Add together the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk and you don’t reach the economic output of Dundee. World domination it isn’t. Unfortunately both in the Kremlin and on Capitol Hill they, and their satraps, think it is. Neither side cares at all about the millions of ordinary people in the zone of potential conflict.
The spiral of death in Ukraine is very worrying. Following the tragic deaths in Odessa, the ball is very much in Putin’s court. His bluff has very much been called. We will now learn whether he was stoking clashes in Eastern Ukraine and massing forces on his border in order to give a pretext for invasion – which pretext he now has – or in order to destabilize and intimidate Kiev into moving away from relationships with the EU.
This has been a discussion of the deaf even more within intellectual circles in the West than between Washington and the Kremlin, where at least the Machiavellians understand full well what they are doing. But their followers either, on the one hand, deny that there are any far right elements on the Ukrainian side or any CIA assistance, or alternatively deny that there are many millions of ordinary Ukrainians who genuinely want to be at peace in their own country and move towards the EU. They either claim that all the separatists are Russian agents and deny the genuine minority population which yearns for the Soviet Union or Russia, or they deny the existence of Russian agents and special forces in Ukraine, and that most of the Russian nationalists are every bit as right wing and appalling as the equivalent tendency on the Ukrainian side.
First, some history. The Ukrainian people really do exist. They have been a subjugated people for centuries, most lastingly by the great Polish-Lithuanian Empire and then by the Russian Empire. That does not mean they did not exist. Consider this: until 1990 there had not been an independent Polish state for over two hundred years, except for a fleeting twenty years between the two world wars. Yet nobody doubts the Poles are a real nation. I shan’t start on Scotland again …
None of modern Ukraine was Russian until the 18th century, when the expansion of the Russian empire and decline of the Polish took in these new colonies. As Putin famously remarked, it was called New Russia. Yes, Vladimir, note it was New. That is because it was a colony. Just like New York. Because it was called New Russia gives you no more right to it than the Channel Islands have to New Jersey. Ukraine had been Russian seven hundred years before its 18th century reconquest, but that population had migrated to Muscovy.
The expansion of the Russian Empire was exactly contemporary with the expansion of the British and American Empires, and other bit players like the French. Like most of the American, most of the Russian Empire was a contiguous land mass. The difference between the Russian and British Empires, on the one hand, and the American Empire on the other, was that the Russians and British did not commit genocide of the existing populations. The difference between the Russian and the British Empires is that the British gave almost all of theirs back in the post-colonial period (a process that needs to be urgently completed). Russia gave back much of her Empire at the fall of the Soviet Union, but still retained a very great deal more than the British. It is to me inarguable that, in a historical perspective, Putin is attempting to recover as much of the Russian Empire as possible, including but by no means solely by the annexation of Crimea and his actions in Ukraine.
Crimea, incidentally, had maintained its own independent existence as the last remnant of the Mongol Horde right up until the 19th century. Despite the Russian colonisation of Crimea in the 19th century, it still had a majority Tatar population until the 1940’s, when Stalin tried his hand at genocide on them. The Tatars were branded Nazis. Opponents of the Russian Empire are always “Nazis” or “Jihadists”. The deportation of the Tatars from Crimea was only twenty years before the British did the same genocide to a smaller people in Diego Garcia. I call for the restitution of both. Those who call for the restitution of one and not the other are appalling hypocrites.
Equally hypocritical are those who call for a referendum on Russian union for East Ukraine, but not for referenda on independence for Dagestan and Chechnya. It is an irony insufficiently noted, that in Russia to call or campaign for the separation of any part of the state is a crime punishable by up to 22 years’ imprisonment. There are over 7,000 people from the Caucasus imprisoned under that law.
There is absolutely no movement among the large minority Russians of the Baltic States to rejoin Mother Russia, because living conditions in the EU are just so much better. As I have blogged before, it is undeniably true that living conditions for ordinary people in Poland have vastly improved as a result of EU membership, and are much better than in Ukraine – or Russia.
GDP per capita figures for Russia look quite good, but do not give a true reflection of living standards because of astonishing levels of inequality of wealth. This is very bad in the West, and getting much worse rather rapidly, but is nowhere near as bad as in Russia which is the most viciously capitalist state in the world, made worse by its commodity dependency. The Russian economy is completely non-diversified, manufacturing and services are miniscule and it is overwhelmingly a raw commodity exporter in energy, metals, grain etc. That leads to extreme concentration of profit and a lack of employment opportunity. Combine that with mafia state corruption and you have the oligarchs’ paradise. Russia is a gangster state. On top of which, if I were a Russian who campaigned against the Russian government in the same way that I do against my own, I would be dead.
