'"Someone" has to finance proxy army.'
The EU has announced a civil protection hub for Ukraine will be established in Romania, as well as sending €500 million in aid to Kiev
www.rt.com
3 Mar, 2022
A longer term perspective on the effect on the surrounding areas of the conflict in Ukraine, with a focus on the location and history of Romania and Moldova
From the article:
Declaring that it is “our duty as Europeans” to provide support “in times of war,” von der Leyen announced a “civil protection hub for Ukraine” will be based in Romania and “at least €500 million” ($554.40 million) in humanitarian assistance be sent to Kiev.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis revealed he had discussed with von der Leyen about the need to increase support for countries that are “currently dealing with a large number of Ukrainian refugees.”
Iohannis and von der Leyen did not specify where exactly the new hub will be established, but the pair expected it would be required, fearing the conflict in Ukraine will escalate.
Can one imagine large groups of refugees in one place. Such locations became in part also recruiting and training grounds in Syria. If something similar happens in Romania, it might be worthwhile considering its strategic position and history of armed conflict, since such a review may save one from unexpected surprises later.
The strategic position of Romania
Romania borders Ukraine, to the north and east, Moldova to the east, the Black Sea and Bulgaria to the south, Serbia and Hungary to the west.
The border in the north to Western Ukraine is of strategic significance. Here is a map:
In the above map, red is always included, brown is often included and pink is sometimes included.
The border between Ukraine and Romania runs through the Carpathian Mountains. A map brings out the unique features of the terrain:
Romanian and its eastern neighbor Moldova
Moldova has been a neutral country, though
Unification of Moldova and Romania has been in the works for a few decades, since the languages, with minor variations, are the same.
A 2013 study by the Soros Foundation Romania found that from the passing of the
citizenship law in 1991 until the end of 2012, the number of successful applications from Moldova was 323,049.
[59] This is an increase of 96,542 successful applications since 15 August 2011.
[60] In the same period, the number of applications was 449,783, meaning that around 125,000 applications still need to be finalised.
[59] In 2011 and 2012, 100,845 and 87,015 applications were submitted respectively.
[59] The actual number of persons granted citizenship in these applications remains unclear because each application may include
minors dependent on the adult filing. The number of persons is estimated to be around 400,000, with a potential of 150,000 more persons if all outstanding applications are successful.
[59] Between January 1, 2010 and November 5, 2021 as many as 1,027,091 Moldovan citizens acquired Romanian citizenship, of which 746,695 adults and 280,396 minors.[61]
Here is
a map of the extent of Romanian language in the area:
Here is another perspective, from the Wiki
Hungarians in Romania, where light green in the North are Ukrainians, green Hungarian and purple is Romanian.
Romania also has a significant minority of
Romani people, the estimates vary widely: "619,007
[note 2]–1,850,000 (8.3%)
[13][14][15]", but they probably speak any of the languages used by the people around them.
The language and history of Moldova
On
Romanian Language: Moldova v Romania? They explain:
Formally, the Romanian spoken in Moldova and Romania does not differ. Although, informally there are major differences due to the widespread use of words of Russian words origin and of course, the accent.
The history of the “Moldovan” language begins in 1812, when a part of Moldova was annexed to the Russian Empire, later called ‘Bessarabia’.
At the end of the First World War; Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina joined together with the Kingdom of Romania, thus forming a larger Romania.
This union, however, did not last long because Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940.
The Republic of Moldova became a sovereign and independent state only on May 27, 1991, with the signing of its Declaration of Independence.
As a result of roughly 200 years of Russian rule, the vocabulary of the citizens of Bessarabia has been greatly influenced. If a Romanian and a Moldovan meet in an informal environment, there is a chance they will not understand each other, even though, formally, they speak the same language.
Both Romanians and Moldovans are aware of these differences, thus the creation of Moldovan-Romanian “dictionaries”.
Romania is part of the EU and NATO. Moldova is not, though NATO has tried.
In the area of Moldova, there is also the Transnistria break away zone, a frozen conflict for about 30 years with a Russian military presence of 200 soldiers. However, in order to help these people, there is a problem of the location which borders Ukraine, Romania and of course Moldova. The following map is from a Russian report,
Transnistria can be the end not only for Moldova, but also for Ukraine and Romania that mentions about 500,000 people in Transnistria have Russian passports.
Moldova and the area Transnistria, borders to the Odessa Oblast in Ukraine
Odessa was the city where in the Euromaidan year, on May 2, 2014, the infamous Fire at the Trade Union Building in Odessa took place. See for instance
Odessa Massacre - What REALLY Happened: VIDEO -- Sott.net
From the Wiki for
Odessa Oblast, there is:
During World War II Axis forces conquered the area and Romania occupied the oblast and administered it as part of the Transnistria Governorate (1941–1944). After the war the Soviet administration reestablished the oblast with its pre-war borders.
