Putin’s former aide: Russia has been preparing for global war since 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3208632/posts
According to Illarionov, Russia has been preparing for a major war at least since 2003 and for a confrontation with Ukraine and capture of Crimea, since 2004, when the ‘Orange Revolution’ started in Kiev.
Another contingency plan was drafted for 2010, in case Yulia Tymoshenko had won presidential election and not Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych. One more potential date for a war was chosen in 2015, according to Illarionov, when Ukraine would hold a presidential election. However, the Maidan happened sooner.
According to Illarionov, Putin himself mentioned plans in Ukraine that same year in a NATO summit in Bucharest - he said that Ukraine was not a real nation, but a state that took over lands that historically belonged to Russia as well as Hungary, Poland and Romania.
The current Ukrainian-Russian war, Illarionov says, began on 27 July this year, when Putin started talking about the “Russian world” during a ceremony to mark an anniversary of the baptism of Slavic peoples.
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According to the former presidential adviser, Russian laws essentially define four categories of ‘Russians’: ethnic Russians, irrespective of whether they reside in or outside Russia; Russian-speakers, irrespective of their nationality; all former citizens of the Soviet Union and their offspring living in the territories formerly covered by the USSR; and former citizens of the Russian Empire (pre-1917) and their offspring living in the territories once covered by the Russian Empire.
“Such a legal base allows the Russian army to protect all the Russians listed in the law. Therefore, for the Russian side, such actions of the Russian army beyond Russian borders might seem completely legitimate,” Illarionov says.
He adds that Putin thinks of the current confrontation not as world war three - since that was the Cold War - but as world war four.