The desire of ordinary Ukrainians to join the EU one day, and move closer to it now, is understandable and indeed commendable. It was also the desire of Yanukovich. Those who claim Western pressure on Yanukovich forget – or choose to ignore – that Yanukovich’s government had actually, quite independently and voluntarily, negotiated the EU co-operation agreement and were on the point of signing it, when Yanukovich was summoned to Moscow by Putin and informed that if they signed the agreement, the energy supplies to Ukraine would immediately be cut off in mid-winter and debt called in.
That is a fact. It was not illegal for Putin to do that; it was perhaps even legitimate for those who believe in a Machiavellian approach to great power politics. Yanukovich temporized, between a rock and a hard place. Ukraine seemed to be at a key moment of balance, hung between the EU and Russia. The capital being in West Ukraine and overwhelmingly ethnic Ukrainian, pro-EU crowds started to build up. Then things started to get wildly out of control.
Were western governments encouraging pro-western groups in Ukraine? Yes, that’s their job. Did this include covert support? Yes. Were the Russians doing precisely the same thing with their supporters? Yes, that’s their job too. Did the Americans spend 5 billion dollars on covert support? Of course not.
Victoria Nuland claimed in a speech America had put 5 billion dollars into Ukraine. I used to write those kind of speeches for British ministers. First you take every bit of money given by USAID to anything over a very long period, remembering to add an estimate for money given to international projects including Ukraine. Don’t forget to add huge staff costs and overheads, then something vast for your share of money lent by the IMF and EBRD, then round it up well. I can write you a speech claiming that Britain has given five billion dollars to pretty well anywhere you claim to name.
The problem is that both the left and right have again, equal but opposite motives for believing Nuland’s bombast about the extent of America’s influence on events. I have been in this game. You can’t start a revolution in another country. You can affect it at the margins.
A military coup you certainly can start. One thing we don’t really know nearly enough about is what happened at the end, when Yankovich had to flee. The Maidan protestors would never have caused a government to fall which retained full control of its army. The army can fail the rulers in two ways. First is a revolutionary movement among normal soldiers – the French revolution model. Second is where the troops remain disciplined but follow their officers in a military coup. The latter is of course a CIA speciality. More evidence is needed, but if this is the second model, it is unusual for it not to result in military control of government. Egypt is the obvious current example of a CIA backed coup.
After Yanukovich we had entered the world domination game. Putin seemed to have lost. The annexation of Crimea was a smart move by Putin in that game, because there probably is a genuine small majority of the population there who would like to join Russia. I have no doubt whatsoever that Putin himself does not believe the 93% for a moment. As I said, the Machiavellian players of world domination are realistic; it is their purblind followers on either side who buy their propaganda.
The Kiev government and the West should have conceded Crimea before Putin moved his troops into it. The sensible thing for the new Kiev government to have done would have been to offer a referendum in Crimea itself, under its own auspices. That would have got the most hardline pro-Russian voters out of the country for good. But by that time, everyone had gone into Macho mode, which is where we still are.
None of the remaining provinces would opt to join Russia given the choice. There is no shortage of existing and historic opinion poll evidence on that. Crimea was the only province with an ethnic Russian majority. The Eastern provinces have Russian speaking majorities, but most are ethnic Ukrainian. I base ethnicity here purely on self-identification in census (and, as I have repeatedly explained, absolutely everybody in the former Soviet Union knows precisely what is asked in the questions of Gradzvanstvo and Narodnosch). Just as some Welsh people speak English, some Ukrainians speak Russian but do not consider themselves Russian. Putin’s frequent references to the Russian-speaking peoples coming back to Russia are as sinister as if we started talking of re-uniting all the English speaking people in the world.
