Providing a Better Understanding of the Geography of Ukraine and Where we will be Delivering Aid and Conducting Rescue-Relocation Efforts
by Dr. E. C. Olson, Mission Director
For the benefit of our mostly-American and non-European supporters – who like me, knew little about Ukraine before the Russian invasion – I thought it would be helpful if I provided an introduction to this fascinating Eastern European nation and its strong-willed people, while also providing insight into Ukraine’s modern history and quixotic relationship with Russia and before that the Soviet Union, all through the use of our Mission Maps.
This very appropriate and very symbolic map provides a very fitting picture of Ukraine’s current geopolitical identity.
Simply put, you will see that rust-colored Ukraine figuratively has one foot planted squarely in Russia and allied strongholds depicted here in light gray, and one foot planted in and amongst “the West”, in this case the free and open portions of Europe and Scandinavia in dark gray.
Then, in identifying where we will be delivering aid, we again rely on our primary Mission Statement for that clarity: “to provide the most-needed aid to the most-needy Ukrainians”, and taking that one step further, it is clear to see that those Ukrainians in greatest need of our rescue and aid delivery services are those that have most recently been trapped in the most hotly-contested combat zones, now referred to as “de-occupied” villages, towns and areas. That in-turn poses the questions, where are those hotly-contested combat zones and why are both sides sacrificing so much in trying to claim control of them?
For example, during our current July Mission will primarily focus on the southern regions of the country, and through the use of our Mission Maps, we will literally and figuratively dig deeper into the reasons why that is the current center of the bloodiest of conflicts in Ukraine.
For those readers who have a serviceable grasp of modern human history and the reasons why most wars in general are fought, you probably already know the answer: Natural Resources.
Throughout history human, everything from regional tribal conflicts all the way up to full-scale multi-national wars has been based around or fought over resources. Wars fought for power and dominance can be seen as an indirect means to then acquire, utilize, and protect, valuable resources. The Russian invasion of Ukraine follows suit, and that story will be told graphically using the very same maps we are using in planning our Mission and anticipating where our services will be needed next.
Ukraine is the 45th largest country in the world at 233,000 square miles, and it is the second largest nation in all of Europe – ironically second only to Russia – so this war is between Europe’s two largest countries.
Ukraine’s forty-one-million citizens makes it the 36th largest populated country in the world, and that populace is 78% Ukraine and 17% Russian, of which 87% are Christians.
It would be impossible to even begin to summarize the history of Ukraine except to say that oppression punctuates nearly every century of Ukrainian history since the downfall of the inaugural country known as Kievan Rus (879 AD – 1240 AD). Periodic respites from this oppressive rule occasionally brought about the emergence of a Ukrainian identity, the most notable being the 19th Century rise of Ukrainian nationalism led by Ukraine intelligentsia that was committed to national rebirth and social justice.
But soon, as the two World Wars stained Europe’s soil blood-red, Ukraine again fell under another century of mostly Soviet-Russian oppression, until 1990-1991 when Ukrainians declared their independence and held their first democratic elections. But a major, extended recession from 1991-1999 crippled the economy and fomented widespread social unrest, which continued up until the formative year of 2014.
This compendium of maps and the stories they tell, along with all of the companion pieces – our “Mission Bulletins” found on our website – will provide you with the same information that I and our Mission staff have compiled and analyzed in order to design and execute the Mission – – which hopefully leaves you feeling more confident in our work and more invested in the fate of the imperiled Ukrainian people.
Throughout my career, in both my non-profit sector work and my entrepreneurial business enterprises, I found great value in providing our stakeholders large and small with all of the knowledge that I had gleaned in establishing, growing and managing those ventures. Gaining this intimate knowledge, as I have found repeatedly over the past four decades, allows stakeholders to “buy-in”, to get as personally invested in our work as possible, which is vital to all measures of mission or corporate success.
So while rescuing and delivering aid to imperiled Ukrainians will remain our primary goal, educating as many people as possible about the Ukrainians’ plight is a close second, because an educated and enlightened base of supporters is much more likely to engage in subsequent actions – and humanitarian actions are what the Ukrainian people need most at this time.
Also, seeing as our Mission will strategically adapt to the ever-changing, already-complex situations on the ground in Ukraine, for those of you who will be supporting our Mission work from state-side, and especially if you are considering joining us in delivering aid in Ukraine – I know you will benefit greatly as I have from understanding the lay-of-the-land both geographically and politically.
As few of our fellow humanitarian organizations seeking your support do, we will bring you constant reporting from the front lines of human suffering, and if you frequent our website, you’ll see ample evidence that we believe that our missionary work will be even more meaningful to you and to the Ukrainians if we truly understand their people, their fledgling, occasionally flawed democracy, and the invaluable liberties that they are presently fighting to preserve – all of which should sound familiar as those same factors characterize America.
