The 2004 Orange Revolution, a wave of street protests that fueled the rise of a pro-Western government in Kiev, will likely be remembered by future historians as the very first modern episode in the drama that would eventually lead to the current Ukraine War. This turning point was enthusiastically supported by the West as a meaningful ideological victory for liberal democracy and ‒ above all ‒ as a geopolitical milestone in the Eastward march of both NATO and the EU. Needless to say, the shockwaves were powerfully felt in the Kremlin. Until then, Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, had been seeking some sort of accommodation with the West. Moscow offered flirtatious overtures to NATO, unilateral diplomatic concessions, and even support for the American military intervention in Afghanistan. Such gestures were seen in Washington and Brussels as a sign of weakness. After all, conventional wisdom dictated that, in the post-Cold War era, Russia was rapidly fading into irrelevance so disregarding what it had to say or what it wanted was an affordable luxury. Considering that Russia was a mere shadow of the impressive power once held by the Soviet Union, Moscow was not being taken seriously anymore.
Read Full Article »
