Eight reasons why Ukraine will end up like Yugoslavia

The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked the collapse of communism and Yugoslavia as a country. Will the end of Cold War 2.0 and the start of the proxy conflict between the West and Russia lead to the collapse of Ukraine and the end of American political and economic hegemony globally?

The first civil war that springs to mind is the one that broke out in the former Yugoslavia as the country broke apart. What about Ukraine, though? The topic of whether there are similarities between the civil wars in Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia surfaced in 2014. So, are there any parallels between the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine? Do they share any traits or not? Let's examine the specifics and find out more!

Here are eight reasons why Ukraine will most likely end up like Yugoslavia. 

Multiethnic country

In Yugoslavia, two main nations—the Serbs and the Croats—coexisted with other ethnic groups. Ukrainians, Russians (who make up around 20% of the population), and a few ethnic minorities (Rusyns, Romanians, and Hungarians) coexisted in this ethnically and linguistically diverse country.

The Serbs lost their status as a constitutional nation in the newly formed separatist republics of Croatia after Yugoslavia fell apart. The populace of Serbia was subjected to severe discrimination and harassment by new, illegitimately constituted nationalistic governments in Croatia and Bosnia. On the other hand, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian government, particularly the Western installed puppet regime following the Maidan coup in 2014, gradually restricted and then outlawed the use of Russian as one of the two official languages of the country. In addition, the new regime outlawed the use of the Russian language in all public forums, including those run by local authorities, educational institutions, the media, bookstores, newspapers, etc. Russians have faced severe discrimination, and many of them have been assimilated into becoming “ethnic Ukrainians”. For instance, the majority of Ukrainian government officials even have popular Russian surnames (Fedorov, Danilov, Stefanishyna, Nemchinov, Laputina, Kubrakov, Reznikov, etc.). Many people in Ukraine suffer from the syndrome of "being greater catholic than the pope" to prove that they are deserving new members of the emerging nation. Numerous Serbs experienced the same kind of assimilation in Bosnia and Croatia.

Map of ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia

Religious conflict

 It is crucial to understand that there is a significant religious component to the Ukrainian war. Contrary to popular belief, Ukraine is not a unified orthodox Christian country. The current war is comparable to the Yugoslavian civil war, which also had strong religious overtones.

In the ex-Yugoslav wars, three opposing sides belonged to different religions. While Bosnian Muslims and Albanians are Muslims and Croats are Catholics, Serbs are Orthodox Christians.

The civil war in Ukraine follows a similar trend. Many Ukrainians identify with various Christian denominations. While the majority of Ukrainian forces are affiliated with the schismatic "Orthodox Church of Ukraine," Ukrainian Greek-Catholic church and the Catholic church, the population in Donbas, Eastern, and Southern Ukraine are affiliated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).

Tragic relations have existed throughout history between the Vatican and Orthodox Christians in the Balkans and Ukraine.  The Orthodox population of Western Ukraine and Belarus was coerced into joining Rome during the XXVII century. Over the past three centuries, the Balkans saw the same tragic process of Catholic proselytizing and primarily violent conversion of the Orthodox population. For instance, during the Austro-Hungarian empire, many Orthodox Serbs were converted to Catholicism. More than 400.000 Orthodox Serbs were forcibly converted to Catholicism by the Vatican during World War II under the protection of a nazi puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia. Additionally, around 100.000 Serbs were "peacefully integrated" into Catholics during the most recent civil war in the 1990s. More than 500 Orthodox churches, some of which date back to the XII century, were demolished in Croatia, Bosnia, and the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. 

Albanians under NATO patronage destroy medieval Serbian Orthodox Christian churches in Kosovo

The same type of destruction is happening right now in Ukraine. Orthodox churches are being targeted for premeditated demolition and seizure as part of the crisis in Ukraine. The majority of Ukrainians declare themselves as members of a schismatic church and consider the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church to be "Putin's religious tool" and a "Muscovite church." Because of this, Ukrainian forces have continued to demolish Orthodox churches and murder orthodox priests, as has been widely reported since 2014. They aim to impose their schismatic denomination forcibly in traditionally Orthodox Eastern Ukraine. Kiev regime is working with the USA and compromised CIA agent Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul to destroy the canonical orthodox church in Ukraine. 

