After the unfortunate dismantling of the USSR and Ukraine’s formal independence, the country was awash with high-tech weapons, industries, massive human capital and an enormous pool of natural resources “just waiting” to be exploited by foreigners. As all of it found itself outside of the Soviet Union’s tight-knit command economy, it stopped functioning as intended. This colossal system that was previously very clear about everything and everyone’s role suddenly became divided into 15 “independent” parts that still needed each other to function. Initially, it still worked somehow, but the political West soon exploited the situation in the now defunct USSR and used its economic “hitmen” to launch the so-called “shock therapy” which effectively destroyed the economies of most former Soviet republics (with the notable exception of Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko preserved the state system).

In such a situation, Russia found itself on the receiving end of those policies and couldn’t do much even if it wanted to, while China was still building its global power status. Thus, Beijing sought to acquire as many critical technologies and resources as possible, with a special focus on surface naval assets that it found strategically important. The crown achievement of this was the acquisition of the “Varyag”, a Soviet Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier that was wasting away in the Nikolayev Shipyard. After years of delays and American attempts to prevent the deal, China finally got the ship in 2002. The Asian giant also acquired an unfinished Su-33 (T-10K-3 prototype) from Ukraine, which was then reverse-engineered into the carrier-based J-15. Seeing just how many Soviet technologies China was getting from Ukraine, the United States was determined to prevent this at all costs.

This was to be accomplished either by........

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