Rivers would like to see the Ukraine manufacturing tractors - doubts this is going to happen in the near future.

By Ray Rivers

March 2, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

That title has to be taken tongue in cheek.

British author Maria Lewycka provides a valuable look into Ukrainian society through her charming novel about Ukrainian tractors. Although trade between Russia and Ukraine has pretty much come to a halt, except Russian gas, following Russia’s invasion, the economies of the two countries had been closely intertwined during the days of the USSR. As ironic as it seems today, Ukraine had been a major provider of military equipment for the Soviet block, including rocket and helicopter engines, and even tanks (tractors in the book).

At the moment it is like watching a school-yard bully kick the crap out of a smaller kid and steal his lunch money. And we in the west are holding a ring-side seat, frozen by the obscene spectacle and hoping, in vain, that the irrational aggressor will come to his senses. Having expressed our concerns and imposed some mild sanctions to ease our guilt, we find ourselves shouting words of encouragement from the sidelines but are hesitant to help with significant material substance.

Similarities to Germany’s 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia are eerie. Russia, unable to control its lesser neighbour, has invaded on the flimsy and false pretext of protecting the linguistic rights of Russian speakers there. But in this the truth lies somewhere else. The cunning Vlad Putin is either unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, or is so bent on aggression against his neighbour that it doesn’t matter.

It might look as if Russia’s invasion was part of a greater long term strategy, which recent evidence shows it was. Back over a year ago there were rumours of Russian parliamentarians exploring Hungarian and Polish interest in the division of Ukraine – in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler’s pact to divide Europe between them (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact).

The former Ukrainian president Yanukovych, elected in 2010, was essentially Putin’s puppet. He ran down the military and the economy, making the country vulnerable and weak, and ripe for the ensuing aggression. Under Kremlin pressure he cancelled plans for the Ukraine to join the EU, which ordinary Ukrainians had regarded as their last hope of rescuing their failing economy and ending corruption.

When the people protested, he called on Putin to help him. And Putin apparently complied providing sharpshooters who killed over a hundred of the protesters. Then fearing for his life and having lost his moral authority in parliament, by even his own party, Yanukovych fled to Russia, taking the federal treasury ($40 billion) with him. Interpol has recently issued a warrant for his arrest.

Crack Russian troops invading the Crimea.

While Ukrainian parliamentarians were sorting out how to govern, and with the conclusion of the Sochi Olympics, Putin made his move. First he invaded and annexed Crimea and then moved into eastern Ukraine. As the recovering Ukrainian army was in the process of expelling the pro-Russian forces in the east last summer, Putin uncloaked his military might, sending in his crack troops, modern tanks and advanced weapon systems to defeat them.

A desperate Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire freezing battle lines (Minsk). However, the Russian president, despite all his denials, ignored every aspect of the agreement. He continued to send more troops and advanced weapons to ensure that the out-gunned Ukrainians would not be able to retake pro-Russian seized territory, and allowing his forces to continue grabbing more land.

Then there is the matter of the Russian missile which knocked down a Malaysian airliner last summer, killing all 300 people on board (including a Canadian). Since the rest of the world seems impotent to deal with this event, it will likely require legal action by the aggrieved victims’ families to register some measure of accountability. And there is now evidence that Putin’s people have been conducting a terrorist campaign, planting bombs all over Ukraine, including at a recent peace march.

Putin has been jailing or exiling all of his political opponents over the last few years, as he has steadily moved Russia back towards autocracy. On Friday his most effective opponent, in fact his once former deputy prime minister, was gunned down in a professional assassination – reminiscent of KGB contract killings.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the antithesis of the way we in the west believe a major military power should behave. Yet nobody is prepared to stand up to him in any meaningful way – in any way that might change his behaviour. Putin told the west that sanctions would not work and they haven’t. Yes, sanctions and lower oil prices have hurt the Russian economy, but Putin is not going to be swayed by economics.

Putin won’t stop until he is stopped. Ukrainians know this but nobody else seems to get it. Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and even our own Harper, keep saying that there is no ‘military solution’ to the crisis. But they couldn’t be more wrong, as events have shown. The former KGB agent is all about his military might. To get his attention he needs to believe that his military could fail to meet its objectives. Negotiating terms with Putin is a one way street, with the traffic going only in his direction. Call this kind of negotiation what it is – appeasement.

Appeasement failed to stop Hitler in 1938 (Neville Chamberlain in Munich) and it will not work in Ukraine (Minsk). Ukraine has asked the west to supply it with modern weapons to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked military aggression. Ukraine is in the process of a massive mobilization of its youth, but needs training and modern weapons for its conscripts to be able to defend themselves. We in the west, including Canada, have that technology in spades.

Ukraine became a source of agriculture for the |Soviet Union and Europe. They were never quite as good as the Massey Ferguson tractors Toronto factories shipped to farms throughout Western Canada

Canada has always had a special relationship with the Ukraine. After all this country has received more Ukrainian immigrants than anywhere else outside of Russia. Ukrainian-Canadians have recently been coming out to help the country of their heritage, including joining troops on the front line against the pro-Russian military forces.

Ukrainian-Canadians know we have the ability to supply the training and arms that Ukraine needs, or that we should be able to help influence other nations to move in that direction. There is no partisanship here. Every single Canadian government has supported Ukraine’s struggle for independence, including making us the first nation to recognize the new country after the breakup of the USSR.

Stephen Harper has been among the most vocal anywhere in defending the sovereignty of Ukraine. We have offered some financial assistance and some non-lethal military supplies. But our Ukrainian Canadians, who have become some of the PM’s staunchest supporters, know that we can and should do much more.

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran as a Liberal against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province. Rivers describes himself “as of Ukrainian extraction”.

Background links:

Ukrainian Tractors     Soviet-Nazi pact     Invasion Strategy     Appeasement Failure

Breaking the Ceasefire     Breaking the Truce      Mis-reading Putin     Need for Weapons    Putin

Full Scale War     Russian Contract Killing     Russian Terrorism     Putin’s Plans     Canada’s Role

Price of Appeasement

Canadians in Ukraine     Canadian Persuasion