The origin of the civil war
To understand the origin of the civil war, one can start by looking at the map of the 2010 presidential elections: one clearly sees the electoral divide between east and west, the west who voted overwhelmingly for Yulia Tymoshenko, and the east for Viktor Yanukovich, the president who was overthrown. The following map shows the percentage of votes obtained by the latter:
This electoral divide is a cultural and linguistic divide: Western predominantly speaks Ukrainian, and the east is essentially Russian-speaking. There is a historical reason for this: Ukraine, historically the region populated by Ukrainian speaking people, do in fact corresponds to the western half of the country; the other half is actually an area conquered in the eighteenth century on the Tatars, populated by Russians, called the "new Russia" (and this is absolutely not a fantasy of Putin), which was attached to Ukraine in 1922 by Lenin, to ensure that the majority in the country will be effectively Russian-speaking.
Yet the majority of Ukrainian always consists of Russian speakers, while the capital, Kiev, is in another part of the country. The coup in February 2014 was fairly well accepted by the people of Kiev and surrounding areas that had voted for Yanukovych to 30%; conversely, in regions of eastern border with Russia, the population had voted overwhelmingly for him, up nearly 90% in Donetsk and Lugansk. We understand that they have not accepted the coup that overthrew the president they had elected, and wanted to keep. The first cause of their desire for secession thus lies in the fact that they do not accept the coup, and no law can oblige them to.
They had all the more reasons to deny the coup that presidential elections were scheduled for May, and that the coup was therefore aimed mainly at preventing the holding of democratic elections by removing the Russian-speaking candidates from the poll; under these conditions, they had obviously nothing to do inside the Ukrainian state.
The second fundamental reason is that the conditions set by Germany to deal with Ukraine demanded that it breaks its ties with Russia. If the people of the West could at a pinch accept it, those in the east refused it categorically.
The third fundamental reason is that groups of neo-Nazis, basically anti-Russian, went engage in barbaric acts in the rest of the country, and that the Ukrainian court refused to investigate these cases. Do not intending to leave assassins to attack their people, they obviously decided to secede.
The coup government of Kiev, being allied to the neo-Nazi party Freedom, immediately tried to suppress this secession attempt by the army, and thus triggered the civil war. It is he and he alone who bears responsibility for the civil war, which has nothing to do, as he claims, with "anti-terrorist" operation, name that all international bodies reject, or with an alleged "invasion " of Russia, which, if it occurred, would lead to the capture of Kiev in 24 hours (Barroso said it, not Putin).
Who fights?
Contrary to the suggestions of the Western media, there is not of one side the Ukrainian army which would defend the country, and on the other side the Russian army who seek to invade. In fact, the military personnel of separatists have been constantly fed by the arrival of the troops of the regular army that Kiev would send against them, and, not wanting to shoot their own people, went on the side of separatists. The civil war now opposed to one side 1) Ukrainian military obeying the orders of the government of Kiev, 2) American militiamen from the private army "academy", former "black water" that formed in Iraq, where it made a sinister reputation (according to Russian sources confirmed by German sources) 3) battalions (Azov, Aidar, Dnieper ...) of volunteers recruited from the ultra-nationalist youth in western regions (particularly in Galicia, where the Nazi tradition strongly maintained itself since the World War II, the neo-Nazi party Freedom got there between 33 and 38% of votes in the last elections); and in the other camp Ukrainian soldiers mainly from the regular army, to which are added a number of volunteers, many actually come from Russia; but they are not from the Russian army officially sent by the government, they are soldiers who leaved the army to fight alongside people who are for them brothers. In both camps are also volunteers from other countries as Germany, Sweden, and dozens of French are now on both sides of the firing line.
