CEPS EXPLAINER - ONE YEAR OF WAR IN UKRAINE - Understanding what has happened

But what struck me was not the music but the libretto: based on the 1682 Moscow uprising of the Streltsy, Mussorgsky builds a story around the opposition to the pernicious influence of westernising reforms and the efforts to bring Little Russia – Ukraine – back into Mother Russia’s fold. [...] A land grab in the east, a settlement in Donbas or the acceptance of the Crimea annexation was never going to be enough; modern-day Ukraine had to be destroyed and its inhabitants ‘saved’ from the corrupting influence of the West. [...] This lends support to the investigation initiated by the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as to a possible International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in Ukraine (ICPA), both supported by the EU. [...] The mutual now candidate countries, Belarus firmly in confidence and respect on which the EU process is based has already come under the Russian fold and the three Caucasian strain on various past occasions and with states in various states of disarray and at increasing frequency, but the misuse of the loggerheads with each other it is high time national veto, often to obtain advantage on unrelate. [...] But this is first and foremost the result of the bravery, perseverance and gritty resilience of the Ukrainians themselves, their armed forces and civilians across the country.