ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

All three of those posts are right on, I think.

and play into a false binary whereby the alternatives are nationalist autocracy and IMF-style neoliberalism.

this is why it's easy to cheer for brazil and some other latin american countries, they seem to be among the only countries successfully offering a third route to pride and prosperity.

i'm not naive about that either, though

part of the issue i think is that Putin represents some kind of unprincipled resistance to Western hegemony and it's easy to become sick and tired of the gormless white hat/black hat picture of the opposing forces painted by a lot of the media in my country and presumably the other Western hegemons

ISIS also offers resistance to Western hegemony

not implying equivalence of the two regimes, and I'm not accusing you of anything... just that the folks (and again, I know one well) who are rooting for putin b/c he opposes the forces of Western liberal globalization are guilty of really simplistic thinking.

i'm trying to say that of course "enemy's enemy" is bullshit but the simplified, propagandist representations that Western media seem to be gleefully falling back on make it hard to fully commit to the idea of "evil megalomaniac who won't stop until he's forced to". not so much with ISIS. maybe.

To some extent Poland and the Baltics states have managed a transition to democracy without going entirely down the sell-your-grandmother-to-the-World-Bank route but they weren't really put in the same position as Russia / Ukraine by the privatisation process. Going from communism to proper representative democracy is arguably easier than going from the kind of oligarch control Ukraine's now in to representative democracy.

but the simplified, propagandist representations that Western media seem to be gleefully falling back on

i don't watch TV, so i think i must be missing some of this stuff. the news sources i read don't seem to be this way.

i think a problem is that the person i know who is "pro-putin" is reacting primarily to 24-hr MSNBC, CNN, etc.

I have no problem handing out black hats in the post-Cold War era; it's the idea that you can put a white hat on any global actor at the moment that is tough to take.

correction: I do watch TV, I don't watch TV news

Kyiv is such a gorgeous city but literally everything about it underlines the horrific inequality of the country. I couldn't get over the huge amount of ads for luxury goods when we were there, in a city where the average salary is $400/month, and we passed so many gorgeous, empty shops staffed by seven or so women that were sustained only by an oligarch's wife rolling up once a week or so. Russia's similar; from perspective of ordinary Russian or Ukrainian, all the choices are bad, if you're going to have the wealth bled from the country regardless does it really matter who's running things? Couldn't even begin to imagine how you would wrest either country from oligarch control at this stage.

feel like I'm in this weird situation where I go to work and several women from Ukraine are constantly forwarding anti-Putin links, but I'm also staying right now with my in-laws, Ukranian Jews who basically think all Ukranians are anti-semites, and I hear at dinner time how Chris Cuomo of CNN is pro-Nazi for taking the Ukranian government line, etc.

i think the ukrainians and the russians have a lot to answer for in the anti-semitic dep't.

Putin, whose intentions are not good, has taken advantage of the mess by pushing a lot of the European Left's anti-fascist buttons.

― Three Word Username, Wednesday, September 3, 2014 7:47 PM (Yesterday)

I don't see that Putin has either managed to gain the approval of the European left here, or that it would even matter if he had- the 'European left' is hardly a driver of policy towards Russia/Ukraine. It'd be more accurate to say that Putin has taken advantage of the mess by pushing a lot of the European Right's don't give a fuck about poor-ass Ukrainians buttons.

Kind of lol but mainly sad that the transition to capitalism in the ex Soviet Union has panned out pretty much as Soviet propaganda suggested it would.

the stuff about urban liberals' contempt for country cousins rings true, of course, but makes me wonder if i've been mistaking the kyiv (etc.) liberals for left-wingers. is there a viable left in ukrainian politics and did they play any role in maidan?

there are, afaik, a number of autonomist / anarcho / workers' union groups but they are small in numbers and not "viable". but they provided what I think of as good, critical accounts of the composition & makeup of Maidan as well as of gov't forces' violence during the protests.

wrt to liberal contempt for the non-middle ("creative") class and those outside of major cities, I don't know what it is like in Ukraine, but that is absolutely the case in Russia (and is also reflected/echoed by Western press coverage of politics there).

also important to note that many liberals in the former Soviet bloc countries often didn't have many qualms about working together with fascists and nationalists (for a current example look at Navalny in Russia, which is really shitty because this means there's not much of a viable opposition to Putin atm, but that's for another thread...)

"European Left" = mainstream continental Social Democrat parties, feel free to put scare quotes around "Left".

Kind of lol but mainly sad that the transition to capitalism in the ex Soviet Union has panned out pretty much as Soviet propaganda suggested it would.

― intelligent, expressive males within the greater metropolitan (Bananaman Begins), Thursday, September 4, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe it wasn't propaganda.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/sep/05/ukraine-catastrophic-defeat/

awful. kiev and moscow have a lot to answer for, though one doubts they will ever answer for it.

