ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

isbn?

Transdniestr is a really weird place. In theory it's a separatist region hostile to Moldovan rule but it's home of Moldova's biggest football team and the national side plays lots of its matches there. It's effectively a corporate state run by the Sheriff Company.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_(company)

Slightly surprised that they want to be part of a country that might actually scrutinise them.

Tbh, I've always thought that Transdnistr joining Russia and Moldova joining Romania might be a win-win for everyone. I have a lot of affection for the place but it's the least functional country in Europe by a million miles and probably needs the EU to sort it out. Not sure who would get Gagauzia, probably Russia.

wonder what the kurds think about all this, or the baloch. or the ghosts of garibaldi and the '48ers... Ethnic Nationalism, Pretty Weird When You Think About It.

he has capped the power of the oligarchs

Sharivari, just asking---If Putin has done this, then how come the U.S. slapped asset friezes on four businessmen linked closely to Putin as well as a Russian bank that provides them support

Isn't he now seeking more money from the wealthy, only because of the impending sanctions?

russia handed out targeted sanctions on 'harry reed' and 'john beyner'

http://www.nndb.com/people/020/000043888/john-byner.jpg

Sharivari, just asking---If Putin has done this, then how come the U.S. slapped asset friezes on four businessmen linked closely to Putin as well as a Russian bank that provides them support

The oligarchs are still hugely powerful and, in many cases, very closely tied to Putin but it's not the same situation you had back when Berezovsky was pretty much able to decide who would lead Russia and government policy was largely decided on what worked best for a small cabal of gangsters. Putin used the oligarchs to get into office but the Yukos affair was the turning point when political power reasserted its dominance over capital.

Bear in mind under Yeltsin the oligarchs were able to engineer a situation in which the state effectively paid them for taking away assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

I think it's difficult to judge Putin's performance as a leader until we have some historical perspective. One big risk is that by centralizing power and weakening democratic institutions with no clear successor he may be setting the country up for someone much less talented and/or more corrupt following him and undoing whatever good the stability of his rule has provided.

I'm not even sure he has actually weakened democratic institutions - they were in pieces when he took over - but yes it's never good when that kind of authoritarianism becomes the long term norm (or when it becomes this popular).

obama threatens putin that if he invades more of southern or eastern ukraine there will be more sanctions. honestly, i was a huge fan of obama when i voted for him, partially bc i thought he made a lot of sense on foreign affairs, but this is some weak-chin bullshit. i understand it's probably not a good idea to do more but why not just keep his mouth shut instead of making these empty threats that i can't imagine impress putin? like maybe he could be like "we're letting our allies in europe take the lead on this one." instead of OH HORRORS sanctions???

also lol:

European leaders will meet on Thursday in Brussels at an emergency summit to wrestle with the dilemma of what to do about Vladimir Putin. The EU described the Russian seizure of Crimea this week as "an act of aggression" – but it does not know how to respond.

A crisis that started with an EU summit fiasco three months ago may reach its climax on Thursday with an EU summit failure as Putin's short-term hard power collides with European longer-term soft power and leaves the EU looking weak and feckless.

The Italians and the French do not want to punish Putin. The Swedes and the east Europeans take a hard line. The British government is worried about the impact on the City of London and losing the capital's big-spending oligarchs. German industry is lobbying strongly against imposing sanctions on Russia.

And while Washington talks of isolating Russia because of Ukraine, Berlin is saying the opposite, stressing engagement and keeping channels open to the Kremlin.

we don't even have fucking support for our policy towards putin from the EU ffs

what the fuck do you expect? the eu has to live with russia nextdoor and can't afford to alienate it, russia knows this and europe knows it

i expect that if you can't even get EU to agree to sanctions then just keep your fucking mouth shut mr. leader of the free world + stop these empty threats

Yeah, let Europe deal with this. Or not.

america and its european fellow travellers are culpable in some measure for encouraging ukraine's aspirations towards the eu and especially nato, which was never happening but encouraged russian revanchist planning as soon as it saw its military interests in crimea threatened

and yeah for the cheap seats, this isn't to exculpate russian aggression, whatever

