War or not war? You might ask yourself that when watching what is happening in Ukraine. If it isn’t the war then why are planes over Ukraine being shot down? If it is a war, then who is fighting whom? On one side we have Ukraine, for sure, but what about the other side? Media call them “separatists,” but I don’t know such a nation. Definitely they are not Ukrainians, so who are they?

Is Russia such an unselfish country that it would support fighters who are indifferent to them? When you look at the history of similar conflicts, a pattern in which Russia launches its war machine to protect some minority or support a new, puppet government emerges. The best example is Afghanistan, where in 1987 the Communist government adopted a policy of tight cooperation with the Soviet Union ,and which ended in the invasion by the Soviet Union and a very long war.

History likes to repeat itself, so there is no reason why the recent annexation of Crimea might not happen again with other eastern parts of Ukraine. Russia showed many times that human loss is not really that important and an individual is nothing compared to the greater public good, even if by an individual Russia means thousands. From this perspective shooting down the Malaysian plane is just a small mistake for Russians in this nonexistent war. Russians are cunning players, repeating their tactics from Crimea and covering up what’s happing in that region today. Who’s going to remember Crimea, anyways, right?

Even Ukrainians apparently have gotten over the loss of that part of the country. Having problems with holding the state together in the Eastern part of the country, they seem to have forgotten this bitter lesson from just a few months ago.