Anna Nemtsova writes how Russian President
Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin's dream of turning parts of Ukraine into "Novorossia"
is turning to dust, as the thugs and criminals running the Russia-backed militias turn on each other:
Leaders of Novorossia, or New Russia, the pro-Russia separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, are publicly admitting their failure. The Kremlin’s ideologues wanted Novorossia to stretch from Donetsk to Odessa, and to provide a transport corridor to Crimea. Russian nationalists believed that Russia had to annex the entire Novorossia together with its rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk republics. But the Moscow-inspired and orchestrated project fell apart from the beginning—rebel leaders and warlords quit the movement one after another, or ordered one another’s murders. [snip]
Such news can’t be welcome in the Kremlin. Grandiose statements by President Vladimir Putin and his advisers suggested that Novorossia was meant to include most of Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern cities, including Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea port city of Odessa and the Azov Sea port city of Mariupol. But now, Novorossia is shrinking to just the two devastated portions of Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
The situation in Ukraine has largely fallen off the radar screens in Western media, but clearly Putin's adventure reached its high-water mark and is now receding (along with the Russian economy). How unfortunate a nation as great as Russia has not found a leader to fulfill its potential for good rather than harm.
