Ukraine Releases Russian Secret

At the end of an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Nick Shchetko and Laura Mills [ Ukraine Bans Soviet-Era Symbols ]  they casually added a paragraph about a new law passed by the Ukraine parliament, " A separate law passed by the Ukrainian parliament Thursday will permit public access to documents classified as secret by Soviet authorities."  I wondered what this could be about.

Several newspapers ran a story, repeated from Novaya Gazeta one of the last surviving investigative journalism concerns in Russia [six of its journalists have been murdered since Putin took over in Russia], about a plan briefed to Putin on a strategy to divide Ukraine and neutralize or subjugate certain parts of it.  This document was received prior to the removal of President Victor Yanukovych to the safety of Russia.  [ read Anna Nemtsova, Putin's Secret Ukraine Plan 'Leaked' in the Daily Beast,  25 February 2015 ] It describes the main concern of the Russians was Gazprom's oil and gas lines and ethic changes in Ukraine and the east that did not suit Russian foreign policy very well.  There was no discussion of the Russian Nationalists that are so prominently listed as the cause that got Russia involved.  Nemtsova's article contains several other details worth reading.  

A story by Czech researchers and published by Radio Praha [http://www.radio.cz/en/section/czech-history/czech-researchers-probe-secret-soviet-era-archives-in-ukraine ]  mentions that the new head of the SBU, the Intelligence Service of Ukraine, has opened archives to further study, allowing the Czechs to research backgrounds of some people held captive by the Soviets before World War II.  The jews who were sent there ended up fighting the Germans after Russia was attacked.  The fact that they were in gulags prior to that was not lost on very many of the Czechs, but there are real secrets to be had in these documents.  

A lot more will be disclosed if the researchers can reach the documents in time.  Many of them were carted off to Russia already.  Those that remain will open new windows on the SBU and FSB relationships that went deep, and how the Russians really went about taking Crimea will be first on that list.