Let’s not forget Zbigniew Brzezinski's prediction that once communism is defeated, Orthodox Christianity will pose the greatest threat to the West. The well-known anti-Russian hawk and European neoliberal, Carl Bildt, claimed that Putin's return to Orthodoxy is the biggest mistake, worse than Islamic terrorism. The Clash of Civilizations? by the venerable Samuel Huntington comes to mind, in which he makes the case that in the post-Cold War world, people's cultural and religious identities will be the main source of conflict.

Western armament and propaganda support 

The West publicly armed Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians throughout the civil war in Yugoslavia. Some Muslim nations, notably Saudi Arabia and Iran, also provided armed assistance to Bosnian Muslims. The same Western military support is currently being provided to Ukraine but on a much larger scale.

In addition to delivering armaments, the West was also strongly involved in anti-Serbian propaganda by demonizing the Serbs in the Western media. The West has always referred to Serbs as "little Russians from the Balkans.” One may argue that because of their shared Slavic ancestry, adherence to the orthodox faith, and affiliation with the same orthodox Slavic civilization.

Prominent Western personages and politicians gave many racist statements about Serbs. For example ambassador of UNESCO and famous actor Peter Ustinov characterized Serbs as subhumans more primitive than animals. The current US president, Joe Biden, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supported NATO aggression against the Republic of Srpska in 1995. and Serbia in 1999. He was the main lobbyist for Albanian separatists/terrorists in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. During NATO’s illegal air bombing of Serbia in 1999, he also advocated a land invasion of Serbia, and compared Serbs to Nazis. As a guest on CNN with Larry King, he said: "All Serbs should be put in Nazi concentration camps. Serbs are illiterate degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists" and that the US should conduct an occupation of Serbia in the style of “Japanese-German”. Many would argue that it is fortunate that Biden is senile because in his prime he was significantly more aggressive and hawkish than even today. It is hard to imagine that is even possible.

From the very beginning of the Maidan coup, Ukrainian politicians and the media employed Russophobic terminology in their political vocabulary. The first post-Maidan Ukrainian Prime minister Yatsenyuk used to describe all Russians in Ukraine as “the Russian terrorists”. Russophobia and the demonization of Russians are at an all-time high in Ukraine right now. Many Ukrainian politicians and media outlets regularly use racist and pejorative phrases to describe Russians, as well as many Western media outlets: orcs, Asiatic hordes, rusna, moskali, katsapi, new nazis, killers, fascists, occupiers, aggressors, etc. The sides that the West supports in both conflicts—the one in Yugoslavia and the one in Ukraine—claim to be making a "civilizational choice" for Europe and Western values over the "dark barbarian East," which Russians and Serbs are supposed to stand for.

Hollywood also made a huge contribution to the serbophobic campaign in the 1990s by presenting Serbs as villains alongside Russians in Hollywood films.

The current politically correct cancel campaign in the West includes the banning of Russian and alternative media, Russian athletes from sports competitions, and Russians' ability to obtain visas. In the West today, it is considered politically unacceptable to advocate against Blacks and Muslims, so their imperial frustration and verbal abuse are targeted at Russians. As a result, it is now conventional wisdom to cast doubt on Russians' status as members of mankind and civilization.

Dogs and “Russian pigs" are not allowed in many European shops

Fortunately, unlike in the 1990s, when the West was demonizing Serbs and fabricating stories about "Balkan butchers," many Western citizens do not take Western mainstream media propaganda for granted today. Despite recent efforts by Western governments to exclude all alternative information and news from Western media space, new alternative media are dismantling the global monopoly of Western media.

Double standards regarding the right to self-determination

The West, particularly the USA and Germany, supported the breakup of Yugoslavia by arming and funding separatist movements and establishing Croatia and Bosnia along their communist administrative borders. However, Serbs were denied the same right to self-determination in their historical homelands and majority-populated regions. 