EU has imposed almost as many sanctions as US so far. And also, the countries are making an effort to find their gas elsewhere, which would be a more damaging blow to Russia's economy than anything sanctions could do, I think.

europe just doesn't care enough about ukraine's sovereignty or its westernizing aspirations and is beholden to russia, america is less beholden but absent a few subnormal malcontents like mccain cares even less about ukraine, none of them are prepared to risk anything substantial in defending its integrity, so russia will always get what it wants when it cares exceedingly about ukraine in its paranoid, anachronistic great-power way and is prepared to use crude and illicit tactics

the crimean annexation might have been avoided if two decades of western policy towards the ukraine more reflected the degree to which its autonomy was valued, if a more transparent approach had been taken instead of bien pensant warm words and empty solicitations that accelerated internal conflict and now territorial dissolution

more /accurately/ reflected

i expect that if you can't even get EU to agree to sanctions then just keep your fucking mouth shut mr. leader of the free world + stop these empty threats

― Mordy , Thursday, 20 March 2014 21:57 (27 minutes ago)

america can try, it shouldn't be lamented for that, but ultimately it resolves to a sort of phatic shunning gesture -- russia as a deplorable, atavistic, violent drunkard unbecoming of the liberal order of nations, it's a sort of diplomatic fiction in defiance of the reality that russia isn't weakened at all, any more than china is when its colonial policy in tibet or turkestan is criticized by western leaders

something i was thinking about today (tho in an unrelated fp topic!) was that this discursive "concern trolling" is super prevalent in geopolitical conflict/diplomacy. it's not enough that we disapprove that russia is annexing Crimea, but that we let them know that we think this is a really poor idea for them, and they're overextending, and this will have repercussions (which of course it surely will, but everything has repercussions including the choice not to act at all in any given scenario). thank god for contemporary trolling studies for helping me understand this prolific geopolitical trope.

Transdniestr is a really weird place. In theory it's a separatist region hostile to Moldovan rule but it's home of Moldova's biggest football team and the national side plays lots of its matches there. It's effectively a corporate state run by the Sheriff Company.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_(company)

Slightly surprised that they want to be part of a country that might actually scrutinise them.

― Yuri Bashment (ShariVari), Thursday, March 20, 2014 1:14 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's also non-contiguous with russia, although by sea it is not far from crimean naval base. but russian annexing a non-contiguous territory that shares most of its border with western ukraine would definitely give people bigger heebie-jeebies.

i mean hell take finland why don't they

just imagine if there were a noncontiguous russian territory adjoining poland

oh yeah, there is that.

Kaliningrad is non-contiguous too, but it does make things more complicated. Transdniestr has been outside of Moldovan control for so long it's arguably a slightly different situation though. On the other hand, Moldova is broadly aligned with Russia on a lot of stuff, by necessity if not inclination. It wouldn't surprise me if Russia turned down the offer as a reward for Moldova joining the customs union.

Xps, obvs, as point has been made.

this is fucked up, but the macro at the end is both OTM and pretty funny

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/ukrainian-nationalists-hand-russians-propaganda-coup-with-video-of-assault/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

also the journalist who tweeted that is kind of foxy

http://impmagination.com/i/people/dt/dt_12.jpg

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26663168

http://i.imgur.com/qcSrox7.png

Lol, so the Danish newspapers are checking how a trade-war with Russia would impact Danish export, consisting mainly of pork. And the truth is, not much at the moment, since Russia is already boycutting Danish pork, as they claim to have found infected pork from Latvia... Basically, they were already shitting on international agreements when they feel like it.

Bad news for Lego. I think they do about $400m of business there!

A drop in the ocean, honestly... Carlsberg is probably more in trouble, they were apparantly focusing especially on the territory. But really, it's only the pork-export which would harm the Danish economy as a whole.

so some of my family from ukraine is apparently over at my parent's house right now. i hadn't heard they were coming before today but i don't think it's like a refugee sitch - maybe an impromptu visit? idk. i'll report back w/ deets when i get them.

Hey Mordy, you do recognize that if Obama says nothing he will be criticized as weak; and if he imposes sanctions (with the US having less influence there than Europe) he will also be criticized.

