Why the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria are both similar and different

I am about to say something that I never thought in a million years I would ever say: I agree with Petro Poroshenko. He said that Syria and Ukraine are in a similar position and they certainly are, but not for the reasons he said. 

His incoherent, delusional speech to the UN General Assembly is not even worth analysing, but this premise is, and here’s why. 

The current borders of Ukraine and Syria are arbitrary, having been carved out from the regions of two great empires which collapsed following the First World War. In the case of Syria, Britain and France carved up the Middle Eastern/Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire in the secretive Sykes-Picot agreement, an agreement incidentally made public by the Russian press. 

The present borders of Ukraine are equally arbitrary, carved mainly from regions of Russia which date back to 1654, whilst Novorossiya in what is today the south east of the country dates back to the reign of Catherine the Great, specifically to 1764.

The westernmost parts of Ukraine were part of the Polish Second Republic, but were transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the Great Patriotic War.

Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in 1954, but mercifully a peaceful and democratic referendum in 2014 reversed this whim of Khrushchev, saving many lives in the process. 

But what about today? The similarities are even stronger.

As recently as 2011 both Syria and Ukraine were stable and peaceful countries. That was until Western funded miscreants posing as an official opposition set both countries on fire. 

In Syria it started in 2011 when a rag tag gang began violent protests against the government in Damascus. These protests did not result in the downfall of the government but weakened the central power enough for foreign fighters to pour over the border from Iraq and turn Syria from a bedrock of secular Arab stability into a hellhole of theocratic conflict. This includes the group now known as ISIS, and of course it also includes other groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, and the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ who are best known for disinfecting the blade with which they behead their secular opponents. 

In Ukraine things happened in a similar manner. Cash and supplies from the US were airlifted to Ukraine and Victoria Nuland of the US Department of State turned up in Kiev to congratulate the agitators. The agitators – painted as Hollywood style democratic activists – were actually the dangerous far-right whose violence against civilians and police officers gripped the world. 

The only major difference between Syria and Ukraine is that the West has managed to destabilise Syria but has failed to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government.

In Ukraine by contrast, though President Yanukovych signed an agreement which represented a major concession to his opponents, but which still left him in the office to which he had been democratically elected, his opponents in the streets repudiated the agreement which their erstwhile leaders had signed, causing Yanukovych – rightly or wrongly – to flee for his life. 

Now both countries are being ripped apart. Donbass has seen the murder of civilians in cold blood, the rape of women and children, and deprivation which has only been alleviated because of Russian aid. 

Syria is fighting against a myriad of Takfiri terrorists who are both indirectly and directly being aided by the NATO powers of Turkey,  the US, France and Britain, whilst the people of Donbass are fighting for their lives against a combination of ill-trained regular forces and neo-Nazi para military forces backed by the same group of NATO powers.  Other parts of Ukraine witness violent attacks against civilians for things like putting flowers on war memorials, and all of the country is economically imperilled. 

In both cases Russia is trying to quell tensions. In Ukraine Russia is doing so by aiding the civilians of Donbass.  In Syria it is doing it by helping to fight some of the most violent barbarians the world has witnessed. 

So yes, Mr. Poroshenko, there are similarities between Syria and Ukraine, but you should have ended your speech there.