Cold Shower For Putin

Ukraine is returning home.

The decision of the European Union summit to begin negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova regarding their accession to the EU is a kind of “prologue” to the present historical event — Ukraine’s very accession to the EU.

When this accession takes place, it will be possible to say that it completes a series of important events of the 20th and 21st centuries, which together should bring Ukraine home.

The first of these events can be considered the proclamation of independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), followed by the declaration of the unification of Ukrainian historical lands.

The emergence of independent Ukraine also led to the creation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). However, the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine led to the death of both the state and the autocephalous church. And when Soviet troops came to western Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was also banned.

The destruction and collapse of the communist regime, with the active participation of Ukrainians, created opportunities for the declaration of independent Ukraine, the restoration of the UGCC and the proclamation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and the UAOC, which contributed to another historical event — the tomos from the Ecumenical Patriarch on the creation of a local church in Ukraine.

And now, against the backdrop of a brutal war with Russia, negotiations are beginning on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

From January 1654 to November 1917, events unfolded in the opposite direction. From Europe, Ukrainians headed to the throne of the Moscow Tsar, into the “embraces” of a cruel and deceitful despotism, which changed the names and faces of its tyrants, but never changed the most important thing — sincere and undisguised hatred of everything Ukrainian.

Literally from the first days after the Pereyaslav Rada, Ukrainian self-governing traditions were destroyed, language and culture were repressed, and history was stipulated.

At the end of the 17th century, the ancient Kyiv Metropolis became part of the Moscow Church, subject to the tsars (and subsequently the general secretaries), and turned into an instrument of Russification and degradation of public life (what to hide, in its modern version of the UOC (MP) this instrument is successfully used today).

It seemed that the Russian Empire had finally defeated the Ukrainians and convinced them that Europe had never been here. But, as we see, it only seemed so.

Of course, Russia is not a country that easily gives up what it has captured. On the day European leaders decided to begin negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, Vladimir Putin held a high-profile “direct line” — the first such propaganda event since February 24, 2022.

The Russian leader has once again made it clear that he is ready for a long and grueling war with Ukraine and is not abandoning the terms of surrender that were put forward to facilitate the final occupation of Ukraine by Russian troops. It was obvious that Putin did not believe in the further support of Ukraine by the civilized world, and therefore for him and his circle the decision of the summit in Brussels was a real cold shower.

Vitaly Portnikov, «Радио Свобода»