Odesa Oblast expanded in 1954 to absorb Izmail Oblast (also known as the Budjak region of Bessarabia), formed in 1940 as a result of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (from Romania), when Northern and Southern parts of Bessarabia were given to the Ukrainian SSR.
If the EU and NATO have singled Romania out for the attention of becoming a civil protection hub, it becomes interesting to take a look at how Romania was involved last time there was a conflict in or around the country. This appears to have been WWII.
Romania in World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania under King Carol II officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance.
Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies.
Romania after the territorial losses of 1940. The recovery of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was the catalyst for Romania's entry into the war on Germany's side.
In 1940 Romania's territorial gains made following World War I were largely undone. In July, after a Soviet ultimatum, Romania agreed to
give up Bessarabia and northern Bukovina (the Soviets also annexed the city of
Hertsa, which was not stated in the ultimatum). Two-thirds of Bessarabia were combined with a
small part of the Soviet Union to form the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The rest (northern Bukovina, the northern half of
Hotin county and
Budjak) was apportioned to the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
A
short video in Russian mentions that Transnistria, was the
small part of the Soviet Union used to be a part of Ukraine. Returning to the participation of Romania in WWII.
As a member of the Axis, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, providing equipment and oil to Nazi Germany as well as committing more troops to the Eastern Front than all the other allies of Germany combined. Romanian forces played a large role during fighting in
Ukraine,
Bessarabia,
Stalingrad and elsewhere.
Romanian troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of 260,000 Jews in Romanian-controlled territories, though most Jews living within Romania survived the war.[1]
I was wondering what regions Romania was controlling. Here there is another map:
See also
History of the Jews in Odessa. From another source:
What contribution did Romania make to the war on the eastern front?
From 1941-1944, up to 30 divisions of the Romanian army took part in the war against the USSR. In general, during the war, on the side of Hitler Germany, Romania lost 600 thousand people (of which 400 thousand were irretrievable losses).
From 1940 to August 1944, their supplies to Germany reached 13.3 million tons, which covered more than a third of the needs of the German Reich in petroleum products. To this must be added that approximately three-quarters of the energy sources needs of the Nazi army were met at their expense.
In addition to huge human losses (600 thousand people), the country suffered a huge economic damage, that was estimated as equal to the budget of pre-war Romania for 12 years. While the Romanian army fought in the USSR, on foreign territory, its country was put on the brink of disaster by military expenses and German requisitions, and then it was occupied by German troops.
This post began with a naïve belief that I would be done with one map and 10 minutes. But the first map, needed a second. This led to many other questions, which also required answers.
Romania from a Russian strategic perspective
There are a few articles, although older, from
www.geogpolitica.ru About their
mission they say:
Portal Geopolitika.ru is a platform for continuous monitoring of the geopolitical situation in the world, based on the application of methods of classical and postclassical geopolitics. The portal follows the line of the Eurasian approach. The analytical group cooperates closely with the International Eurasian Movement, as well as the Center for Geopolitical Expertises, the Center for Conservative Studies and some ex-members of Katehon think tank.
Here are a few titles:
FOCUS ON ROMANIA ?
US WARHEADS MOVE TO ROMANIA? 2016
From a political point of view, Romania is a completely controlled US subsidiary with no actual sovereignty. Its geographical proximity to Russia and the Middle East, where tactical nuclear weapons might be used, make it ideal for storage. However, such turn Romania into a legitimate target for Russian nuclear weapons.
SOME REMARKS ON GEOPOLITICS IN ROMANIA 2016
Romanian Nationalism Reloaded 2016
US ANTI-MISSILE SHIELD OR SWORD? 2016
What are the risks for Romania?
As a gesture of supreme servility towards the US, Romanian authorities agreed that the status of the US base at Deveselu would be similar to the American AEGIS ship, commanded by a US Navy officer. This is why the Deveselu US military treats their Romanian colleagues as primitives. No Romanian military, not even Chief of Staff of the Romanian Army has access beyond the barbed wire fence of the US base in the center of command and control or around the radar AN / SPY-1D and vertical launch system VLS Mk- 41. Therefore nobody in Romania will really know what types of missiles and what kinds of warheads (conventional or nuclear) will be brought under the Deveselu shield, or against which targets (land, air or space) the Americans will use it.