Serbs established their republics, the Republic of Serbian Krajina (in what is now Croatia) and the Republika Srpska (in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina), after being officially denied the right to self-determination inside the artificial borders of the new countries Croatia and Bosnia. In 1995, Croatian forces eliminated the Republic of Serbian Krajina along with the Serbian populace with the direct assistance of the American military. Republika Srpska managed to resist Bosnian Muslim and Croats aggression and NATO bombing (in 1995), but the West has been doing its best to abolish it for the last 20 years. 

It is crucial to note that the Ex-Yugoslav countries' borders were administrative, not historical. The communists drew them after WW2. This was consistent with the communist ideological preoccupation that Serbia's royal dynasty and "Serbian bourgeois chauvinism" were Yugoslavia's main problems before the Second World War. Additionally, the split of Bosnia, Slovenia, and Croatia constituted a flagrant breach of the Yugoslav constitution. The West paid no attention to this fact, in contrast to the Ukrainian case where they asserted that it was unacceptable that the Ukrainian constitution was being violated.

The self-determination process unveiled in former Ukraine led to the formation of the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics as well as the emergence of new political entities, the formation of Novorossiya in the Kherson and Zaporozye region, former Southern Ukraine. This led to the recent referendum and their reunification with Russia. However, as we often hear from hypocritical Western politicians, the referendums in Crimea, as well as the ones in Donbas, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, are obviously in violation of the Ukrainian constitution and "democratic standards”. It is important to note that the West rejected any chance of true autonomy and federalization inside Ukraine, which was partially addressed in the UN-approved Minsk agreements, in addition to denying the people of the former Eastern, Southern Ukraine, and Crimea the right to self-determination. In the case of Ukraine, the Western double standards are openly exposed. It seems that Western hypocrisy and cynism have no bounds. If hypocrisy had a name, it would be called "the West”.

One should also keep in mind that Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999 without the UN mandate. The NATO occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo followed this violation of international law, where the West established a NATO puppet state that is run by Albanian war criminals and drug traffickers. Imagine appointing for the prime minister a man suspected of being the mastermind of an organ trafficking organization and execution of kidnapped Serbian citizens for their kidneys and hearts. Can one imagine endorsing such a man as a “democratic leader”? This is precisely what occurred when the West supported renowned war criminal Hashim Thaci for positions of power in Kosovo for more than a decade. 

Ethnic cleansing

The ethnic cleansing of areas inhabited by an undesirable population is one of the key objectives of Western-supported forces in both civil wars.

Despite claims made by Western propaganda that Serbs were “butchers of the Balkans”, it is a fact that Serbs have been ethnically cleansed from Croatia, NATO-occupied Kosovo, and Muslim and Croat-controlled areas of Bosnia. Nowadays, there are almost no Serbs left in Bosnia under Muslim and Croatian authority. Croats in Croatia were able to ethnically cleanse the Serbian population after invading the Republic of Serbian Krajina in 1995. After the conflict, the Serbian population in Croatia decreased by more than 70%. Today Serbs constitute less than 3% of the total population in Croatia. The former Croatian dictator, Franjo Tudjman, listed "no Serbs in Croatia" as one of his key objectives. The remaining Serbian population in Croatia continues to face severe discrimination and persecution. There are a few, mainly elderly individuals, who returned to their family's legacy estate to merely end their life. Kosovo, a Serbian province occupied by NATO, has also been completely depopulated of Serbs, with only 130.000 remaining after more than 250.000 fled from NATO-supported Albanian pogroms. Croats and Albanians were successful in carrying out their genocide goals in today’s Croatia and Serbian province of Kosovo. On the other hand, Bosnian Muslims did not succeed in winning the Bosnian civil war since the Serbian people preserved the autonomous Republic of Srpska within the de facto confederate Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Serbian civilians’ exodus from Croatia, August 1995.

