Russia continues to devour Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has continued his land grab in Ukraine, making it ever more apparent that the Russian president wants to reunite the old Soviet republics and from a new Soviet Union, even at the risk of causing a major war.

span style="line-height: 1.22;">LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March after Crimea held a referendum to secede from Ukraine, which was widely criticized as illegal by much of the world. Afterwards, pro-Russian gunmen seized numerous government buildings in around ten cities throughout eastern Ukraine.

On April 14 a police station in the eastern city of Donetsk was stormed, and many of the officers capitulated and joined the crowd. Outside they were met by a man who identified himself as Alexander Shulzhenko, a Lieutenant Colonel with the Russian army.

Pray for peace!

It is unsurprising, as having Russian troop instigate, lead, and coordinate these takeovers seems to have become Putin's go to strategy, after his military intervention in the Crimea was loudly decried by the world, and saw sanctions leveled on his country.

This new approach is much more effective because it puts Ukraine's government in a horrible situation where they have no effective options. They can either slowly lose their country to Russian instigated uprisings and rebellions, or they can retake the territory with force and risk a very short war with Russia, losing their territory anyways.

On April 15, Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov told the countries parliament that there was an "anti-terrorist operation," underway in Donetsk. "The aim of these actions is to protect the citizens of Ukraine, to stop terror, to stop criminality, to stop attempts to tear Ukraine to piece," he said.

On that day, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, weighed in. "I will be brief: Ukraine is on the brink of civil war, it's frightening," he said.

Currently NATO shows no signs that it will intervene with force on Ukraine's behalf. So the country stands very much alone, the victim of an ambitious Russian leader who has a country of frothing zealots behind him, and a personality cult to rival that of Hitler or Stalin. 

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