By Alex Marinides
A newly leaked memo has delivered the shocking revelation that the Russian government planned to annex both the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine before that country’s revolution last year. This proves that Russia was lying when it insisted that it had invaded the area spontaneously in order to avoid the persecution of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
The report was released by Novaya Gazeta, a Russian magazine which is notable for being one of the last publications in that country with freedom of the press.
A conservative oligarch named Konstantin V. Malofeev is apparently the person who drafted the memo, which laid out what was described as the unstoppable dissolution of Ukraine, and suggested a path for Russia to follow in order to gain the most from the situation.
The memo is notable in that the steps it outlines have basically been followed in the actual government policy towards the Ukraine, short of Russia officially annexing any part of Eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, denied the memo’s legitimacy, saying that “I don’t know whether this document exists at all…the document has nothing to do with the Kremlin.”
Malofeev’s communications team also denied any connection with the memo, which cannot yet be independently verified (the newspaper did not publish any actual pictures of the memo).
All this comes after continued violence in Ukraine, with the recently signed ceasefire on shaky ground. After the truce was signed, there were reports of consistent violations of the ceasefire by separatist rebels. However, the situation appears to have stabilized at least a little bit in the past few days.
