Who should learn lessons from what happened to Ukraine

Who should learn what lessons from Ukraine, the victim of the struggle between the West and Russia? Undoubtedly, the Ukrainian people are at the top of the list of those who need to learn lessons.

The heavy price of following incompetent leaders who could not foresee the catastrophe that the Western-engineered Orange Revolution would bring to the country, nor the fragmentation that war with Russia would bring, will be collected from the Ukrainian people.

In target countries, the future Zelenskys waiting for their turn, the caricature leaders, also need to learn a lesson from how they are simply abandoned once their mission is over.

There are also lessons to be learned by certain administrators who are ignorant of political history and realpolitik, who lean toward Zelensky one day and Putin the next, who dislike the Montreux Convention one day and then refuse to hear a word against it the next.

Let us add our own country to the list of those who need to learn a lesson, due to the deep negligence that led us to fall into a position of being mere spectators, not to mention failing to consider the theological dimension of the Russia-Ukraine War.

On January 5, 2019, at a ceremony held in Fener, Bartholomew presented the "Tomos" decree, which granted "Autocephaly" to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, to Epifaniy, the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

We are talking about a theopolitical setup whose script was written by imperialism and whose field implementation was given to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Leaving for another article our lack of state wisdom to foresee the theological contribution to the Russia-Ukraine war of the participation of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his wife Marina Poroshenko in the service at the St. George's Church in the Patriarchate courtyard on January 6, let us return to our topic.

Evaluations made without looking at the historical background of the West's interest in Ukraine will remain incomplete. Let us underline that in the background of the war lies the question of which side's sphere of influence Ukraine, which surrounds the Russian Federation from the west and southwest, will remain in. Let us remember that the most violent clashes between Germany and Russia in World War I and World War II took place on this very field.

The ideal of a united Europe under German patronage, stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Urals, has continued from the Germanic Teutonic Knights to the present day with different terms (but unchanged in essence).

The 19th-century German expansionist term Drang Nach Osten would be called Lebensraum (living space) during the Hitler era. It is time to end the historical roots of Western imperialism's strategy of surrounding Russia with a Polish and Ukrainian buffer and isolating it from the Black Sea, and return to the present day. Russia's harsh response to the West's dream of including Ukraine in its sphere of influence will be recorded in history as an exemplary example that intentions, rhetoric, and initiatives not based on military power are doomed to remain fruitless.

Russia has proven on the ground that it will never allow a Ukraine that would fundamentally enter the West's sphere of influence with the realization of NATO membership. Giving its first response by tearing Crimea away from Ukraine, Russia's act of depriving Ukraine of its lifelines by taking the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk) region under control is an indication of a strategic planning calculated down to the finest detail.

Lessons should be learned from the US President telling Zelensky, in a cynical and demeaning tone, that he has lost a war that had no possibility of being won, and that he has no choice but to accept Russia's conditions without dragging things out any further.

Again, the US President mentioning a figure far above the monetary aid given to Zelensky, and in return demanding that Ukraine's precious minerals be given to them, shows the exemplary ends of those who descend into deep wells with the rope of imperialism.