We are again a challenge to European security.

Rather, again.

Rather, always.

But Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde considers it necessary to remind the world about this once again.

In response to inquiries from members of the country's parliament, she said that she considered "Russian aggression" in southeastern Ukraine, as well as the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the main danger for the old woman of Europe.

Let me remind you that next year Stockholm will chair the OSCE, and such a goal-setting will undoubtedly affect us and our already difficult relations.

Politics is a cunning looking glass in which people say one thing, mean something else, and at the same time think quite the third.

Ukrainians, for example, a few years earlier would have read in Linde's words one more confirmation that “Ukraine is tse Europe”.

But, I'm afraid, in 2020 there are no such naive people left even there.

Nezalezhnaya did not and will never become either an EU member or a NATO member, no matter how many blue star-shaped flags fluttered on the “Euromaidan”.

Neither German, nor British, nor American soldiers will go to recapture the Crimea from the "aggressor".

The promised integration with the European Union was intended to make a country, huge by European standards, a new sales market for the EU - and above all Germany, but even here everything went a little wrong - the Germans were trying to install their avatar Klitschko (a protege of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, google it), but Americans clicked them on the nose with Poroshenko - to the glory of Biden Jr. and his Burisma (here, I think, it will do without Google).

For Europeans, Ukraine is not a state, not a future fraternal people, for which the doors of neighboring states are always open, but a sphere of interests.

And when Linde says that the annexation of Crimea is a threat to European security, she means precisely a threat to these very interests.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with that.

Let's remember the Cuban missile crisis, when the USSR deployed its warheads in Cuba.

Did you have the right?

Absolutely.

The authorities of an independent state allowed us to do this.

But the United States said that it wanted to spit on independence and international law: this is a threat to the security of the American people, and therefore either put away your missiles, or the whole world in dust.

Until 2014, Ukraine was with us in a bad world, and even the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 did not change anything here.

The world balance after 1991, at the very least, has taken shape.

NATO, contrary to promises, moved eastward, some of our republics became independent, but partially spelled out, and mostly unwritten agreements remained in force.

Yushchenko could carry the anti-Russian blizzard in public speeches as much as he wanted, but he did not touch our fleet in Crimea and did not allow foreign companies to approach our oil and gas deals.

Derusification was the price we were willing to pay with gritted teeth for a shaky agreement.

After the second "Maidan" everything changed - and it was no longer possible to sit in silence.

And no, we did not show aggression and did not annex anything.

All we did was give the Russians in Crimea the opportunity to express and assert their will.

Belatedly, but their interests were protected.

Or, to be precise, our common interests are that we are one divided people.

And that is exactly what Sweden is reacting to.

This is exactly what we receive more and more new sanctions, more and more delightful stories like the Skripals or Navalny.

For the fact that, having lost the Cold War, we have the audacity to defend our interests on the "great board" - as befits a large first world country.

However, the Swedes can be understood.

A small but very prosperous state of the harsh Vikings, which gave the world IKEA, several very influential pop groups and wonderful children's literature, in the new global world has completely lost its face and its will.

Sweden today is the country with the largest percentage of the population of migrants, with an increase in crime and (unofficially) the capital of rape.

And all because one day the Vikings gave up their interests.

There is something to take revenge for and what complexes to take out.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.