Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

Russia President Vladimir Putin came under criticism from rights activists on Tuesday after he compared Vladimir Lenin's embalmed corpse to the holy relics of Christian saints.

In a Monday speech before a group of supporters, Putin spoke against the idea of removing Lenin's mausoleum from Red Square in Moscow where his corpse is housed.

"Many say the mausoleum contradicts traditions. What contradicts traditions? Go to the Kiev Caves Monastery (in Ukraine) or look at (Russia's) Pskov monastery or Mount Athos (in Greece). There are relics of saints there. You can see everything there," Putin said.

A trusted source of mine materialized this week carrying a freaky gift: a leaked document allegedly produced by Russia’s National Security Council. The document itself, he says, looks like a compilation of pieces of other papers that lay out the Russian plan for Ukraine – at least a version of what they hope to carry out.

Meant to look like a photocopy of a document with a covered-up secrecy stamp on it, it falls short of some features that would identify it as such a secret paper, but carries others that make much of the information and analysis look authentic.

But even if it’s only partially true, Ukraine should brace itself for a long war with Russia, after which our once good neighbor would like to permanently increase its borders – the scenario some observers already call the “state of Israel solution.”

The reference is meant to describe how a state, using instability and infighting in neighboring countries, takes advantage of the weakness to expand its own territory. Except, in the case of Russia, the plan was designed to provoke and nurture the instability first.

The document, entitled “On The Crisis in Ukraine,” is written in solid Russian and reads like a prequel to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on March 18 welcoming Crimea as a part of Russia that laid out a set of very skewed, but passionate arguments for the annexation of Ukraine’s peninsula.

The document gives a snapshot of Russia’s view of Ukraine before the end of the revolution, change of government and ex-president’s cowardly escape at the end of last month. In fact, Viktor Yanukovych was designated a major role to play in the Russian plan, despite a highly unflattering assessment by its security forces of him as “extremely weak, indecisive and a generally inadequate partner.”

The final goal for Russia is stated in two key paragraphs of the document, and they in fact be the reason for the leak, which seems to be designed to gauge people’s reaction to this goal.

“Firstly, only the full inclusion of the territory of Russian regions of Ukraine, namely Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Kiev, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa regions to the Russian Federation can guarantee peace, security and prosperity to its population, as well as reliable defense of Russia’s interests.”

“Secondly, implementation of this task is possible only by establishing control over the mother of Russian cities, the capital of Ukraine, the hero city Kyiv.”

Citing a “full bankruptcy of the so-called Ukrainian statehood” and the danger of “fascists-Banderites” (Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader accused by the Kremlin of collaborating with Nazi Germany) and other extremist elements to implement their misanthropic ideas, terror and broad masses of the population,” Russia planned to ride in on a white horse sometime last month and save “millions of compatriots” from what it describes as “suffering.”