As almost always with colonies, the minority ethnic Russian populations in the East of Ukraine are more concentrated in urban areas. Hence it has been possible in regional capitals to mobilise gangs of disaffected and unemployed Russian young men (in view of Ukraine’s basket case economy there are plenty), and with a slight stiffening of Russian forces take control of town centres. There is a significant minority, and possibly a majority in town centres, willing to support. It is, I think, extremely important to understand that the thugs on both sides are very unpleasant. I have the particular experience of relations with a lot of Uzbeks, and the incidence of racial attacks by Russian nationalist thugs within Russia itself is absolutely horrifying and almost completely unreported. The swastika is a popular symbol among young macho men throughout all of former Eastern Europe including Russia. I absolutely guarantee you that an equally significant proportion of the pro-Russians who have been attacking anyone who tries to show support for Ukraine within Eastern Ukrainian cities, are no more and no less right wing, racist and vicious than the appalling Pravy Sektor thugs included on the other side. We have plenty within the EU – there is a serious problem, for example, with the official encouragement given to commemorations of pro-Nazi forces within the Baltic states which often have a distinctly neo-Nazi tinge.
Putin’s campaign of controlling the urban centres appears to have gone wrong in Odessa, which is simply too large for the numbers of available young men armed with baseball bats to take control. The pro-Russians were badly beaten in precisely the same street fighting they had been winning elsewhere. The culmination of this was the terrible fire and deaths. My expectation is there will not be many women, children or old people among the dead, but also there will not be many non-Ukrainian nationals. I expect these will prove to have been local Russian young men.
Putin now has a real problem. His own rhetoric has indicated that he will sweep in and defend these Russians, but there is one thing anyone with half a brain should have worked out by now. The ruling 1%, the ultra-wealthy, in both Russia and the West are so interconnected with each other that they are playing the game of world domination while trying at the same time to make sure nobody super-rich really loses his money. Hence the strange obviously bogus sanctions regimes. Real stock market disruption and confiscation of corrupt assets would be difficult to avoid if the tanks start rolling in earnest. We may be saved from utter disaster by the sheer scale of global corruption, which is a strange conclusion.
I would like to think the awful deaths of the last few days would lead both sides to step back from the brink. The time has come for a peacekeeping force. Negotiations should be held urgently to make the Kiev interim government more inclusive of opposition elements from the East – and they must oust the far right at the same time. The UN Security Council should then send in UN peacekeepers, which must include both Russian and western forces in close integration, to keep the peace while genuine elections are held. I can see no other way forward which does not risk disaster.
I dont think Moldova wishes to cede to Russia Transnistria is another matter.
John,
You shy away like this:-
” Courtney, thanks for that lawyer’s analysis, which is difficult to argue against.”
And I have read you against some quite belligerent and/or aggressive opponents.
A “debate mouse” like me should be quite easy prey for you – surely.
Smile.
CB
PS. But, don’t punch too hard – I am slim built ( ha…ha.. – just teasing).
“The real answer, Resident Dissident, is that John Goss – truly the Insolent Squatter – has no expertise at all in matters Eastern European or Russian. Apart, of course, from some knowledge of the language, a good indoctrination in Marxist thought and (possibly) a couple of cycling tours in the region.”
I really would question the indoctrination in Marxist thought given his undying support for all things Putin. Perhaps John might wish to explain how Putin and his oligarch friends do not constitute a rentier class exploiting the vast mass of the Russian population.
Paul
“many of the Neo-Nazis west of the Dnieper”. What oercentage of the population West of the Dnieper are you characterizing as Nazi?
CB, that really made me smile. Thanks. There is so little humour, and to be honest, not much to laugh at these days, but thanks to you, and Sofia, we can suffer the trolling with a few smiles and the odd belly laugh.
My comment earlier. Perhaps Habbabkuk could tell us which country he posts from that is one hour ahead of BST?
‘Habbabkuk seems to be in a time zone that is different to the UK’s?? He says he posted a comment to Technicolour at 13.25hrs on the apartheid thread. It actually went up at 12.25hrs BST.
???
Answer please. Germany? France? Poland?
Alacanon,
I don’t know what that video shows. 5 seconds in there is a guy on the far left brutally attacking somebody on the floor. Whether that person on the floor jumped from the building, or whether he is on the floor because of the brutal attack, we cannot know. Who the person on the floor is, or who the attacker is, we don’t know. There are other people on the floor to his right.
Then there is a cut for at least several seconds, as the man in black who was attacking has either gone or substantially changed position (the figures are blurred). Several people fall from the building. Nobody attacks any of them. At the end on the far right, one of them manages to get up and run away with nobody in shot making any move to stop him.
While the people are jumping, nobody seems either to be attacking them – or to help them. It is not plain what the attitude of most of the people there is. Whether the tape is edited, or someone kept switching record on or off, is not plain.
