With Sudetian spontaneity

The performance of the Czech President Milos Zeman with a proposal to recognize the annexation of Crimea by the failed fact and “pay” to Ukraine for consent to reconcile part of its territory - not just the initiative of the next “useful idiot” of the Kremlin. This is also a reflection of the fatigue of part of the Western political establishment from the conflict with Russia - that’s actually, that's why Zeman went to the tribune of PACE.

It really seems to many Western politicians that it will end soon and will become as it was before the Putin invasion of Crimea. Russia will gradually crawl out of the Donbass, agree with the replacement of its troops and mercenaries of the UN peacekeepers, and what will happen next with the destroyed territory and the propaganda population is already the case of Ukraine. And it’s not easy to leave Crimea, you can’t smoke Putin from there, so it’s much easier to “bent” not him, but Ukrainians, forcing them to come to terms with the fact of annexation. And then everyone will live, live, make Russian good.

This is a dangerous illusion. It is noteworthy that Zeman made his incendiary speech just on the anniversary of the transfer of the Czechoslovak Sudet to Hitler. Then there was also the illusion that the Führer would be satisfied with this territory and the main task of the Western guarantors of the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia (yes, the UK and France were the same guarantors of the integrity of Czechoslovakia as the signatures of the Budapest Memorandum - guarantors of the integrity of Ukraine) - this is to reassure the potential aggressor. Since there was no way to get Hitler to abandon the Sudet, it was decided to bent the Benes - and as a result, after a short time, all Czechoslovakia disappeared from the political map of Europe. Did this help prevent the Second World War? But how.

It is amazing that from this story, many in the West have not yet made any conclusions. That the apologet of the recognition of the "failed facts" is precisely the Czech, and not some other president, is just not surprising. The decades of the occupation - and in Czechoslovakia the years of the German nightmare quickly replaced the Soviet - bring up not only heroes, but also collaborators who are convinced that it is necessary to reckon with force and it is dangerous to resist.

Zeman is a typical representative of this “nation of fear”, and he will call him Ukrainians to put up and take money much easier than a policy from any country who did not know the Soviet boot, albeit a misconducted. But all this analysis of the psychology of surrender does not cancel one simple fact: the rape of Czechoslovakia did not work. Rape and betrayal never work.

If the West really wants to close the Crimean question, you need to act in a completely different way. Never, under no circumstances to recognize the results of the annexation of Crimea. Never, under no circumstances can I cancel sanctions against Russia - moreover, to tighten them every year to continue the annexation. To accept Ukraine in NATO and place the armed forces of the Alliance on its territory. In a word, even a dream of war with this country is impossible to make it impossible.

I will not at all say that these measures guarantee the return of Crimea. But they guarantee the most important thing - that Crimea, even annexed, will be an isolated case, a private illustration of state insanity and retaliation for it. Otherwise, the right of force will sooner or later replace international law, as it was already in the days of the annexation of Sudet.