If Moscow has the time to carry out its program of ethnic cleansing in the Donbas and Crimea, there will be no one left to demand the return of these territories to their lawful sovereign Ukraine. The Russian government knows that, and it is acting accordingly, Oleshchuk argues. Such a strategy, of course, is nothing new.The lesson of those different outcomes explains Moscow’s actions in Ukraine now where it is conducting “the largest ethnic cleansing of the 21st century, comparable with the cleansing of earlier years” and involving “the destruction of everything Ukrainian and in the case of Crimea also the Tatar.”
As a result, Oleshchuk says, these non-Russian regions historically became “Russian from time immemorial.” In the case of the Donbas and Crimea, of course, the current rulers in the Kremlin do not have to start from scratch. All they must do, the Ukrainian commentator points out, is continue the work that was “done in Stalin’s times… destroy everything of other ethnic groups, resettle and build an advance post.” If Moscow succeeds, the fate of these regions will be like Kaliningrad; if it doesn’t, their fate will be like that of the Baltic countries.“Have you never wondered who populated Siberia or the Volga region before the Russians?” he asks rhetorically. These weren’t empty deserts; there were various nations there. But with the coming of Russian arms, some were “assimilated” and some were “destroyed.”
