ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Good to know that Ukraine's new acting President is a guy dogged by persistent allegations, backed up by Wikileaks files, that he destroyed police records of collusion between Tymoshenko and Semiyon Mogilevich, long-term star of the FBI's Most Wanted list.

As a continuation of the debate regarding 'nationalism' then and now: I'm pretty tired of people saying The Arab Spring and other revolutions 'turned sour' as if they were thereby bad or pointless. France still celebrates Bastille-day, even though The French Revolution led to terror, massacres and then decades of repressive regimes. Europeans still think fondly of 1848 - well, if they ever think of it at all - even though it only really worked in Denmark, and led to counter-revolutions everywhere else. These things never work completely, there are always set-backs. However, they create opportunity for change, where before there was none. Sometimes the change is good, sometimes it really doesn't go anywhere. And sometimes, as in Syria, the change is quite clearly bad.

But the problem isn't 'revolution'. The problem is repressive regimes closing down every other avenue for change, until the uncertainty of a revolution seems like the only possible way forward.

Yes, I think that's true.

Back to Ukraine and the government has officially voted to de-list Russian and Crimean Tatar as national languages. It almost looks like they're trying to promote a split.

Good to know that Ukraine's new acting President is a guy dogged by persistent allegations, backed up by Wikileaks files, that he destroyed police records of collusion between Tymoshenko and Semiyon Mogilevich, long-term star of the FBI's Most Wanted list.

― Ramnaresh Samhain (ShariVari), Sunday, February 23, 2014 6:01 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ouch. is there anyone of the political class in ukraine that isn't a criminal? i guess that explains the appeal of klitschko (sp?).

But the problem isn't 'revolution'. The problem is repressive regimes closing down every other avenue for change, until the uncertainty of a revolution seems like the only possible way forward.

i'm not sure that really matters, even in the long run. modern "revolutions" have as much or more carnage to their names as old-school monarchies/autocratic regimes. basically, i'm not much of a believer in political "progress" in a world-historical sense.

but of course it's the autocrats and despots who create the conditions that make revolution not just attractive but inevitable. so it's not like i'm blaming revolutionists per se.

http://i.imgur.com/mCdqJvr.jpg

i went to NYT.com this morning and the front page story was about Russia conducting military drills on the Ukraine border - and then all the columns switched to cyrillic and i was like wtf and then the entire screen dissolved and it turned out to be an ad for The Americans which is some bizarre synchronicity w/ reality there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25910834

Great, the acting Chief Prosecutor is from Svoboda, the neo-Fascist party. Fair trials all round.

i went to NYT.com this morning and the front page story was about Russia conducting military drills on the Ukraine border - and then all the columns switched to cyrillic and i was like wtf and then the entire screen dissolved and it turned out to be an ad for The Americans which is some bizarre synchronicity w/ reality there.

― Mordy , Wednesday, February 26, 2014 9:05 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same thing happened to me.

also all of the people profiled in that last link sound like total assholes. ukraine is fucked.

Yep, the country really needs a popular, grass roots people's movement to provide left-leaning balance. At present the choice is between three unscrupulous neo-liberal parties indebted to oligarchs, a bunch of Nazis or the aging communist rump.

Like 2004, this would seem to be a perfect time for that kind of movement to develop. People are sick of corruption, sick of oligarchs, sick of the IMF, sick of inflation, sick of dodgy banks, etc, but the vested interests, as in 2004, are incredibly adept at stifling or hijacking genuine popular sentiment for change.

would the demands by the IMF/EU break up the oligarch's grip on the economy?

The IMF wouldn't - Tymoshenko and Yanukovich have both been enthusiastic adherents to IMF and World Bank programmes in the past. The IMF has never seemed to have much of an issue with oligarchs anywhere in Eastern Europe. I assume they are considered preferable to nationalised industry.

I think the EU would probably make it marginally harder for oligarchs to extend their power but it would also make it harder for Ukraine to follow Russia in reclaiming industries from the oligarchs, should it want to. For all the noble talk, the EU doesn't seem to have done much about endemic corruption in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria or Ireland. It could possibly provide a framework for small export / service oriented businesses to grow but it's tough to see that being an effective counterbalance to big business in the near future.

the recent events just seem like the legislature and other powerful figures jettisoning a liability (yanukovitch) rather than any genuine political change.

xxpost i guess

pretty interesting piece here: http://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/ukraine-1-yanukovichs-end-is-a-beginning/

What a mess.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/?insrc=hpss

Read that the other day and thought it was one of the worst pieces I've come across so far. Really disappointing from the NYRB.

