President Putin return Crimea back to Ukraine

In 1954 Nikita Krushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine as a gift.

The Crimean Peninsula  was part of Russia since 1783. Before that, during the Crimean War,  there was a military conflict fought from Oct.  1853 to Feb.  1856 in which the  Russian Empire lost to the Alliance of the Ottoman Empire: France, Britain and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1854 Britain and Russia were engaged in a contest for influence in crumbling Turkish Empire.

In 1932 Stalin starved four million Ukrainians to death to keep the grain harvested for his own benefit to support the Communist Party. Sixty years later President Putin demolished communism and formed the Republic of Russia. The Ukrainian word “Holodmor” means murder by starvation or genocide. Stalin’s intent was to kill every single Ukrainian to destroy Ukrainian intellectuals and leadership – to destroy a sovereign Ukraine. One of the more striking instances of continuity was Lenin sending Russian troops in Ukrainian  disguise during the civil war which almost a century later became a Putin tactic. There are other similar moments where various tricks to undermine distract and disorient Ukraine including Stalin at one point setting up Republics in Donbass, Odessa and elsewhere.

As historians put it,  Stalin decided to use famine to essentially murder a lot of Ukrainians.

President Putin, the Ukrainian people are holding you responsible for the actions of Stalin, and demand a written apology from you to President Petro Poroshenko of the Ukraine. They demand compensation for the loss of revenue for the grain that you stole from the Ukrainian people and they insist that you return Crimea,  that was rightfully given to them by the former President Nikita Krushchev of Russia. Mr. Putin, the building of empires are over.  You cannot own the world.

PAUL JONES
Coaldale