Your description makes the assumption that the guy who was on the floor being hit was one of those who had jumped. That is certainly possible, but it is far from the only possibility. The video does not actually show anybody jumping and then being attacked. In fact, it shows several people jumping and not being attacked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbeUmpQ_4nU
I am deleting comments that simply post links to diatribes by one side or the other – be they Brzezinski or some equally odious Prof from Moscow University.
Lucythediclonius
On that limited sample of victims my surmise was right. 93% male and no children. I have been on scores of political demonstrations, but never a 93% male one.
Fine. Delete away. One point though; who is Paul?
So let us say this goes the western US/UK/EU/NATO way, discounting (always a mistake) Russia entirely. It seems to me the largely agricultural western Ukraine is being gifted to Germany/the EU thus effectively, generously compensating Germany primarily for the loss of largely agricultural East Prussia, and part of present day western Poland: Germany’s former breadbasket, without which the difficulties in feeding Germany’s distressed people’s after the western-elite created and backed Hitler had wrought his worst, became acute and the country as so structured could never be anything other than a dependant dollar demoninated ‘world war two’ theme park. If the Kiev fascist’s putsch stands then much more will unravel, for a long time fascist elements in Poland have eyed those parts of Belarus which were formely part of the artificial re-created Polish state which existed between Versailles and the 1939 German occupation of Poland, Poland’s own fascist elements there had already unbidden, perhaps to ingratiate themselves with their Nazi idols, passed in 1938 discriminatory anti-semitic laws comparable to Germany’s own. I wish I could see a third option for Ukraine, a middle course between Moscow and Washington/Berlin centred subjugation and ruin, plus the depredations of ‘local’ oligarchs, tethered to no-land, and to nothing but their sense of entitlement to engorge themselves on whatever they choose, but realise this was exactly the line pursued by the Yanukovych government from which the people and country inevitably endured economic hardship, straddling a difficult line and whom the United State’s new pet nazis brutally toppled, the least worst option for all of Ukraine’s people then is the one the US just gleefully discarded. Neither Russia’s oligarchs nor its people will submit to death by a thousand pricks of US-inspired flea-bites from ultra-violent ultra-nazi anti-Russian hireling murderers.
I can only presume from this the US and the UK will not stop fomenting war until devastating crushing total war has been visited upon their own people and nations and in that process the whole planet inevitably destroyed. The habitabilty of this fragile earth – this unstable vulnerable purely chance biosphere which is our highly-convoluted life-support system – and therefore continued human existence is already extremely doubtful due to our many nuclear follies, climate change though real is not even the same order of magnitude threat to our entire species. Shute’s ‘On the Beach’ scenario of a southern hemisphere unaffected by radiation, risibly unfounded, as no place on earth can offer even temporary respite, however deep the deep-state might dig themselves.
By the time you read this comment, the situation will have become worse.
“You’re wrong again. The only difference is guttural inflection and a few odd words which might even be described as an accent, like Geordie for example.”
So you were able to tell that the Romanian traders were not in fact Moldovans speaking “Romanian”, merely on the basis of their accent.
We still have to see your evidence for your original statement that Moldova is pro Russian and may cede to Russia.
“I wish I could see a third option for Ukraine, a middle course between Moscow and Washington/Berlin centred subjugation and ruin, plus the depredations of ‘local’ oligarchs, tethered to no-land, and to nothing but their sense of entitlement to engorge themselves on whatever they choose, but realise this was exactly the line pursued by the Yanukovych government”
If you believe that the Yanukovych government was seeking to avoid the depredations of local oligarchs you really are living in a fantasy word – just what proportion of government contracts were being awarded to his son?
Craig,
That was just one clip I found that someone has posted. I was watching the whole thing live and there were a number of scenes of the wounded being attacked after the fire brigade rescued them.
By the way in today’s live streams, much of the crowd who descended on the Odessa police station were elderly ladies with umbrellas, in the pouring rain, demanding the release of their relatives. The news coverage on BBC and Channel 4 of course focused on the few aggressive elements at the front but they couldn’t quite get all the umbrellas out of shot in the Channel 4 footage. You see the tops of the umbrellas but we weren’t shown the old ladies underneath them.
In case you think I only see nice old ladies on the Russian side, the pro-Russian crowd in Donetsk today most certainly does not consist mainly of old ladies and there could be a lot more trouble coming in Donetsk if things can’t be calmed down.
