: Ukraine as Russias Pakistan #IndiaNEWS #International By Dmitry KosyrevThe year was 2006 or 2007, I was lecturing at the JNU in Delhi. The topic was Russias foreign policy, and Russo-Ukrainian verbal

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Ukraine as Russias Pakistan #IndiaNEWS #International
By Dmitry KosyrevThe year was 2006 or 2007, I was lecturing at the JNU in Delhi. The topic was Russias foreign policy, and Russo-Ukrainian verbal bickering of that era was constantly cropping up as a discussion point.
Thats when Ive discovered that my audience just could not warm up to the subject, because you had to know a lot of foreign history to understand what was is about. And, anyway, why should professors and students of JNU be in the know about a very obscure ethno-ideological conflict somewhere in Europe? I could not blame them for taking no interest. I had to blame myself for not putting it clearly.
So I simply said: look, folks, Ukraine is Russias Pakistan. And thats when everybody woke up and began to take interest and ask questions.
Today, Ukraine is still Russias Pakistan. Only thing, its a Pakistan of the year 1971, when a war over Bengal had started, dragging several foreign powers into the fray. Similarities here are often close to 100 per cent.
We need history to avoid past mistakes and, maybe, to draw inspiration from the past solutions. Its a pity that next to nobody in Russia remembers the lessons of 1971, since you have to be an Orientalist for that, or to be over 70 and remember the old newspapers. For us, that war was too far away, and too long ago.
We had newspapers at the time, we had TV, but we did not yet live in a world where fake news were morphing into huge global phantoms, bearing no resemblance to the truth. While today you are supposed to believe that we are seeing a war started by a huge imperialistic Russia, suddenly invading a small freedom-loving Ukraine.
The West was sure, this time, that it was in complete control of all the media sphere, globally. But something went wrong. The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning, said, last week, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
Of course they are not winning. How about a narrative about an imperialistic India attacking a small, freedom-loving Pakistan in December 1971? Did that narrative win?
Lets go back to these 100 per cent similarities of these two wars. Pakistan in 1971 had its East and West, and they were, mildly speaking, uncomfortable with each other. The true Pakistanis were supposed to speak Urdu, not Bengali. The Easterners were treated like second-rate Pakistanis.
Ukraine has its East and West, too. The industrial and Russian-speaking East (and South) had been arbitrary attached to Ukraine by the Communist government starting from 1918. Ukraine has been struggling with that problem from 1991, getting its independence and statehood after the split of the Soviet Union.
The problem was in Western ideology, based on the idea that Ukraine is not Russia, while half of the nation was, essentially, Russian.

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