ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

i really wanna go to kiev

2006?

There are no reports the death is linked to Mr Yanukovych's defeat by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in Sunday's presidential poll re-run.

Yeah, right.

http://www.eyecandyforthebrokenhearted.com/ukraine.jpg

nice pics of timoshenko. whats with the c.17th thing? is this some ukrainian nationalism schtick? national dress a gogo?

A Stratfor note today:

---

Ukraine made a radical policy adjustment on Thursday by essentially ending its bid for NATO membership. The move, which would have been unthinkable as recently as a month ago, probably resulted from external forces, namely Russia. Ukraine’s abrupt departure from its long-standing bid indicates the ominous involvement of Moscow. In its effort to maintain its security buffer, Russia probably employed its FSB security services.

Economic tools can include fostering closer integration, raising or lowering barriers to trade, embargoing another country, threatening to undermine a country’s financial stability by mass sales of its currency, or by simply shelling out cash. In the case of Ukraine –- and by extension, Western Europe –- Russia frequently has employed natural gas cutoffs.

Political tools are varied, and focus on finding political weak spots for later manipulation. The options include promoting closer integration among citizens with a common heritage found in both of the countries in question. These ties can then be manipulated later. For example, one country can threaten to intervene in the other to protect an allied ethnic group from alleged discrimination. Russia could employ this tactic in relation to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

Military tools to influence another state’s behavior include the threat of invasion, conspicuously aiming weapons — anything from artillery to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)— at the other country, or providing military assistance to the government or the opposition groups in the other country. Russia’s Feb. 12 threat to aim ICBMs at foreign forces that might deploy in Ukraine falls in this category.

The 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s subsequent loss of influence in its near abroad and in the West laid the foundation for Russia’s current geopolitical trajectory. Russia’s resurgence under President Vladimir Putin has involved a strong effort to regain the influence, respect and national security it believes it is due. Moscow’s desire is especially keen given previous Russian humiliations — particularly those suffered by the government of the late Boris Yeltsin, when the West encroached on what Russia perceives as its prerogatives. Russia, however, lacks many of the tools the Soviet Union had at its disposal for compelling other countries’ behavior. This complicates Putin’s effort to satisfy the Russian geopolitical imperative of establishing hegemony in its near abroad.

The Russian resurgence took a potentially fatal hit over Kosovo’s Feb. 18 secession from Serbia. This was an issue of minor importance to the United States and most Western European countries, but a major threat to Russia’s effort to demonstrate its return to major power status. For Russia and Putin to survive the Kosovo insult, retribution elsewhere in the Russian near abroad was expected — namely in the Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.

Ukraine’s dramatic about-face on NATO comes in the context of Kosovar independence. Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko — who came to power in his country’s 2004 Orange Revolution — was clamoring as recently as a month ago for NATO membership, despite a lukewarm reception from the alliance. Rumor has it that Yushchenko’s sudden change at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels occurred after the Russian president literally ordered him to withdraw Ukraine’s NATO bid, probably reminding him of the aforementioned Russian economic leverage over Ukraine.

Putin likely did not rely on economic coercion alone, however, and we can assume the FSB helped change Ukraine’s mind on NATO. The FSB is quite good at pressuring individuals using threats, intimidation, enticements and even sophisticated assassinations. Yushchenko knows the capabilities of the secret service underworld well, having barely survived a poisoning while seeking office in 2004.

Russia and the FSB probably decided that bringing the existing Ukrainian leadership in line would be easier than introducing a new leadership, allowing Moscow to avoid the pitfalls of Ukrainian politics. Given the lukewarm reception to Ukraine’s membership bid, Kiev could simply have let its application fall by the wayside. Instead, it made an active policy reversal. Compelling Yushenko’s U-turn on Ukraine’s NATO bid thus represents a significant Russian achievement, one that others — particularly Georgia — will observe closely.

The willingness of right-wing analysts to suggest that personal threats by the FSB against the Ukrainian government were probably behind the policy change, while completely omitting to mention the saleient fact that Gazprom did in fact cut gas supplies to Ukraine beginning on Monday and only restored full flows on Thursday... well, you're smart guys I'm sure Stratfor, but don't pretend you have less of a policy agenda than Putin does.