The lack of accountability in Russia / Ukraine is underlined by the fact that Leonid Kuchma, who sparked Maidan-style mass protests (involving Tymoshenko and others) when he was caught on tape discussing the murder of a journalist in 2000, is Poroshenko's chief representative at the peace talks. Fairly safe to assume that Yanukovich is beyond the reach of the law too, let alone the yahoos both sides have farmed the actual fighting out to.

who controls mariupol now that the cease-fire has been called?

I think Ukraine has pulled troops back, so presumably the DNR.

rightwing US columnist Krauthammer blames Obama:

Which makes incomprehensible Obama’s denial to Ukraine of even defensive weapons — small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Indeed, his stunning passivity in the face of a dictionary-definition invasion has not just confounded the Ukrainians. It has unnerved the East Europeans. Hence Obama’s reassurances on his trip to the NATO summit in Wales.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-at-nato-summit-ukraine-abandoned/2014/09/04/ce45f13c-3467-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html

news at eleven

I think Ukraine has pulled troops back, so presumably the DNR.

so the 'resolution' to this conflict is deja vu, all over again.

putin gets what he wanted all along, land access through sympathetic/puppet territory to his most recent acquisition. i wonder what the next front will be? i know putin has said before that he resents finnish independence (the bolsheviks never should have granted it in the first place, you see) and finland isn't yet a NATO member...

The resolution, if it comes, will be Ukrainian territorial integrity but with a federal set-up and a massive caveat over Crimea. The DNR isn't going to control the territory indefinitely - it would have to be normalised under a formal federal structure or it won't work.

Or what won't work? I don't understand what you are writing there, could you elaborate? My thinking is that Putin wants a frozen conflict, like Moldova and Georgia, to control what happens and ensure NATO could never allow those countries in.

Ukraine couldn't sustain, politically or economically, a situation in which most of the economic base of the country is as cut off from Kyiv as Transdniestr is from Chisinau. Donetsk and Lugansk are unlikely to be able to sustain a situation in which they are run by the first couple of thousand of guys who happened to sign up to fight. The real power in Donetsk is Akhmetov. What I'd anticipate over the next year would be a situation in which the rebel-held regions are brought back within Ukraine but given a form of autonomy similar to Crimea's previous status. They can make some of their own laws, elect some of their own leaders, speak their own language but will be Ukrainian.

Russia also benefits from having Ukraine as a frenemy and a trading partner. An indefinite frozen conflict may be useful in some respects but if whatever is thrashed out with Poroshenko includes a tacit agreement that Crimea will not be returned, that becomes much less important.

that seems reasonable enough but is difficult for me to reconcile with the fact (ish) that Russia just got done invading.

The two phases of proper Russian invasion were taking Crimea, which had been a long term objective, and more recently bolstering the DNR and LNR when it looked likely they were on the verge of defeat. Whatever assistance they gave was enough for the rebels to hold the line and push Ukraine back, maintaining the bargaining chip. I don't think anyone really wants a full scale war between Russia and Ukraine.

Anne Applebaum, maybe.

i guess i have been operating under the assumption that russia's support for the rebels was in service of some larger strategic aim, and not actually tied to their ethnic russian identity. what with all the effort put forth to establish popular support for the rebel cause, it seems difficult to believe that putin's end game was greater de-centralization of state power under a federal ukrainian government. like allowing the east to assimilate, even with caveats, back into a ukrainian state that still has eyes on NATO and europe doesn't really fit the putin MO

lol SV, i like applebaum so i'm biased but she's written some great, serious stuff (i really liked the recent iron curtain book) and i'd think of all ppl you'd want to shy away from the least generous characterization of ppl's opinions :P

Remember they still have the thing they really came for - Crimea. If a federal Ukraine was built on an understanding that the country wouldn't join NATO (which the East has always been opposed to) and maintained good trading relationships with Russia, in addition to whatever else they are doing with Western Europe, it's not a bad end result for Putin. It would also stop this happening:

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=GBP&view=2Y

Xp,

I make no claims about Applebaum as a historian, Applebaum as a journalist, however, is even crazier than Krauthammer. She was hypothesising this week that Russia could be preparing to nuke Tallinn just for show.

On Friday, as Russian Federation tanks and troops poured across the border into eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin talked about his country’s most destructive weaponry. “I want to remind you that Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations,” he said. “This is a reality, not just words.” Russia, he told listeners, is “strengthening our nuclear deterrence forces.”

That same day, Putin used a term for eastern Ukraine meaning “New Russia.” So when he refers to repelling “any aggression against Russia” and speaks of “nuclear deterrence,” as he did on Friday, the Russian president is really warning us he will use nukes to protect his grab of Ukrainian territory.

Crazy!

There's a slight difference between reminding the world that Russia is a nuclear power during a bout of mutual sabre rattling and making plans to pre-emptively liquidate a city of 400,000 (about a third of whom are Russians) within the EU just to show that you can.

