Ukrainians Fear Moscow May Use Their Co-Ethnics in Russia in Provocation to Restart War
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 71
(Source: ForPost)
A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may seek to exploit these incidents to stage a provocation inside Russia. Such a scheme would potentially allow him to mobilize domestic public opinion to support a new round of aggressions against Ukraine, in much the same way he appears to have orchestrated the terrorist attacks in Russian cities in 1999 to justify his campaign against Chechnya and boost his rise to the Russian presidency. Moreover, doing so in the near future would likely gain credibility inside Russia and perhaps even internationally because Kyiv has recently stepped up its attention to ethnic Ukrainians and other non-Russians residing in the Russian Feder