NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine - Pro-Russian rebels conquering territory in eastern Ukraine are fighting under a new flag that betrays their - and perhaps the Kremlin’s - soaring ambitions. The blue cross set on a red background, which is stitched into uniforms and flies on tanks, represents Novorossiya or 'New Russia' - a notional state that would swallow southern and eastern Ukraine.
It is slowly replacing the disparate flags representing individual independence-minded groups in the regions of Donetsk. Indeed, the separatist regional administration flag in central Donetsk – one of the rebel headquarters – is now flying the Novorossiya flag.
The fighters’ ambitions mirror the flag’s reach.
A rebel commander who recently captured a key town on the road leading to the strategically important town of Mariupol said his men were not about to lay down their arms in a cease-fire, as was reported earlier. They also planned to go as far as the city of Lviv, which lies even further west than Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
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The Moscow Times reports that similarities to the Confederate flag are apparently not intentional. They located the Ukrainian insurgency supporter credited with introducing the design; he says he merely found it—in the Times' words—“online somewhere.” And in such a manner is the course of history determined.
Dr. Alexander Dugin is calling for action on behalf of the secessionists of New Russia who are fighting against the US-backed government in Kiev.
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Finally, for my friends in America, Putin’s efforts to help protect Russian speaking Ukrainians seems no different to me than Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Travis or some other American statesmen taking to the ramparts of the Alamo, which was back then, inside Mexico territory. I mean, if Ukraine were Texas, every Georgia or Alabama boy I know would be in a pickup truck headed there right now.