In general the live streams have been very patchy today. Dropping out more often than they are up.
Craig you originally said young men and an earlier quote referred to baseball bats.I do have photographs of a pregnant woman killed in the fire which I can’t verify .It was a tent city which was originally attacked if there was any foreknowledge of the fascists being bussed in I don’t think many people would bring their children.
Craig,
Hope with this:-
” I am deleting comments that simply post links to diatribes by one side or the other – be they Brzezinski or some equally odious Prof from Moscow University.”
That I did not stoke your ire.
Indeed I mentioned Brzezinski and quoted from what he has recently prescribed. But, I did proceed in a logical way to denounce not only his hypocrisy, but his truly less than credible approach to issues of global governance.
I do not hold any exalted position. I am merely a global citizen who fully understands that the present situation in Ukraine can easily spiral out of control and then strong and determined powers may then be staring each other down the barrels of guns – or even worse yet – be on the opposite sides of nuclear missiles threatening their use. More likely, Ukraine and its population becomes the pawn in a totally unnecessary proxy civil war.
How do we bring some sanity to the international bargaining table – or is it all just Western and Eastern oligarchs and a corrupt banking system running the world?
Assuming now – that nothing I have said on this blog makes me any time soon – a candidate for excommunication.
CB
Courtenay,
No, it your comment wasn’t a problem. Referencing and quoting in argument is fine. I deleted a couple of comments which weren’t anything except links to other places, one of them Brzezinski.
Alconon
Thanks for the clarification. That’s pretty appalling, the attack on ambulances. Certainly there are plenty of mixed groups on both sides. But both sides also have attack forces that are a very different kind of thing. I really don’t know what happened at the trades union building, but the profile of the dead would give us a clue. We wait to learn more. Also I am not entirely sure what the status of the building was just before, and if entirely random people might have been visiting it.
Obviously the loss of life , any life, is tragic. But if you are using violence as a tactic (as it is beyond denial pro-Russian forces are) then you can’t really claim to be horrified if you get hurt. Same goes for the other side too. In my mind, it makes a huge difference if this was a bunch of men acting violently, or a mixed group from a peaceful camp. I say that while genuinely not knowing which it is.
Lucythediclonius
Young is relative. They are younger than me, and I don’t consider myself physically unable! The Ukrainian side are claiming that the majority were Russian citizens or Transnistrians brought in to cause trouble. It would be a bold claim to make if they are lying, as obviously the bodies will be identified.
Live Odessa
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/13166013
Thanks AA.
Why didn’t take Russian instead of Spanish?
‘Why didn’t I take……..’ 🙂
Alcanon
Amazing. Are you sure it’s live?
Craig.
Yes live. It matches up with real time tweets.
It is this tv channel http://www.1tv.od.ua/
For those who don’t think Russia has a fascist problem
https://twitter.com/svaboda/status/461784538176585728/photo/1
From Putin’s home town on Mayday
And as expected the persecution of the Crimean Tatars has now started
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-to-prosecute-crimean-tatar-protesters-over-unrest/499385.html
Do the Putinistas care?
Many countries have a fascist problem. But for some, it’s no problema.
For those who are interested in some balance when it comes to reporting on what happened in Odessa
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-new-us-sanctions-hit-closer-to-putin/
As I said before I don’t think either side comes out of this well – and something needs to be done to de-escalate matters rather than whipping them up PDQ
RD
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/moscow-may-day-parade-red-square
I didn’t really think I’d see anything balanced from you RD but thought I’d take a look anyway, and in a very short piece, hardly an article at all, I found this:
“While 100,000 marched in official May Day parade on Red Square with aggressive patriotic messages, . . .”
You have been weighed in the balancing scales and found wanting again.
Might as well describe what we just watched on the live feed Alconon posted.
A large crowd of Ukrainians carrying Ukrainian flags walked through the streets to the trades union building where the tragedy happened. When they got there, they posted guards to make sure the crowd didn’t accidentally trample on the floral tributes on the ground. Then they climbed a scaffold and replaced the Ukrainian flag on the large flagpole outside, at half mast (either from respect or because there was no rope and they couldn’t get it higher). They then took off their hats and held a silence for those who died in the building, which was completely observed. They then sang the Ukrainian national anthem, there were some shouts of “Glory to Ukraine” and then they went home.
Waiting for someone to claim they were all fascists.