I imagine anybody writing about Russia who doesn't themselves work for the Kremlin is likely to have on about fifteen tinfoil hats as regards the FSB/GRU apparatus, and with perfectly understandable reason

it has come to...trebuchets

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-clashes-kiev-molotov-907/

can someone with more geopolitical smarts explain what's happening to me?

the american MSM seems to painting this as a peaceful-freedom-fighters vs. entrenched-corrupt-government thing, but I get the feeling it's more complicated. for one thing reading the foreign press tells me that some ultra- right-wing groups (whose nationalist distaste for Russia apparently trumps reservations they might have about the EU) with a distinctly anti-Semitic bent (and some soft-right groups who have connections to the ultra-rightists) are taking an increasingly visible (and increasingly violent) role in the Kiev protests.

but you know, I don't really know anything about all this. so 'splain me.

some discussion here - Rolling European Politics Thread

maybe this will help: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-ukrainian-smears-and-stereotypes/2014/02/20/450b8d62-9a72-11e3-b88d-f36c07223d88_story.html

the protesters are fascists trying to impose the EU on a country that doesn't want it

xpost

i think that washington post thing is a little pollyanna-ish (pollyanish?) about the nature of the protest movement(s), it's true.

but i honestly don't know what to read/who to believe.

I'll break it down as i see it.

Yanukovich indicated that he wanted to sign a provisional agreement with the EU to liberalise trade relations. He's not on good terms with Putin and Russia's decision to keep charging Ukraine high fees for gas (which is partly Ukraine's fault for reasons i won't go into) has wrecked the Ukrainian economy. He took the view that opening up Ukraine to the EU would have some short term difficulties (cheap EU products competing with domestic Ukrainian goods, etc) but it was worth it for the potential long term gains. The EU prevaricated over exactly what was on offer, didn't give a clear indication that full membership could be on the cards in the future and wasn't willing to provide financial assistance to help compensate for short-term hardship.

At the same time, Russia did what Russia always does. They said that if you don't want to have a special relationship (in this case preferring the EU over a post-Soviet trade agreement) then you can't expect special favours. Russia started imposing the kind of border checks on Ukrainian traffic into Russia that Poland always has on the other border and stopped giving Ukrainian companies preference on government contracts over Indian, Chinese, etc firms. Ukraine's eastern side is economically reliant on Russia and trade income went down by about 30% over the course of two or three months.

Ukraine also owes Russia a stack of cash for gas it hasn't paid for. The Ukrainian government was very close to defaulting until Russia offered to defer billions of dollars worth of loans in return for signing their trade agreement. Yanukovich didn't really have much of a choice other than accepting.

This went down very badly with a wide range of people, from EU-minded liberals to hardline neo-Fascists and ended up highlighting deep political, regional and ethnic splits in the country that go back decades. Bear in mind that Stalin was responsible for starving millions of Ukrainian peasants and Ukrainian nationalists later collaborated with the Nazis to murder hundreds of thousands of Russians and Jewish people. Western Ukraine remains strongly nationalist - both in the soft sense of wanting to make sure that the country is free of Russian control and in the less soft 'Mein Kampf displayed in bookshop windows' sense. The nationalists are not all violent right-wing extremists, as the Russian press would like to have it, but some of them certainly are. On the other hand, lots of the East of the country, and Crimea, retain a strong Russian identity.

There is no unified protest movement. Some are hardline nationalists, some are liberals, some want to be part of the EU, some want to be free of Russian control, some want to split the country in two, some want to unite it. There are a million positions in between each. The protests are also equally about the economy. Ukraine has been in a massive slump for several years, partly as a result of the oil situation, and people are sick of it.

They're also sick of corrupt, criminal politicians. Pretty much everyone who has held a political post in Ukraine since independence is a corrupt criminal, though, so Yanukovich is not unique in that regard. There's a chance that Klitchko might be different though which is why a lot of people are uniting behind him.

that's the sanest, most even thing i've read about the situation since i stopped listening to the BBC pretending to be impartial

I think that's about right, although the geographic split being talked about doesn't seem to be working out so much in reality -- my Ukrainian pals are all Russian-speaking Easterners, and are supporters of the protests. Yanukovich is also widely considered to be the worst of a bunch of idiots -- this is an "enough is enough" moment in many ways. There are neo-fascists in the protest movement, but I have seen no sources that are not Russian-friendly that suggest that they are the majority or growing, and there sure as hell are neo-fascists in Yanukovich's troops as well. There are agents provocateurs at work as well. For the people on the ground this is primarily and simply anti-government protest, but of course there is far more going on than just the people on the ground.

in the context you folks describe the way the west (esp. US) is dealing w/ this is kind of embarrassing.

we all know john mccain is an idiot, but appearing with some of the right-wing protest groups and calling for "freedom" was one of his more embarrassingly credulous photo ops.

what about those folks that briefly came into power after the "orange revolution"? my understanding was that they were both crooks _and_ victims of political show trials.

