As the deciduous tree sheds its leaves in autumn, a new ring is added to its trunk of ages and its roots are seldom remembered when a new spring buds forth its new leaves again. Just as an old tree has its roots from the beginning of a seedling, so do nations.
Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, is there a root to the current problems and issues? Has a foreign lumberjack come to cut down an old tree, or is the lumberjack a native of the land of the tree’s roots? How old is Ukraine and Russia as countries and is there a common root?
Timeline of Ukrainian History & Important Historical Events
882 CE – Kievan Rus’ begins with of Prince Oleg.
1569 – Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ukraine falls under administration of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1648 – Khmelnytsky Uprising, a Ukrainian Cossack rebellion.
1772-1795 – ‘Partitions of Poland.’ Western Ukraine falls under control of Austria-Hungary, the rest becomes part of Russian Empire.
Mid-18th Century – Ukrainian National Revival. Ukrainian nationality and identity to consider.
1917 – Rada Council. Central Rada (Council) forms in Kiev after collapse of Russian Empire.
1918 – Ukraine Declares Independence
1932 – Stalin’s Famine. Around 7 million killed during Stalin’s collectivization famine.
1941-1944 – Nazis Occupy
1944 – Tatars to Siberia. Stalin deports almost a quarter million Tatars from Crimea to Siberia.
1945 – WWII Ends. Western portion of Ukraine annexed into Soviet Union as WWII ends.
1986 – Chernobyl nuclear power station’s reactor explodes, causing infamous radioactive event.
1991 – Independence. Ukraine declares independence from USSR.
1996 – Hryvnia Currency Introduced
2004 – Orange Revolution
2014 – Russia Annexes Crimea
Source for below: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/02/21/280684831/why-ukraine-is-such-a-big-deal-for-russia
Why Ukraine Is Such A Big Deal For Russia
February 21, 2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yanukovych, chat during a news conference after talks in Moscow on Dec. 17. (2013)
Ivan Sekretarev/AP
There’s cautious optimism in Ukraine and the West on Friday at news that President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to hold new elections, form a unity government and restore a constitution drafted in 2004. But the mood in Moscow may not be as optimistic.
One reason for this, as NPR’s Greg Myre reported, is that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to stem his country’s decline in global influence: Moscow’s leverage in places like Ukraine is one way to preserve that influence. But there are other reasons why Ukraine is of deep interest to Russia — reasons that have more to do with history, faith, economics and culture.
A Special Relationship
Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, says the two countries “are joined at the hip”: They share language; Russian media are popular in Ukraine; there are family ties; many Ukrainians work in Russia; and Russians have billions of dollars invested in Ukraine.
“Their relationship is like the U.S.-U.K. special relationship,” Rojansky says.
Historically, those ties date back to before the Soviet Union — and even before the days of the Russian empire that began in the 18th century.
Many consider Ukraine to be the birthplace of the region’s Orthodox Christianity. Ukraine then became part of the Russian empire, and later part of the Soviet Union, where Ukrainian men were pivotal in the Soviet defeat of the German army in World War II. (Ukraine was perhaps the most important Soviet republic after Russia).
Linguistic And Economic Ties
Linguistically, as we’ve told you before, most Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian. But it’s the eastern and southern parts of the country where Russian speakers dominate, and where Russia still holds influence.
Take Crimea, for instance. More than half of its 2 million people are Russian, and Russia still maintains a naval base there. In fact, the region was part of Russia until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine as a present. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine.
Millions of Ukrainians work in Russia, and according to the EU-funded Migration Policy Centre, the Russia-Ukraine border is the second-largest migration corridor in the world. (The U.S.-Mexico border is the largest.) The center says that in 2011, more than one-third of all Ukrainian migration was to Russia.
Russian companies are one of the largest investors in Ukraine, accounting for 7 percent of total foreign investment in 2013, according to official Ukrainian statistics. And when Yanukovych walked away from the deal on closer economic and political ties with the EU, Russia said it would buy $15 billion worth of Ukrainian bonds, giving Kiev an economic lifeline. (But on Friday Moscow said it was taking a wait-and-see approach to the events unfolding across the border.)
Ukraine is also a key component of Russia’s plans for a Eurasian customs union with some other former Soviet states. But as Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told NPR’s Robert Siegel, “for many Ukrainians, and I even think for President Yanukovych, that’s not where they want to go.”
Seeds Of Discord
The crisis in Ukraine is, in many ways, a conflict about the former Soviet republic’s future direction: Should it look westward toward the EU or maintain close ties with Russia?
Until recently, this wasn’t an either/or question, says Stephen Sestanovich, a professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University.
“For 20-odd years, it has been possible for the Ukrainians to kind of have it both ways,” Sestanovich told NPR’s Siegel. “What is now the troubling issue on the agenda is the perception of a lot of people that you do have to choose, and that is producing violence across Ukraine.”
There are historical reasons for some of the antipathy — especially in the western part of Ukraine that borders Poland, where the protests against Yanukovych have been the loudest. This area was once part of Poland and Austro-Hungary, and became part of Ukraine only when World War II began.
Ukraine was the victim of the 1932-33 famine induced by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Later, it was among the Soviet republics that bore the brunt of the Chernobyl disaster.
Those events undoubtedly resonated in the public memory for years: Ukraine was one of the first Soviet republics to vote for independence from the USSR. It did so overwhelmingly in 1991. The Soviet Union fell apart soon after that.
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President Roosevelt (FDR) didn’t want to get involved in a European War. The USA did send aid to the UK and Russia. The country was just beginning to come out of a great depression and had enough problems on its plate. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Congress declared war on Japan. Japan had signed an axis pact agreement with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy in the mid 1930’s. On December 11, 1947 Hitler declared war on the United States, and in return, the U.S. declared war on Germany, then the whole world was drug into a war.
Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine and started a war in Europe which is on our eastern front, will China invade Taiwan on our western rear? Russia and China have a “Military Cooperation Agreement“. Is history about to repeat itself? Is the world about to come into WW III? The pattern of three woes is in Revelation. Prophecy will be fulfilled!
“And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord GOD: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD.” (Ezekiel 38:21-23 KJV)
“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. (Matthew 24:3-13 KJV)
Zechariah 13
KJV(i) 1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. 2 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. 3 And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth. 4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive: 5 But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. 6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. 7 Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. 8 And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. 9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.
Independence from man’s government and dependence on the King of Kings government is at hand. (Isaiah 9:6-7, Revelation 20:4-6)
Come out of Babylon for her judgement is near.
LOLGB+
The Ezekiel 33 Watchman Report 