So news is that anti-semitism, despite public protestations from Yaakov Dov Bleich, is common. A friend who built an orphanage for Jewish kids and a Jewish museum in Kryvyi Rih, had some windows broken and he's now thinking of immigrating to Germany (always lol when former Soviet-bloc Jews decide the safest place to go is Germany). Otherwise they are very concerned - upset about the government shooting protestors, uncertain about the future. Lots of foreboding talk. No plans to becomes emigrate yet from my family...

For now, the measures target Putin’s inner circle and stop well short of the kind of sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Those would be triggered only by a wider military incursion, and Russian troops remain massed on Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/putin-signs-bill-completing-annexation-of-crimea-as-sanctions-take-hold/2014/03/21/ef038a44-b0f3-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html?hpid=z1

Unmentioned in this thread, is that most supply to the current 20,000 NATO ISAF forces in Afghanistan passes over Russian roads or through Russian airspace. And Russia offers the only current manned flights to ISS.

Severe sanctions are a non-starter. And Washington's grand strategy of encirclement of a once great superpower, like that of a cornered animal, was always likely to have its limits.

My hope is that Ukraine has its own belated Velvet Divorce through popular referendums, as the current borders of Ukraine only ensures perpetual conflict between West and East Ukraine, and broken nationalist party politics.

funny thing, I corresponded w/ a woman from a state film organization in kyiv today, name sounded familiar and turns out she moonlights as a left-libertarian/anarchist activist-intellectual and wrote one of the smarter pieces on the varying ideologies in the protest movement and what goals/ideas they had in common.

My hope is that Ukraine has its own belated Velvet Divorce through popular referendums, as the current borders of Ukraine only ensures perpetual conflict between West and East Ukraine, and broken nationalist party politics.

I think there's probably far too much invested in the state of ukraine in something closely resembling its current borders on the part of many ukrainians for that to happen "amicably." i get the sense that there were ethnolinguistic divisions b/t czechs and slovaks going back quite a ways, making the separation something mutual. many of the russians in eastern ukraine arrived during the soviet period (part of general policy of russification of non-russian republics, a policy that obviously has huge ramifications to this day) and there isn't a very longstanding institutional notion of a "russian" part of ukraine. maybe I am wrong.

As I've said before on this thread, most of my acquaintances in Ukraine are (academics or musicians and) native Russian speakers, and they do not love Russia nor do they consider themselves Russian and not Ukrainian. The only people rooting for the break-up of Ukraine are holders of Russian passports.

That has never been true of Crimea. Most of my contacts in Ukraine are native Russian (or Surzhyk) speakers and consider themselves Russian-speaking Ukrainians first and foremost. They are overwhelmingly in favour of keeping Ukraine together. They're mostly European-leaning people in education or publishing living in Kyiv though. There is a substantial demographic of people in Crimea, and to a lesser extent in the south and east, who consider themselves Russian irrespective of what their passport says.

yeah, that's what i gather. it's confusing because there are at least three different (and not always contradictory) senses in which one can be either/both "ukrainian" and "russian."

it can be purely linguistic (russian-speaker), ethnic (I am "Russian" by family heritage), and/or national (I am/would like to be a Russian citizen).

what do you make of julia ioffe's analysis in TNR that the split isn't as ethno-linguistic or regional as it is generational?

well yeah there's that added layer of folks who did/didn't grow up (mostly) during the soviet period.

ie "pro-russian" sentiment can be older people looking back at better times in the soviet sphere and/or a 20th cent memory of what it meant to get closer to russia (vs. closer to europe/germany)

where's that pic of an old crimean woman celebrating the annexation with an old poster of stalin...

xp

i have to admit feeling kind of contemptuous toward images of elderly crimeans dancing in the streets after russian annexation. it's like, grandpa, the future isn't really for your benefit, you know?

i imagine that's a hateful response but still.

xp

Haven't read it but it's an interesting idea. Not something reflected in my experience though. I'm not aware of either side's politicians having a particular generational skew in support. There is a certain section of the older generation that is heavily nostalgic for the security that being part of the Soviet Union provided, and they might be more Russia-leaning, but region / ethnicity seems a much stronger factor.

i've def. read about the generational divide(s) from a number of places, doesn't mean it's not being overstates though