Why do you think it is the "worst"? Specifics please?

ShariVari mistakes the political parties with any hope for power under non-revolutionary circumstances with the nature of the protests (revolution) itself, and that's why he hates that article. He's wrong.

A good friend of mine is reporting Tituschski stopping busses and robbing the passengers in Zaporizhia (in the South East). They have some sort of power, but not by the will of the people.

The article makes grand sweeping statements about groups with a complex set of aims and objectives. It also completely ignores the main reasons so many of the protesters are out on the streets - endemic corruption across all political parties and the economic mismanagement that has gone with it. There is no economic analysis at all.

Saying that 'the protests represent every group of Ukrainian citizens' is clearly nonsense. There may be representatives of all groups of Ukrainian citizens but that is not quite the same thing. Most Ukrainians have not taken part in the protests and many are opposed to them.

Equally, saying 'Jewish leaders have made a point of supporting the protests' is misleading. Some have, so say 'some Jewish leaders'.

The etymological description of the term 'maidan' is extremely dubious. It's the primary Ukrainian word for "square" and carries the same set of meanings as "square" and the Russian "ploschad" - a public space, a gathering point, etc. The fact that Russian speakers refer to Maidan Nezhaleznosti as such is no more surprising than the fact that French speakers don't usually call the big clock tower in London 'grande Ben'. It's a Kyiv landmark and that is its name.

The description of the changes to constitutional powers, awful as they were, is completely hyperbolic, as is the suggestion that they were intended to turn Ukraine into a 'dictatorship'. If the 'dictatorship' laws were based on Russian models, they weren't dictatorship laws.

The comparison between an EU where every member is a equal partner (lol) with the Eurasian Union is ludicrous. Most Ukrainians i've spoken to are in favour of the EU but don't think it's a magic bullet that will miraculously cure the country's ills. There's no mention of the millions of Ukrainians whose jobs depend on close ties to Russia and Belarus and who actively want a closer partnership.

The line "it is the Ukrainian regime rather than its opponents that resorts to anti-semitism" is head-spinningly stupid when one of its main opponents, a party that got 10% of the vote and has been in the vanguard of the Maidan protests is as avowedly anti-Jewish as Svoboda. They were called, until relatively recently, the 'Social National' party ffs! They might only make up a small percentage of the whole national protest but they're not imaginary. It's another example of trying to shoehorn a complex set of competing movements into one homogeneous group.

The suggestion that the Eurasian Union is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy is bunk. Dugin is a fairly marginal figure who has vacillated between the far-left and the far-right. Putin does have some very unpleasant people working alongside him (including Glazyev and Kiselyov) but the whole section is tainted with transparent cold-war paranoia.

Conflating the authoritarianism and brutality of Berkut and Yanukovich with fascism is wrong. They are murderers clinging on to their own personal influence but fascism means more than that. If you want to bring the historical perspective into it, maybe expand a little on why the Jews suffered so badly in Ukraine - it was partly thanks to a man hailed as a hero by many Ukrainian nationalists today.

This could have been written at any point in the last ten years. It makes no attempt to understand or engage with the protest, or its root causes, other than to use it as a vehicle for a questionable ideological attack on Putin - a man with a mutual loathing for Yanukovich.

SV otm, piece is total garbage. Obviously saying that all of the protesters are fascists is false, but otoh the NYRB piece (as well as other UK+US sources, until recently at least) deliberately tries to diminish the role of the far right and openly racist groups. Also, his account of WWII is filled with rather gross misrepresentations.

so is ukraine about be become another yugoslavia? it sure looks that way. hard not to despair.

i feel particularly bad for the crimean tartars right now.

a minority w/in a minority

Cue SV saying the aggressive Russian invasion of the Crimea is a defense of the genuine will of the people.

The situation wrt the 'invasion' doesn't seem particularly clear at the moment. Russia leases parts of Crimea / the Black Sea from Ukraine so will always have troops in the area but taking control of local airports would be a huge provocation. There's no confirmation of whether the the people who apparently have them are Russian Russians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Either way, it's not particularly positive.

Most accurate Yugoslavia comparison might be Slovenia, but it's hard to tell. Difficult to see many Western Ukrainians wanting military action to reclaim it if the referendum went in favour of separation. Losing Crimea would mean a permanent Tymoshenko-leaning political majority in the rest of the country as things stand. Their fear might be that the economically productive East might go with it.

"Referendum".