The key to understanding Ukraine in particular is through understanding the plethora of natural resources that their land has been blessed with – something that Russia, and before it, the Soviet Union knew all too well, for Ukraine had for decades been a part of those two nations, and not just any part, but it’s most valuable part…because of both its agricultural resources and its coal and natural gas reserves, which in turned spawned industrial and energy production unparalleled in all of present-day Russia (which you will see vividly depicted in the Mission Maps that follow).
Today both Ukraine and Russia (and before it the Soviet Union) covet these natural resources and the economic growth and prosperity that they bring about. And not just these Eastern European nations, but almost every government now assigns a great strategic significance to “resource and energy security”, particularly in relation to oil and gas supplies and because of its global significance, Ukraine’s food production.
The result is a new global landscape in which competition over vital resources is becoming the governing principle behind the accumulation and deployment of military power. Nowhere in the world today is this better illustrated than in the theater of war in which we find ourselves.
We will help you understand that relationship, just as we had to do ourselves, so that there’s a more lasting meaning to our Mission, a meaning that hopefully will keep you aligned with the Ukrainian people even after they have prevailed in this bitter war and begin the long and arduously difficult period of rebuilding and recovery.
As I have mentioned in the opening, please don’t feel bad if you currently know little about Ukraine – neither did I until I established the Mission. I of course heard Ukraine mentioned over the past decade in the context of various political issues, along with news coverage about the persistent threat of more Russian military actions after they “annexed” or “conquered” Crimea in 2014 (each reflects regional biases which do a disservice to both sides).
Why that geopolitical discussion of Crimea is important to understanding the need for our current Mission circles back to Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea, which the Ukrainians today still refer to as “the Temporary Occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” is because there, many astute observers see Putin playing the long game, actually the very long game when one considers that then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the Crimea territory to Ukraine way back in 1954. So important is that seminal act that I found that it merits an explanation all to itself, which I provide below in the text box.
The Abridged Modern History of “The Crimea” and its importance to both
Ukraine and Russia (and by historical extension, the Soviet Union)
Part One
For all of the talk today about Crimea, specifically how the 2014 Russian “annexation” of Crimea was a precursor to Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, I found the recent history of this relatively small peninsula (it’s about the size of Maryland) quite surprising, beginning with how over the past 68 years it has changed hands three times, and possibly a fourth, if Volodymyr Zelensky has his way.
Working backwards from Zelensky’s rather vociferous intent to reclaim Crimea (after he defeats the Russians and drives them back to the outskirts of Moscow), relatively large media coverage in 2014 reported on Russian’s successful “reclaiming” of this 10,000-square-mile jagged circular peninsula that abruptly juts out into The Black Sea, physically connected to Ukraine only by the razor-thin Isthmus of Perekop.
For those that don’t recall the details of that 2014 conflict (Barack Obama was President at the time, if that helps), it came on the heels of the major internal upheaval that began in the fall of 2013 when then Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych rejected an overture from the European Union for greater integration of the Ukrainian economy into that of the rest of Europe, something that most Ukrainians wanted (along with the US and nearly all European countries), but it was also something that Russia and their hand-picked Yanukovych most decidedly didn’t want.
So feverish were both sides that the conflict sparked massive public protests which Yanukovych had to put down violently, and which fueled even greater internal discord in the months that followed – discord that resulted in the February 2014 anti-government movement that toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country and back to his favored Russia.
The Abridged Modern History of “The Crimea” and its importance to both
Ukraine and Russia (and by historical extension, the Soviet Union)
Part Two
The next month Russia retaliated by trying to salvage its lost influence by invading and “annexing” Crimea. But there too Russia wasn’t done, for in April, pro-Russia separatists began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine, from which they shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 on July 17th, killing 298 innocent people (probably accidently if that makes any difference). Finally, in August of that year the Russians very overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels, which brought that fractured, very violent relationship to where it is today. Russia is fighting to “reclaim” even more land, while Ukraine is fighting to hold on to it.
And as far as Khrushchev’s 1954 decision to hand the province over to the Ukrainian people, so seemingly meaningless was that decision at the time that the discussion of it purportedly took all of 15 minutes (for in the Soviet Union of old, who questioned the communist leader?) That Khrushchev “gifted” Ukraine was ostensibly to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s merger with the Russian Empire, and his benevolence was no doubt influenced a great deal by the fact that he married a Ukrainian and as a teenager worked in the Ukrainian coal mines.
