In Kiev stands a statue depicting Russian and Ukrainian workers holding up the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples. Blood brothers. But time changes everything. The statue featured briefly in the BBC broadcast, 'Uneasy Borders', Sun 6 Feb. The workers' raised arms morphed into another image - the baggy trousers of a politician from the 1920s, possibly Lenin. He holds a piece of paper. This will have consequences, I guess. When Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, annexed Crimea in 1776, her adviser, Bezborodko claimed, "Our only wish has been to bring peace to Crimea…and we were finally forced by the Turks to annex the area." The first 5 letters of Crimea drip blood. All crimes have their excuses. Loaves can become tanks. The geographic outline of Crimea looks a bit like a dismembered hand of friendship, I thought. |