The Kiev regime's current plan is to purge the country's population of Russians and pro-Russian citizens. There are numerous reports of executions and disappearances of persons who had contact with Russian forces, as well as the detention of teachers and other city employees, from the civilian population in areas that Kiev forces have retaken (such as the Kharkov region). The Ukrainian parliament adopted the law to charge with treason those who had even accepted humanitarian aid from the Russian Federation. The goal is not only to ethnically cleanse Ukraine from ethnic Russians or the pro-Russian populace but also to jail everybody who has had any contact with “Russian occupiers”.

That is the main cause of the countless reports of indiscriminate shelling, civilian deaths, and bombings of civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, power plants—including the nuclear one in Energodar—coal mines, water treatment facilities, etc. The exploitation of the immense resources of Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, which will primarily be in the hands of Western businesses, is the top priority. Let's not forget that free land including ownership over “Russian slaves” was promised to the Ukrainian militias at the start of the civil war in 2014 if Ukraine won the conflict in Donbas. It is the Ukrainian version of Nazi “Lebensraum”. Russians and pro-Russians will share the same fate as Serbs in Croatia if the Maidan regime prevails in this war. There will be no.

In the 1990s, a number of international organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council, accused Serbia of war crimes, which Russia is now being accused of in Ukraine. In the meantime, the Kiev regime is calling for a special tribunal for “Russian war crimes in Ukraine”. The US and its vassals also managed to expel Serbia from the UN as they are currently preparing to do with Russia. Zelensky, a puppet of the West, is behaving similarly to radical Islamist and head of the Bosnian Muslims Alija Izetbegovic, arguing that the world owes him and his regime weaponry such as tanks, missiles, planes, etc. Zelensky even wants “dirty nuclear bombs”, as well as funding the budget for a war against Russia.

Failed state

Ukraine and Yugoslavia both never had fully functional states and cohesive societies.  Due to their lack of history as independent states and the fact that they have always been a part of other countries and states throughout history, they might be viewed in some respects as "artificial countries."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia both Ukraine and some of the ex-Yugoslav republics (Croatia, Bosnia) were established within the administrative borders. Communists drew them hastily and arbitrarily; they never represented traditional boundaries between nations. Only the authoritarian communist government and the charismatic leadership of Yugoslav dictator Tito allowed Yugoslavia to prolong its existence after World War II. Tito was unable to establish a single unified nation known as Yugoslavians. Ukraine never had a true state within its present borders, nor did it have a statehood heritage or sense of itself as a single, cohesive nation. Both countries were born out of failed geopolitical ventures that never truly succeeded.

The post-Maidan regime in Ukraine works arduously to forge a potent, unified anti-Russian Ukrainian identity.  Under the tenet of "One state, one nation, one church," they seek to assimilate people from many languages, nations, and religions. In addition, the Ukrainian economy never fully recovered after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian political “elite” had 31 years to create a functioning economy. They miserably failed in this quest.

Without common history, culture, language, and traditions, there cannot exist a strong and united nation. In a country divided by its historical figures, the Kiev regime attempted to foster unity by pushing the radical Western Ukrainian form of nationalism through the educational system and media. They made murderous Banderite ideology their official creed.

Ukrainian nationalists received more assistance from foreign countries than just a helpful hand. The US even openly acknowledged having “invested” 5 billion dollars until 2014 into forging a new anti-Russian Ukrainian identity. The amount of money spent following the Maidan coup and currently throughout the war might be estimated in the dozens of billions of US dollars, as we are seeing today.

The West Of Ukraine revers Ukrainian fascists and the Waffen-SS Division "Galicia" as their national heroes, while the east of the country venerates common heroes with Russia like St. Alexander Nevsky, the Zaporoshian cossacks, the Red Army, etc. The majority of Ukrainians firmly opposed Galician fascist Stepan Bandera as a national hero. The now-common phrase "Glory to Ukraine" was only popular among Ukrainian fascists and a portion of the population in Western Ukraine during World War II. The current use of a real nazi or fascist political slogan by Western social justice warriors, Antifa radicals, socialists, and liberals to demonstrate their support for Ukraine is more than amusing. 