Should state, for the avoidance of doubt, there are plenty of equally crazy Russian journalists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/not-right-wing-enough-for-the-brits/2012/11/06/e05ab45e-2850-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.html

I knew I didn't think much of her writing and this blogpost sums it up. Her husband's jokes are not funny either.

But I agree with Art:

like allowing the east to assimilate, even with caveats, back into a ukrainian state that still has eyes on NATO and europe doesn't really fit the putin MO

― busted (art), Friday,

i have a hard time imagining the precise scenario that ShariVari envisions as the most likely resolution

i don't have a hard time imagining a federalized ukraine, however it's difficult for me to imagine the current leaders in kiev completely jettisoning ties to the EU/NATO as Putin would surely wish. it's hard to imagine they could do so and save even a bit of face, which surely is important to them.

i should say, jettisoning any hopes of concrete ties to EU/NATO

I'm sure there will be special partnerships with NATO and the EU but full membership of the former would be destabilising and full membership of the latter (which would be really great for Ukraine in a lot of respects) is both a long way off and something the EU would have substantial reservations about. It's worth noting that membership has never really been put on the table and the way they messed Ukraine about the last time closer ties were proposed was one of the factors that led Yanukovich to go back to the Russian trade alliance. Things might have changed since but if you were Cameron or Merkel would you want a desperately poor country of 45m people with an absolute horror show of an economic / banking system as a member?

Satisfying the expectations of both liberals and the far right will be a massive challenge though and there is polling data to suggest Poroshenko isn't substantially ahead of the Ukrainian Radical Party at the moment either. Throw in the IMF shock therapy and you have a recipe for a major challenge from the right. That might also be a fear for Putin too. His poll ratings are off the chart at the moment but the more you build up the nationalist fervour, the more you run the risk of being challenged by the lunatic fringe.

In the short term, Ukraine will need to come to some kind of arrangement with Russia over gas, otherwise it's going to be a pretty cold winter, and really does need to improve its trading relationship with Russia if it hopes to build the economy back up. Whatever deal is made is going to make a lot of people unhappy but so is no heat, no food and no money.

would all this have really been impossible w/o putin throwing russia's military weight around?

The worst of it could probably have been avoided with a unity government and early elections but I can't see any scenario, either now or at the start of the crisis, that would have left Ukraine with a government it's people deserve,.

The EU didn't want to make any promises to Ukraine but did want to make any loans it was offering conditional on not receiving assistance from Russia in the future. Russia was willing to offer more money but would have tied the country in to its economic orbit even further and was willing to impose punitive trade penalties if it didn't get its own way.

Even if the post-Yanukovich government hadn't been so polarising, it would have faced huge economic challenges - debts to Russia, a collapsing currency, a banking sector that remains largely fraudulent and on the point of collapse, the inevitability of default on international loans, etc. The IMF loans have papered over some of the cracks but it's not nearly enough and it's going to come at a terrible human cost. Life expectancy will probably decline, just as it did in the Russian shock therapy years.

The country remains locked in a tug of war between oligarch groups. The decline of the one most closely linked to Yanukovich (although it's members are still powerful) just means the other lot are in charge, What started with democratic protests about corruption has ended with a shady billionaire tycoon president handing out cities to other shady billionaires to take charge of. His chief rival is another career criminal, Timoshenko, and another corrupt hardman - Yatseniuk. Who's funding the private militias would be interesting to know, particularly those marching under Wolfsangel and Swastika banners.

At no point over the last twenty years has anyone in a position of influence, either inside Ukraine or outside, done anything to make the economy more equitable or the country more genuinely democratic. That's what I'm perpetually annoyed about, not the aspiration of the people for a better life.

it's amazing how many different aspects of this i couldn't give a fucking shit about

― Daphnis Celesta, Friday, September 5, 2014 9:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gah!: http://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-is-on-the-brink-of-total-economic-collapse-2014-9

Recapitalisation of the banking sector is likely to be papering over cracks at the moment. Difficult to overestimate how much damage endemic corruption of all parties has done to the financial and industrial sectors over the last twenty years, equally difficult to see much inward investment while disaster is looming.

Ukraine crisis: Russian troops crossed border, Nato says

i wonder how much of this is to shore up domestic support for putin given how negatively the economic situation in russia is developing. alternatively, have sanctions pushed the kremlin into a corner where they now feel there isn't enough to lose with escalation? none of this has ever made much sense and that trend continues

Part of it is also a response to domestic Ukrainian issues. There were elections in both Kyiv and Donetst / Lugansk last month. The Ukrainian government campaigned on a more hawkish platform and Russia's provocative decision to recognise the separatist elections made things worse. There was a significant increase in Ukrainian shelling of separatist areas and both sides are sliding back on to a war footing - which for Russia probably means, at the very least, resupplying separatists.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/10/putin-nostalgia-stalin-hitler/