Therefore, Mikhail Vanin, Russian Ambassador in Copenhagen, said to the countries that host components of US missile system in Europe even if you do not have nuclear weapons, you automatically become a target for Russian nuclear means. According to Russian military doctrine, these countries can be hit preventively by Russia with nuclear weapons. The Bucharest government’s decision to deploy the US antiballistic shield is incomprehensible as long as it is not useful for Romania, and there was no referendum in this regard. However, the Romanian authorities were warned of the risk of exposure of the Romania population to classic military strikes or a nuclear response from Russia.
THE EAST AND THE REST: A ROMANIAN POINT OF VIEW 2016
GEOPOLITICS OF EASTERN EUROPE: SOME PROPOSITIONS FOR HEARTLAND ?
It’s essential for Europe, including Russia, to establish a collective sense of self-identity in order to counter what has alternately been described as Atlanticism, the global consumerist monoculture, and ‘McWorld’.
This year the United States began to convert the relatively loosely connected Eastern European countries into a serious anti-Russian bloc. This occurred in response to the actions of Russia in the Crimea and the uprising in the Donbas. In addition, Russia has stepped up its cooperation (including military and technical cooperation) with China, India, Iran, and Latin America. The Americans, in response, have focused on their traditional Anaconda strategy.
All American activity in the region should be interpreted through the prism of Mackinder’s Heartland Theory, because it has remained an essential mainstay of geopolitics since 1900. Since the creed we find in Mackinder’s doctrine was formulated, nothing has changed.
There are two key points in what he calls the Eurasian Rimland - the Middle East and the cordon sanitaire in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, Atlanticists employ a strategy of controlled chaos, while in Eastern Europe we see a combination of this model (Ukraine) and an attempt to create an anti-Russian fist of American Eastern European satellites.
Unfortunately, attitudes towards Russia, the key country in the Eurasian project, are not positive everywhere. Whereas in most of the Balkan countries popular sentiment remains generally positive, the elite is anti-Russian or skeptical. In Poland and Romania, Russia is perceived with some anxiety, as many cling to memories of the countries’ troubled past.
MOLDOVA – ZONE OF GEOPOLITICAL CLASHES OR THE GOLDEN BRIDGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. 2017 by
Iurie Rosca This article not only tells a story about Moldova, but one can also ask if it might apply to other countries as for instance Ukraine. The bold types are from the article, except the red.
Moldova is not a productive, but a consumer economy. How does it work? Very simply. Moldovans work abroad, on the external labor markets to earn money which is spent in Moldova to buy goods produced abroad which have completely invaded our internal market. How can a local businessman compete with, say, a German or Turkish one? Difference in production capacities, know-how, access to cheap credits, etc. dooms the local entrepreneur into a loser right from the start. Moldova has signed the ”free trade agreement” with the EU and with Turkey too - a well done operation in favor of our big brothers. It is worse for us, the aboriginal population whom these glass beads and illusions are sold to in exchange to natural resources and the key sectors of the national economy.
Personally, I was four times a member of Parliament, twice Vice-President of the Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister, and I have accumulated a rich international experience. But I confess that I spent two decades of political activity and assiduous reading in four languages (including English and French) until I realized why things in my country are going from worse to worse. When I realized that the West had actually applied to the ex-communist space the same treatment that the Third World has long suffered, everything became extremely clear. When principle of ”kicking away the ladder” (Friedrich List) or ”comparative advantages” of “freetradism” (“laissez-fairisme”) has been fully applied, then Moldova's chance of emerging from the crisis strictly following the imposed rules from the outside becomes illusory. By blindly following ”friedmanism” and the advices from the Chicago Boys, by assuming quasi-religious principles of the so-called ”Washington Consensus” Moldova became a classical poor country as so many other countries around the world which were guided to go in the same direction. For more argumentation on the transitioning experience of post-communist countries, reading the books of Joseph E. Stiglitz or Ha-Joon Chang would be sufficient. ”The shock doctrine” (Naomi Klein) didn’t avoid our country. It ruined our economy, provoked ”mass nomadism” (Paul E. Gottfried) of our people, determined a ”demographic winter”, and pushes our nation to an unprecedented disaster.
The prominent Romanian economic analyst Ilie Şerbănescu, speaking about the case of his country, characterizes these new geopolitical and economic realities by the very title of his book: "Romania, a colony on the periphery of Europe". Unfortunately, Moldova's status today is not different. Some years ago I published a book which describes our new post-Soviet realities and put the following title: ”The downfall from the USSR to the EU”. This is the glorious path of our nation during the last 25 years.
”The Russians are coming!”