The elite political class in Ukraine is a disaster -- the lack of a central strong figure leading the protests is both a result of and a reaction to that.

Yes, Yushchenko (who was president) is a minor crook, his son is a fairly major one. Tymoshenko (who was Prime Minister) stole several billion dollars worth of gas from Russia while people on both sides of the border were dying in poverty. Her reinvention as a St Joan figure is laughable.

Yushchenko and Yanukovich were both PM under Leonid Kuchma, the journalist-murdering crim who was Ukraine's first independent President, so the idea of a major political difference between the two is somewhat overstated.

Ukraine is generally though of as more corrupt than Nigeria. All politicians are required to state their income on electoral forms. There was one election in the mid-2000s where every single candidate but one claimed that their only source of income was their government salary of £5,000 - £13,000. All had BMWs, plush Kyiv apartments and massive country dachas. The one candidate who didn't claim to be living off his stipend ran with the campaign tagline "i'm too rich to need to be corrupt!". He didn't win.

Much of Ukraine's economy is carved up between a small number of oligarch factions and they bankroll everything. Some are pro-Tymoshenko, some are pro-Yanukovich. Quite a few are in favour of EU membership as they think it'll stop future governments from trying to reclaim the money they've stolen, some are against it as they think it'll prevent them from stealing more.

The oligarchs tend to be worse than the politicians. Ukraine' richest man, Rinat Akhmetov (who's more famous as Chairman of Shakhtar Donetsk), for example, was a prominent member of the Donbass Mafia and acquired most of his wealth when his boss (and former Chairman of Shakhtar) died in a bomb attack at a football match.

Great posts ShariVari.

As with most protest movements there are elements you wouldn't want to embrace - during Greece's Syntagma Square occupation in 2011 the left occupied one end and the far right (much smaller) the other because they were both opposed to the ruling elite and the EU austerity package - but the neo-fascists don't seem to be the driving force here by any stretch.

I'm still shocked it's come to this. I reported a story in Kiev after the 2004 Maidan protests and was told "Psychologically speaking, the orange revolution was unique. The Ukrainian nation is very peaceful and calm. We don't like ups and downs. A lot of Ukrainians still don't believe that they all went out into the street." So much for that theory.

With Bangkok and Caracas kicking off as well, for different reasons, it's a scary time. Since the Arab Spring turned sour it's really hard to be optimistic.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/21/ukraine-president-says-deal-has-been-reached-opposition-bloodshed

Positive news, though it'll be a tough sell on the streets. Expect Yulia to be freed any day now.

posting w/o comment since I am still just learning here, but I saw this today:

http://boingboing.net/2014/02/21/i-am-a-ukrainian-powerful-vi.html

The Ukraine

to avoid getting depressed, maybe just embed parliamentary brawl clips

one of the more balanced pieces i've read on this: http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2014/02/ukraine-war-were-just-not-admitting-it-yet

Yes, that is much better than most.

There are unconfirmed rumours that Yanukovich has resigned.

Pro-Russia Kharkiv and Crimea have effectively said that they are implementing self-governance until constitutional order is restored and are highly unlikely to come back under Kyiv's control if they aren't satisfied with the make-up of the new government. Lviv is doing the same but from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Yanukovich hasn't resigned and has apparently claimed that a coup has taken place in Kyiv. The main square of Sevastopol is full of people demanding the Crimean Autonomous Republic breaks with Ukraine and rejoins the Russian Federation.