Don't most of the gas pipelines between Russia and Europe go through Ukraine? I would have thought that alone would be enough incentive for the rest of the region to prevent a Yugoslavian-style collapse.

Most accurate Yugoslavia comparison might be Slovenia, but it's hard to tell. Difficult to see many Western Ukrainians wanting military action to reclaim it if the referendum went in favour of separation. Losing Crimea would mean a permanent Tymoshenko-leaning political majority in the rest of the country as things stand. Their fear might be that the economically productive East might go with it.

― Yuri Bashment (ShariVari), Friday, February 28, 2014 4:55 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right, it's likely not a fear of losing crimea as such, but once one part of the country is allowed to "go" like that, what's to keep the rest together? see also: yugoslavia.

i don't mean to be cap'n pessimist on here, i do hope things work out without force, but i just feel like we've been down this road before...

Wait, so is the airport occupied now, or are there just armed unaffiliated men hanging about?

And what is England/Europe/the EU saying about this stuff? Doesn't it affect them directly more than the US (oil and all)? Is the fact that I keep hearing US blather about this related strictly to me being in the US?

Another also: what is the current readiness of the Russian army? I know they have manpower and firepower, but are they in tip-top condition to get bogged down in a border war? Russian strategy post USSR mostly seems be killing everyone willy-nilly.

And what is England/Europe/the EU saying about this stuff?

Excuse me, England?

What they saying about it in the Confederacy?

It looks almost certain that the armed men are not Russian troops. Ukraine's interior minister has claimed that the men are "under the control of the Kremlin" but suggestions that they're actually Russian soldiers have dissipated. They do look fairly well equipped so it's possible they're Ukrainian soldiers from Crimea but nobody seems clear.

Russia could roll into Crimea with five minute's notice, the entire Black Sea fleet is anchored off-shore, and they would have no problem defending the peninsula if it came to a war with Ukrainian troops, but i honestly can't seen any circumstances in which that would happen at the moment. It would wreck relations with the EU and Russia can generally get what it wants via other means. Russia would probably intervene 'on humanitarian grounds' if Ukraine tried to recapture Crimea by force at some point in the future, but again, that doesn't seem very likely.

Irrespective of how close to the EU it gets, Ukraine still needs a cordial relationship with Russia and, when things have settled down, Tymoshenko is likely to try to rebuild one.

The EU seems to be focusing on getting Russia to calm the situation down but i haven't seen much taking a firm position on Crimea.

"...suggestions that they're actually Russian soldiers have dissipated"

Who the fuck are you, really? And beyond denials-that were-kinda-not-denials from Putin and a spokesman for the Black Sea fleet (“Given the unstable situation around the Black Sea Fleet bases in the Crimea, and the places where our service members live with their families, security has been stepped by the Black Sea Fleet’s anti-terror units.”) what are you talking about here?

How would you compare Russia's relationship to Crimea w/ its relationship to South Ossetia? xp

or 'this one time in college i read a book'

The Ukrainian government is still calling this an 'occupation' but has largely stopped claiming that they are Russian troops, as far as i can tell. The difference between troops loyal to Russia ("controlled from the Kremlin" or otherwise) and actual serving Russian soldiers is fairly important.

Russia has said that it has increased troop activity in the area - euphemistically called "anti-terrorist" security efforts, which is where the port-access blockade allegations come in, but hasn't claimed responsibility for taking the airports.

South Ossetia is what i was thinking of when i said that Russia might intervene if there was an attack but probably wouldn't make the first military move. The situation isn't quite the same yet, though. Crimea, although, an autonomous Republic, is officially recognised by Russia as part of Ukraine at the moment but South Ossetia is mostly viewed as an independent territory.

And I don't think he's misinterpreting something I said or confusing me with someone else; he's just making shit up.

x.post http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russian-troops-take-over-airports-in-crimea/2014/02/28/659fbec0-a082-11e3-a050-dc3322a94fa7_story.html

SV OTM (not going to check this thread again for a while if 'unpleasantness' continues)

Post story indicates journalists have been threatened for approaching, has one of the uniformed men calling himself a member of the Black Sea Fleet, describes a Russian officer approaching the uniformed men, who acted as if he were in command.

xpost

Yeah, SV I always appreciate your clarity and contributions to threads like this.

Credit where credit is due: SV writes very clearly and puts a lot of thought into what he says here, but he appears to me to have an agenda and the constant "otm"s bug me.

It doesn't look like SV is parroting the Russian line here at all, wtf?

I didn't say the Kremlin line or the Putin line -- I said the moderate Russian line.