One of Khrushchev’s biographers noted that while Khrushchev was ethnically Russian, he held a great affinity for Ukraine. Well, that and the fact that the year prior, Joseph Stalin died, and Khrushchev openly felt that he needed to atone for Stalin causing the Ukrainian Holodomor, the “forced starvation” that cost Ukraine millions of its citizens.
The glue that binds the 2014 Crimea land grab with today’s invasion of Donbas and Luhansk is a major political position held by Putin and other Russian hard-liners: that the current invasion and the most recent military focus on the rest of the southern one-third of Ukraine is an intended outgrowth of the 2014 annexation of Crimea, with both of those predatory actions being viewed by the Russians as nothing more than them seeking to return to their ownership important land which was taken away from them when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
That 2014 land grab, taken by Putin ostensibly to “ensure proper conditions for the Crimean nationals to freely express their will” was an easy sell to the Russian people, who had otherwise begun to turn on him in 2013-14 because the Russian economy was again cratering. But many Russians living in the western bounds of Russia had relatives living in Crimea, and most knew just how valuable this industrial portion of Ukraine is to Russia’s economy. Not so surprisingly, as shown on one of the following Mission Maps, Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk then and now feature the highest percentage of Russian-speaking Ukrainians residents.
The 2022 war’s roots in the 2013-2014 “Euromaiden Protests”
Part One
Much of today’s Ukraine–Russia crisis can trace its roots to the fall of 2013 – November 21st to be exact as that was the date of the “Euromaiden Protests” (it’s important to at least mention that the somewhat odd name has nothing to do with European women as I too first thought, instead the name merged the primary topic: the status of Europe with the location of the protest: Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).
The core reasons for the protests typified the major issues and controversies that more-or-less have defined Ukraine during this decade: the protesters saw Ukrainian President Yanukovych as being totally subjugated to Russia because he rejected an offer for Ukraine to become more integrated into the European Union and instead took a $15 billion lots-of-strings-attached bailout from Russia.
That led to repeated calls for Yanukovych to resign, but instead he reacted in a typically Russian manner by sending in his storm troopers to break up the protests and then he gerrymandered the passage of numerous laws that severely restricted free speech, the right to assembly and pretty much every other liberty that is insured by a democracy.’
The 2022 war’s roots in the 2013-2014 “Euromaiden Protests”
Part Two
Chaos ensued in Ukraine’s major cities for the next three months but Ukraine’s embattled democracy survived long enough to see the Parliament turn against Yanukovych, first removing his powers to stop the protests and then voting to remove him outright.
What then began was a period of divisiveness that continues today and is reflected in the 2022 Russian invasion and in the war’s current status, as Russia is redoubling its efforts to “win” the southern portion of the country (roughly represented by the area in blue on this map).
However, contrary to the opinions of most observers who think that Putin would reluctantly settle for this region as a consolation prize after failing to conquer the entire nation – the more people look at Putin’s actions since 2014, the more they will be convinced that maybe, just maybe there’s some method to his madness.
To Putin and his allied hard-liners, re-taking this land and re-acquiring these people’s obedience was a plan that was actually upwards of seventy years in-the-making, as they had been waiting for this opportunity since 1954, when Nikita Krushchev gave the region to Ukraine. Fast-forward to today – Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea (and his present-day gambits) have worked on every intended front: he bought himself some redemption from the Russian people and more time to fix the economy, he also enraged the rest of the world, which always delights the fiercest Soviet loyalists, and most importantly, in conquering Crimea in 2014, Putin knew that this key piece of real estate would in due time play a very critical role in a much larger, much grander plan.
Seeing himself as Russia’s ruler-for-life, Putin knew that he could take his time executing that larger plan, which he’s now doing, beginning with the 2022 invasion. Understanding this larger plan and why this stage of the plan is now focused on the southern tier of Ukraine are key to better understanding our relief efforts, and the following maps help tell that story quite graphically.
In shifting our focus to what relief efforts are needed now and in what portions of Ukraine, I found myself of more familiar ground – literally and figuratively – because my only other prior knowledge of Ukraine came during the past twenty-five-plus years that I’ve spent as a Florida ranch owner, which involved me in Florida’s agricultural issues. Being familiar with the link between localized agriculture and global food production helped me to better understand why the central and southern regions of Ukraine are so important to both Ukraine and Russia. Perhaps even more importantly, being familiar with localized agriculture in the context of global trade sheds even greater light on the vital role that central and southern Ukrainian agriculture plays in both Russia’s military plans and their global trade strategy.