Y has fled the palace acc to the NYT

The parliament has apparantly fired Yanukovich, and elections will be held May 25th

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraines-president-open-to-early-vote-polish-leader-says-scores-reported-killed-in-clashes/2014/02/21/05d3de46-9a82-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html?hpid=z1

Thousands poured onto the grounds of presidential residence, 12 miles from downtown Kiev, to gawk at the manicured lawns, the golf course and the botanical gardens, while other government offices were shuttered amid reports that workers at the public prosecutor’s office were destroying documents.

Police had abandoned the center of Kiev to protesters who had commandeered water cannon trucks and claimed full control of the city.

that wapo article helps, but i'm still confused. has the country splintered into two soon-to-be-independent states, one in kiev (west)and kharkov (east), and if it's true, what factions would control each such territory?

so much happening so fast. this reporter is a good read on the subject.

Eric Margolis ‏@ericmargolis -- Yulia Tymoshenko jailed Ukraine leader freed. Will make triumphant entry into Kiev, maybe challenge protest leaders.

sorry; meant to say one in kiev (west) and one in kharkov (east).

The big nationalist power bases are Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. The nationalists now dominate the West and North, including defacto control of the capital. The pro Russian groups dominate the East (the economic heart of the country) and the south, including the whole of the Crimean peninsula.

so those controlling western ukraine are, largely, nationalists who are comfortable seeing "Mein Kampf displayed in bookshop windows." normally i'd think pro-russian groups would be especially anti-semetic.

scary times. your posts have been outstanding, sv.

The newly-installed interior minister declared that the police now stood with demonstrators they had fought for days, when central Kiev became a war zone with 77 people killed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ukraine-protest-20140221,0,1284200.story

x-post to Sharivari-- so if one is not pro-Russian then one is a "nationalist"... ok I guess.

"Nationalist" doesn't mean far-right automatically, though there is some of that and the continued affection for Stepan Bandera even from some of the mainstream is troubling. It's more about prioritising a sense of Ukrainian national identity over a pan-Slavic one and a fairly strong hostility to Russian influence. Most people don't fit neatly into either category (I celebrated the 15th anniversary of Ukrainian independence in Maidan Nezhaleznosti with Ukrainian and Russian speakers) but to the extent that there is a clear split, that's how it breaks down.

i mean, yeah, party is "troubling" to use the word of the times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_%28political_party%29

*this party

being fascist and pro-EU is a strange combo of positions...

The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

xp

oh ok then, Sharivari has debunked the scurrilous idea that Ukraine is the most corrupt state in eastern Europe. I wash my mouth with soap!

Just never become an "inveterate hack propagandist" yourself SV. You look at Craig Murray as a warning from history!

I'm just not arrogant enough to judge any other country

um

threatening to censor my voice because I'm a comrade

New board description

I just don't give a fuck about Putin, Whereas to me, Zelensky is a dispacable villain. But class politics is my core really, and this place is a white middle class melt zone, with a massive bias towards Anglo-American Empire, even from fucking Irish posters!

calzino just so i understand, is all this supposed to be a demonstration of how you "keep it polite"?

I'm just going to return to my first post here tonight, where I'm pointing out that the EU is forcing people who don't want to die in this war for a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and neo-fascist militias, have got nowhere to go other than ZERO- the death death zone for them. And lots of them are trying to escape and it's not as popular war with them as it is with posh UK based fans of proxy wars having strong opinions on GeoPolitIcs.

gotta admit its pretty hard to have a strong opinion on Putin if your main thing is class politics perspective, not really much of an "in" there i'm afraid

why, do know the difference between life in remote parts of Russia and poverty stricken Dewsbury Moor? I don't know that myself, not even pretending to, I'm just saying this hand me down cold war bellicose propaganda bollocks spoken by our political elites, and parroted on here at times towards other nations becomes very tiresome and ultimately bad and pointless speech, imo. Class politics is about thinking who is getting bled in this war (both sides) and it's a high % of working class people.

I'm totally with calz on this warmongering garbage we're getting fed over here about "the Russian threat", it's relentless. Disagree with him on some of his other arguments, mind you!

the UK elites are deranged turnips and want to spend us like ants in a futile war against Russia (after they've bled Ukraine dry in the proxy war) is my mad take. I felt a bit emboldened tonight after an Asda delivery guy who is ex-military agreed with me on these opinions!

What difference does it make if you condemn Putin. Does it make you a good person? that's deranged to me.

