Putin’s “Greater Novorossiya” - The Dismemberment of Ukraine

Adrian Basora and Aleksandr Fisher

Adrian A. Basora was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from July 1992 to December 1992, and then U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1993 to 1995. Currently, he serves as a Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on Democratic Transitions at FPRI. Aleksandr Fisher is an intern at FPRI and a senior at Temple University, majoring in History and Political Science.

May 2014 | http://www.fpri.org/articles/2014/05/putins-greater-novorossiya-dismemberment-ukraine

On April 17, Vladimir Putin introduced a dangerously expansive new concept into the Ukraine crisis. During his four-hour question and answer session on Russian TV that day he pointedly mentioned “Novorossiya” – a large swath of territory conquered by Imperial Russia during the 18^th century from a declining Ottoman Empire. This historic Novorossiya covered roughly a third of what is now Ukraine (including Crimea).
Subsequent comments and actions by Putin and his surrogates have made it clear that the Kremlin’s goal is once again to establish its dominance over the lands once called Novorossiya. Furthermore, it is clear that Putin hopes to push his control well beyond this region’s historic boundaries to include other contiguous provinces with large Russian-speaking populations.
Most commentators and media are still focusing on Putin’s annexation of Crimea and on the threatened Russian takeover of the eastern Ukraine provinces (oblasts) of Donetsk and Luhansk. But the far more ominous reality, both in Moscow’ rhetoric and on the ground, is that Putin has already begun laying the groundwork for removing not only these, but several additional provincesfrom Kiev’s control and bringing them under Russian domination, either by annexation or by creating a nominally independent Federation of Novorossiya.
Unless the U.S. and its European allies take far more decisive countermeasures than they have to date, Putin’s plan [6][1] will continue to unfold slowly but steadily and, within a matter of months, Ukraine will either be dismembered or brought back into the Russian sphere of influence.