The final collapse of Ukraine is especially accelerated by the 2014 Maidan coup d’etat. The disparity between how the West and the East of the country view their past, as well as the absence of shared historical destiny and national mythology and heroes, led to the civil war in Ukraine. The divide between the east and the west is simply too great, even at a time when people are being brainwashed and forced to adopt the extreme Western Ukrainian chauvinistic mindset and are experiencing mass psychosis. Because of this, a united Ukraine was bound to fail from the start.

A myth about foreign military aggression

Both Croats and Muslims asserted that their conflict was not a genuine civil war but rather a Serbian invasion of their nations to establish "Great Serbia.” The reality is far different; 95% of the soldiers on the ground were local Serbs fighting for their ancestor lands - the republics of Srpska and Serbian Krajina. Over the past eight years, the Lugansk and Donetsk republics in Ukraine have experienced a similar situation where most of the soldiers were from the local population. However, Western and Ukrainian propaganda claimed this wasn't a civil war. Simply said, according to them, “mad Russian tsar Putin" is attempting to invade Ukraine to resurrect the dream of the Great Russian Empire or the Soviet Union 2.0. In the Yugoslavian case, it was crazy “Balkan butcher” Slobodan Milosevic who is after killing all non-Serbs in ex-Yugoslavia. 

To successfully create an anti-Russian NATO fortress next to Russia's borders, Western and Ukrainian propagandists aim to portray the conflict as a fight between Ukraine and Russia rather than as Kiev’s war against its population. There are also many examples of people from the same family, brothers, fathers, and sons fighting on opposing sides. Thus, next to the proxy war between Russia and the West, this tragic conflict is also a real civil war between brothers, cousins, friends, and neighbors. 

Nazi collaborators

Many Western media outlets have declined to acknowledge that the conflicts in post-Soviet Ukraine and former Yugoslavia are caused by long-standing historic rivalries, whose most recent grievances date back to World War II and even earlier.

Ukraine and Yugoslavia both endured great suffering at the hands of domestic Nazi allies. Both the Handschar division of the SS, a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS made up of Bosnian Muslims, and the Ustase, an organization of Croatian Nazis that established a nazi puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia, were particularly active in atrocities against civilians. During the Second World War, they were able to murder 1.1 million Serbs, 200.000 Jews, and 150.000 Roma. According to a Nazi diplomat in Croatia, even a genocidal psychopath like Hitler was repulsed by the scale of Croatian monstrous atrocities: “I have also told the Poglavnik (Croatian Nazi leader Pavelic) that one cannot exterminate such a minority: it is simply too large!” 

Members of the Bosnian Nazi Handschar division of the SS

On the other hand, the Ukrainian Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) and the fascist paramilitary led by Bandera killed tens of thousands of Jews, Russians, and Russian-speaking and eastern Ukrainians in addition to massacring approximately 100,000 Polish civilians.

Thus, it is ironic to see Polish support for the Kiev-based Banderite regime in Ukraine today. The regime that glorifies Nazi collaborator and war criminal Bandera as a national hero receives the majority of its weapons from Poland. The city of Lvov is the epicenter of contemporary extreme Ukrainian nationalism. Before World War II, few Ukrainians lived in Galicia's capital, which had a 50% Polish and 30% Jewish population. Nazis and Bandera-affiliated Ukrainians completely wiped out the Polish and Jewish residents before populating the city with Ukrainians from the countryside.

Numerous history books, videos, articles, and archives provide evidence that nationalists and fascists in Ukraine, Croatia, Bosnia, and Albania were and continue to be inspired by their ancestors who fought together with Nazi Germany. 

History is repeating itself right before our eyes. Why are we not learning from these history lessons?

Concluding Thoughts

These eight reasons prove that there are many parallels between Yugoslavia and Ukraine. There are far too many similarities between Yugoslavia and Ukraine, even if they are not exact replicas. Terrible wars in both countries share far too many characteristics.

In the wake of the referendum results in Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson and their subsequent reunification with Russia, the process of the collapse of Ukraine is now de facto and de iure confirmed. It is extremely unlikely that the further collapse of Ukraine will stop anytime soon. 

As with anything in history, there are differences between Yugoslavia and Ukraine, but it is now all but certain that both countries will ultimately end up in the same place—the ash heap of history.