What's deranged to me is your language condemning members of this board more than Vladimir Putin. Your choice of enemy and rhetoric in this and other threads are often fundamentally problematic, contradictory and undermine your message's intent. You come off a bit nuts and it's hard to empathize with you when you call people names, are clearly emotionally projecting, or use adjectives I'd generally reserve for people who have actually committed real violent crimes.

One thing you seem to forget is despite a lot of people's differing points of view and communication style here, we are mostly on the same side. I recognize you're coming at things with God intentions, but by being an absolute asshole about it you are doing yourself and others here a disservice.

ok i had a great post teed up about actually living in a remote part of russia but need some time to process the idea of calzino springing this debate on a delivery guy

Good intentions but that typo actually makes sense lol

I'm generally quite hostile towards Americans because most of you keep FPing me off here and the woke imperialist contradiction of your fake-left bullshit politics are frankly fucking awful, just cause me to implode at times. But saying that I don't think I have any friends on here. Probably best just logging off permanently tbf lol bye!

Hi, I'm not american nor european and I've FP about six of your posts today, you are an arse, you're welcome.

Bye!

Btw blaming others for evoking you to use abusive, bullying, assholish language to berate others, causing them to FP you, is the exact kind victim blaming BS rhetoric the far right enjoys using. You've been banned because you've been an asshole not because we disagree with you.

Now officially longer than World War One
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/world/europe/ukraine-russia-world-war-i.html

― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 13 June 2026

Sad. No endin sight

I suppose I can say Putin is bad? Putin is bad! There..

Now that's out of the way does it go on until Putin dies. And, depending on how Russia goes after that (never seen any think pieces on how his death would play out) maybe this could end, or not?

There really are questions around the efforst Europe/The West have made to provide a negotiated solution to end the conflict. It's not as if the West doesn't carve out territory to look at a negotiated end to conflicts and catastrophic wars. Yes, this is bad, but given we can't have the good outcome what is less bad? People will say it's capitulation but they aren't the ones doing the fighting or dying.

Yes, this is bad, but given we can't have the good outcome what is less bad?

think someone has hacked your account.

That is also bad

I don't think there should be a requirement to say Putin is good or bad, this veers into but do you condemn Hamas/IDF territory

I think the issue with the above statement is it implies the west should negotiate over Ukraine's head. If Ukraine are the ones doing the fighting and dying, then it should also be Ukraine doing the negotiating. Whether or not thats capitulation I don't know but it can't be done on their behalf, even from a purely practical standpoint

It’s a bit like saying that Israel wants peace with regional players and once they get the right bits of Lebanon and Syria, they’ll stop. They don’t. The country operates on a permanent war footing because it shores up the ability of an authoritarian government to maintain power and because they feel like they’ve got the god-given right to dictate how their neighbours live in perpetuity. A settlement based on ceding territory Russia has captured would be bad but likely the kind of thing that could form the basis for an interim peace that could extend into a longer status quo, but there’s no real sign that’s what Russia wants to achieve. It’s basically what they had when they (re)started it. Anything short of a veto on Ukrainian government policy in future, effectively permanent vassalage, is a failure and a demonstration of weakness.

Agree with the principle that the people who live in the country should be choosing their future.

Except Ukraine haven't had elections since the war started (possibly logistically difficult). Are people happy with the way Zelensky is conducting this war? Maybe yes, or not. We don't know.

And Ukraine need arms supplied by the West to fight this war too. So a negotiation surely also needs their input. Overtime as we've seen with Trump, governments -- unlikely rn -- may sell Ukraine out and it could be an even worse outcome.

The west could cut their supplies off and force them to negotiate but as they've become more self-sufficient over time thats potentially less of an option than it was, and no guarantee of forcing them to the negotiating table. Then even if we were able to force them we would have to decide what we would want Ukraine to offer Russia thats enough for Russia to also agree

Any settlement would likely need to be ratified by a referendum. Possible one would pass but much less plausible if it puts handcuffs on democracy.

Zelenskiy is still just about the most popular potential leader. The only other credible candidate, who is polling a few points behind, is General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who was Commander in Chief until 2024. The guy polling third is another soldier. There is no significant ‘peace on any terms’ movement.

I think if we had a more concrete picture of what we in the west want other than "agree to negotiate" this might be easier to imagine. I don't think removing Zelenskyy works either, anymore than removing Putin does