I give here, for illustrative purposes, the Wikipedia article that chronicles the siege and capture of Slavyansk; Wiki, being an American encyclopedia, cannot be expected to make the pro-Putin propaganda:
"In March-June 2014, the city was plagued by agitation movements led by militias claiming to be"Donetsk People's Republic".The siege of the city by the Ukrainian army since April 12 proves a failure and causes the death of civilians. The tension also grows with the stationing since April 14, a few kilometers from the city, of an armored column of the Ukrainian army, commanded by General Valery Krutov. It says about agitators he calls "terrorists": "We must warn them that if they do not lay down their arms, we will liquidate them". Ukrainian troops encircle the city of Kiev on April 15th with a score of tanks and 500 men, and would benefit from the support of 400 fighters of American society Academi. Nelly Chtepa, mayor appointed by Kiev and unable to exercise its mandate, said in an interview in Kiev Tuesday, April 15 in the morning that "we must rid the city of the pro-Russian militia, who, (according to her), are terrorizing the city". These words arouse the indignation of the self-proclaimed mayor of Slavyansk Vyacheslav Ponomariov. The next day, some armored tanks sent from Kiev change side and rejoined the supporters of federalization. The crowd let other soldiers return to their base in Dnepropetrovsk. From the statements of soldiers sent by Kiev, they "did not intend to shoot their compatriots". So this was of a failure of the interim government of Kiev. (...) The city, whose defense is organized by Strelkov colonel, is encircled by tanks of the Ukrainian army. Water, electricity and telephone are largely cut off, the city and its suburbs are bombarded daily. The Russians proposed - in vain - the establishment of a humanitarian corridor. Tank columns are stopped several times by the population (12 June 2014). Ponomariov is replaced as mayor by Vladimir Pavlenko, June 13, 2014. He had already met with members of the OSCE mission in Ukraine, saying he was ready to "discussions on the need to stop the resistance army in the region".
Slavyansk is taken over by the loyalist army on July 5, 2014. "
Is it necessary to specify that Slavyansk is now in ruins?
Would Russia supports the separatists?
The answer is obviously yes. This does not mean that the Russian army is directly involved, of course; military intrusion of a greatmagnitude would be clearly visible; and secondly, if it occurred, it probably would take less than 24 hours to reach Kiev. The accusation of a Russian invasion is perfectly grotesque. The Russian support is limited to the supply of arms, executives, and technicians. The main body is provided by the population of the separatists regions. On the other hand, the number of Russian volunteers who enlisted from their own initiative in the separatists armies is likely to run into thousands. There is nothing surprising or scandalous: residents of Donbass are almost all from Russia, they have family on the other side of the border, and it is perfectly natural that they receive help.
What is the current state of the war?
The situation on the front is very bad for the battalions of Kiev, who are constantly losing ground; 10,000 men are now in the process of being encircled in the cauldron of Debaltseve. The initiative is clearly on the side of the separatists, because first of all that they are truly motivated by the war while others do not see the sense, secondly that Russian support, however small, is revealed very effective facing a ghostly Ukrainian army, and thirdly that the separatists do not believe a word of Kiev peace words, which has continually taken advantage of the truce to strengthen as much as possible the weapons of its battalions. From the signing ofthe Minsk agreements, it was obvious that the Kiev government had sought only to take respite to replenish its forces to fight again. The separatists will certainly not offer them the opportunity to start this game anew, and US weapons delivery threats can decide them to end the war as soon as possible. How far will they go? They will just by chance resume Mariupol? They will try to conquer all regions predominantly Russian-speaking, that is to say, the southern half of the country? Could they try to go to Kiev? At present, all options are open.
One of the most serious consequences of this situation is the irritation of the battalions formed by the right-wing extremists, which make the Kiev government responsible for their military failures in the field. Their political leader is trying to unite them, to form a parallel army; he now ensures that this army will obey the government; it's obviously a bad joke: if their will was indeed to obey, they would accept what the government offers them, i.e. to be completely integrated into the regular army. To form a parallel army can have no other purpose than to prepare a coup, what will be devilishly facilitated by their future military failures.
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