And now just a few words concerning ”the Russian factor” in the region and the russophobia methodically cultivated by global elites not only now, but during last several centuries. It would be foolish to deny the reminiscences of the imperial vision in the current policy of Russia which used to be stronger than it is today. Obviously, these reminiscences affect national interests of post-soviet countries, but infinitely less than the globalist elite or, to quote David C. Korten, than the corporations which rule the world. So, in this new historical and geopolitical conditions Russia is seen as a ”target country” as well as Moldova and the whole region, and even all countries which are going through unprecedented processes of desovereignisation. Namely new extraterritorial actors which during the last decades have become the main planetary players are representing a common threat for Russia, Moldova and even America. Take a look at current political realities in USA. Who is trying to obstruct and dismiss Trump? The same global elite which cannot tolerate a president who just declared his intention to change the internal and external agenda of the biggest ”captured state” in the world (USA) in favor of the American people and symmetrically in detriment of global plutocracy.
One of the most popular myth in the West is the Russian threat to global peace, democracy and so on. But the real problem is not the aggressive character of current Russian rulers or the lack of democracy in this country but enormous Russian natural resources and territory which are coveted by the global elite. Anti-Putin propaganda is not because he is not a ”good guy”, but because he is not cooperative enough to sacrify the national interests of Russia on the altar of plutocracy interests. In this regard, compared with Moldova, Russia is partially a sovereign country first of all thanks to its military potential.
So, while remaining realistic, it is not necessary to exaggerate the "Russian threat". On the contrary, in the face of the new ideological totalitarianism, promoted by radical hyperliberalism, including the imposition of "political correctness" as a new form of censorship, the LGBT agenda, transhumanism, the consumerism cult, and mass pseudoculture, more and more people in the world see Russia as a bastion of authentic, traditional, Christian, family values. The famous American conservative thinker Patrick J. Buchanan exclaims in the title of his article which was written several years ago: ”Vladimir Putin, Christian Crusader?”:
”In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes? The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide - the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values”.
So, if in the previous historical period the USSR incarnated the militant atheism, "the empire of evil", and America represented the bastion of Christianity and the defender of moral values, it seems that after the fall of communism, the roles have reversed. And this huge historical changement seems to be ignored by so many Westerners who remain inside of the old paradigm, valid during the period of Cold War.
In a TV show I hosted with the famous Romanian painter and writer Sorin Dumitrescu, a full member of Academy of Science. I asked him how he sees the new situation that was created during the 25 years of post-communist transition. His response was direct and harsh: "We are currently under the most terrible form of occupation ever known in history, the axiological occupation". He specified that the substitution of traditional values by mass-culture, consumerism and hedonism affects our cultural codes more profoundly than it was under communist regime. Or, to quote another friend, the French essayist, writer and economist Hervé Juvin, he calls this new reality in the title of his last book ”the government of desire”. I am talking about the consumer society, the domination of artificial needs imposed by advertising which distorts our traditional identity, our way of thinking and makes us abandon our religious and our cultural roots. Another French author, Michel Clouscard, calls this new type of society we are now living ”the capitalism of seduction”. Why am I talking about it here? Because the first problem of our society is not the poverty or the corruption at the high level of state administration - both of them exist in abundance - but the brainwashing of the masses with neoliberal poison. This phenomenon represents a very dangerous and dissolving factor, which destroys the traditional cult of labor by inducing a certain type of volitional paralysis and civic absenteeism.
The above article is way longer than the others and has a few links at the end:
Nuland supports infamous oligarch to rule Moldova
EU Tries to buy Moldova for 1.5 Million Euro
Moldova: European-styled treatment
Moldova has the mission of becoming a space of confluences between Western Europe and Russia
THE OPPOSITION OF RUSSIA AND ROMANIA DESTROYS THE MOLDOVAN SOCIETY
Comparing the past with the present - there is hope
If one compares the situation of Romania to WWII, then there is hope. After the Romanians had lost a lot of people at Stalingrad there came a turn of sentiment. In the
article, there was:
"The fact is that, according to I. Antonescu, "after the defeat of the 3rd and 4th armies near Stalingrad, the very foundations of the Romanian government were shaken." "The desire to end the war as soon as possible" became common for all the Romanians."
Before Romania could get out of the war, they suffered not only the loss of people that had died up until then. More followed with the trouble of retreating with the Germans forces through Russia and Ukraine and back to Romania. While there was a desire to end the war, there were still things to suffer through before that could be achieved.
Perhaps this time it will not be a desire to end a war that will help, as much as a persistent desire to seek knowledge and truth, expose lies and psychopaths, which is a battle in which many more can participate than those conventionally making up an army.