Simply stated – whoever controls Ukraine’s farm belt instantly becomes a major player on the global trade stage because they control the lion’s share of the food production that serves the majority of east-European and north-African nations. Whoever controls Ukraine’s most agriculturally-productive lands also control (and can manipulate) the region’s economy and with it, the ability to create greater political instability, which is always a key ingredient in Russia’s quest to foment political regime changes throughout Europe, Africa and the world.
The Lifeblood of Ukraine – Farming & Agricultural Production
Wheat & Corn
Sunflower Seed, Soybean & Barley
In taking a wider view, here we also see stark evidence why, over the course of human history more wars have been fought over natural resources than over religion or ethnic identity or any other cause. In the present-day invasion of Ukraine we also see Russia borrowing from the last one-hundred-years of Russian-Soviet military strategies (as they seem to always do, often to their own detriment).
In borrowing one of the more insidious and debilitating strategies from their otherwise failed plan to take control of the entire country of Ukraine, Putin has decided that if Russia cannot conquer Ukraine’s agricultural region, then it will at least destroy it entirely so that it no longer benefits Ukraine or anyone else.
Quite telling is the fact that throughout the Ukraine farm belt, Russian troops have focused nearly all their military might not on military targets, but instead on agricultural targets. Their brutal artillery strikes destroyed the entire region’s rural homes, barns, silos and other grain storage facilities, and tractors and other farm equipment, with their coup de grace being to litter agricultural fields with hundreds of thousands of land mines and other booby traps. Clearly this is agricultural genocide on a scale never before seen.
Russia’s Intended Targets: Grain Storage Facilities
As I write in other Mission Bulletins, this agricultural genocide and their associated occupation of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and blockade of maritime trade corridors is also “food terrorism on a scale never before seen as well. All if this is intended to create human suffering and political instability not just in Ukraine, but in other parts of Europe and Africa as well, and their intended outcomes too have been borrowed from the darker chapters of Russia-Soviet geopolitical history. In another Mission Bulletin, I write about the “next Ukraine crisis”, which too extends far beyond Ukraine’s borders and which too repeats Russian history: the looming food shortages that will certainly result in mass starvation and multi-continental famine, “the 2023 Holodomor”.
Ukraine’s Ports, which Russia is blocking
Ukraine’s Export Partners
The Significance of Ukraine’s Agricultural exports
Other than targeting basic transportation infrastructure, along with grain silos and other agricultural products storage facilities, the Russians are concentrating the intensity of their military attacks on the regions where Ukraine’s farms are located.
Being a scientist by training and inherently having an inquisitive geopolitical mind, I naturally wanted to know why global famine and the largest war Europe has seen since World War II (and why many observers believe that this current conflict will determine the footprint of communism and democracy for the next one-hundred-years) – all will come down to fierce fighting over a sliver of land about the size of the American state of Virginia.
That answer again is found in the maps that follow, specifically the ones providing insight into Ukraine’s most productive acreages of “Ukraine black soil”1. This in particular resonated with me because here in South Florida, we too have rich black soils locally referred to as “black muck”, and it is Florida’s most productive soil type for everything from sugar cane to vegetable crops, and as with Ukraine, the crops produced off our black soil are among the most valuable of all Florida’s crops, which also figure prominently in America’s global trade.
The Black Soil Region of Ukraine
It isn’t just the farms and other agricultural assets that Russia is attacking – the same comprehensive, horrific “total war” approach is being used to destroy industrial production facilities and infrastructure, along with mines and mineral extraction centers, although there the Russians must be careful because they rely on the gas storage and transmission pipelines inside Ukraine so that Russia’s natural gas can be transferred to willing buyers throughout Europe.
Tracking our Mission Work
In closing, I will return to these base maps of Ukraine geography and major transportation corridors. In this first regions map of Ukraine, our meetings and aid supply distribution centers are located in the green and blue highlighted regions, while our aid deliveries and rescue and relocation work will take place in the orange, yellow and peach colored regions, conc entreating on the recently “de-occupied” villages, towns and areas.
This map shows the major roads we will be using to get to the Ukrainians that we will be serving; the actual small towns and villages where we will be rescuing people and delivering aid are scattered amongst all of the open white space in between these major roads, throughout the entire country.
1 Here’s another thing that you will get used to seeing in our Mission reports, and that’s the footnotes that I use quite frequently to provide more information about important topics (once a scientist, always a scientist). Here I’m referring to Ukraine’s vitally-important natural resource – “black soil”. Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, is known as “the breadbasket of Europe” thanks to its rich, black “Chernozem” soil, which is highly-fertile and rich in organic material. Nearly a quarter of the world’s most fertile soil is found in Ukraine, where more than 65% of Ukraine’s arable land is composed of Chernozem deposits, which make these regions the most agriculturally productive land in the entire world.