ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

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/

provocative URL, sorry!

The Kremlin released a verbatim account of the meeting in questions and it's worth skimming through to see how much of it tallies with Snyder's interpretation:

http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/23185

Snyder has a pretty clear agenda, even if you take Putin out of the equation.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/timothy-snyders-lies/

um, this quote is the one snyder focuses on and it's pretty awful:

I do not want to blame anyone here, but serious studies should show that these were the foreign policy methods at the time. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, “Oh, how bad.” But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?

the pact was indeed one of mutual non-agression from a german and russian POV, but poland would have a very different opinion of this.

bloodlands is a really impressive work and tbh i trust snyder more than most

The first thing that strikes the reader on dipping into its 500-plus pages is its tone. We are all used to sober histories that lay out a problem coolly and rationally, but right from the start it is evident that this is not Snyder’s way. Rather than analytical, the prose is white hot. He bombards the reader with phrases and concepts that are highly provocative yet do not stand up under scrutiny.

imo not correct. i found him very dispassionate considering the events that he was revisiting.

xpost

but i wonder if this is really a "revision" per snyder or just standard-issue chauvinism. i mean it's not as though the dual invasion of poland has ever figured largely in russian views of WWII.

The full quote from that section was:

Or, for example, there are still arguments about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Soviet Union is blamed for dividing Poland. But what did Poland itself do, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia? It took part of Czechoslovakia. It did this itself. And then, in turn, the same thing happened to Poland.

I do not want to blame anyone here, but serious studies should show that these were the foreign policy methods at the time. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, “Oh, how bad.” But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?

Moreover, even knowing about the inevitability of war, supposing that it could happen, the Soviet Union desperately needed time to modernise its army. We needed to implement a new weapons system. Each month had significance because the number of Katyusha rocket launchers or T-34 tanks in the Soviet army was in the single digits, whereas thousands were needed. Each day had significance. So idle thoughts and chatter on this matter on a political level may have a purpose, in order to shape public opinion, but this must be countered with serious, deep, objective research.

He neglected to mention that Stalin had murdered almost every senior general in the country the year before too. There's also a dig about Neville Chamberlain's 'non-aggression pact' being written out of history.

The remarks were ill judged and potentially inflammatory but Snyder's taken on them is hysterical.

Stalin entered the pact with Hitler fully aware of his partner’s anti-Semitism, and indeed accounting for it in his own diplomacy. On August 20, 1939, Hitler asked Stalin for a meeting, and Stalin was more than happy to agree. For five years the Soviet leader had been seeking an occasion to destroy Poland. Stalin had prepared by firing his Jewish commissar for foreign affairs, Maxim Litvinov, replacing him with the Russian Vyacheslav Molotov. The dismissal of Litvinov, according to Hitler, was “decisive.” On August 23, Molotov negotiated the agreement with Hitler’s minister of foreign affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, in Moscow.

Hysterical? I disagree.

And I don't understand what your pov here is - are you trying to rehabilitate Stalin or just excuse Putin's rehabilitation?

Polish woman I know is often heard to curse Poland's bad luck at being stuck between Germany and Russia, "the two worst countries in Europe".

i get the sense that snyder is taking too much license in interpreting putin's comments as signalling some profound shift. again, the comments are reprehensible, but i'm not sure putin is promoting a view much different than a succession of soviet historians and leaders, who also needed to explain away the nazi-soviet pact as a necessary evil (and then to emphasize hitler's duplicity rather than stalin's brutal realpolitik).

like it's not as if Stalin made a treaty w/ Hitler bc he just wanted to be left alone - taking huge swaths of poland was a big part of signing on

yeah but i'm not sure that in obscuring that putin is doing anything different than his predecessors.

and that Jacobin piece in general, idk, he's critiquing Snyder for implying that Hitler + Stalin were morally equivalent (I don't think that's a claim that comes through particularly strong in the book - which is more about how both were morally abhorrent in their own special ways) but what does Jacobin want? To explain how Stalin wasn't as bad as Hitler? This is some pretty sick stuff imho.

both were morally abhorrent in their own special ways

I don't see how this is arguable really. obviously Putin's into rehabilitating/emulating Stalin to some degree, but that doesn't change this essential fact.

America is not a fascist country, at least not yet. oh god

yeah i find my eyes rolling way up into my head with every other jacobin article. kind of the internet hardman (grad-school variety) of leftist media.

sometimes they have really smart stuff, though, and i find myself frustrated when an intelligent piece suddenly descends into callow sloganeering.

And I don't understand what your pov here is - are you trying to rehabilitate Stalin or just excuse Putin's rehabilitation?

Neither - i don't think that, if Putin was seeking to rehabilitate Stalin there's a great deal of evidence of it in his comments to the students when seen in context. The point he seems to have been making is that Russia wasn't the only country at the time to seek to appease Hitler or opportunistically take land and they were not, in any way, logistically prepared for war when the deal was struck.

Turning those comments into a wider piece about Russia attempting to create a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with European Neo-Nazis to divide and conquer Central / Eastern Europe is transparently silly.

A stronger case for Putin following a Stalinist model or a far-right model could be made using the evidence of him curtailing the press or the appalling treatment of migrant workers but, again, it needs to be argued on solid ground.

Has anyone seen Sergei Loznitsa's Maidan? Saw it a few days back, loved it. It really showed how much work goes into a revolution. And how much money it undoubtedly took. Some amazing imagery, and stirring moments when crowds sing or shout 'Glory! Glory!' Of course, now the whole thing looks bittersweet.