“The Ukraine Girls Really Knock me Out….”
The newspapers have recently been filled with articles about the looming threat of Russia invading the Ukraine. I don’t think I had ever heard about Ukraine until the late 60s when the sone “Back In The USSR” was released by the Beatles with that wonderful line “The Ukraine girls really knock me out. They leave the West behind.”
When I grew up anything east of Poland was called “The USSR” and I had no idea that it was made up of lots of different countries that became part of the United Socialist Soviet Republic when the communists took over Russia in 1918.
The only other contact I had with this area of the world were street names in Melbourne and Shepparton like Balaclava Rd, Crimea St, Sebastopol St but I didn’t associate any of this with a geographical area of the world.
Slowly as the years went by the veil on Eastern Europe lifted slowly and the invisible countries of the Soviet era slowly appeared.
I decided to attempt to find out what is going on and why Vladimir Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine.
The following discussion is by John Mearsheimer and American political scientist. I listened to it a few days ago and it gave me a much broader understanding of the historical situation between NATO, Ukraine and Russia. Well worth a listen if you want a greater knowledge of the past 20 years.
