Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[kaur]

Greetings to Dugin and Barkashov from Donbass.

[Firn]

Pretty early in this thread we discussed the huge problems Russia would face supplying the occupied Crimea, be it water, gas, oil, electricity and food. The headline Crimean Citizens to Get Russian Gas sounds promising, but for now the reality is:

Crimea is also facing a shortage of gasoline and diesel supplies resulting from its annexation, as the majority of its supplies were delivered overland from Ukraine. Russia has not yet been able to resolve the supply issue with the small oil terminal in the port city of Kerch, on the eastern side of the peninsula.

Pretty much what we said, capacity just doesn't grow magically and severing natural economic ties comes at high costs. BTW if Ukraine did indeed cut the water supply from the NCC at the entry it will take some weeks, I think, to be felt in Crimea. IIRC there is also another channel watering southwest Ukraine towards Odessa, possibly they might be able to divert also there.

The highly likely collapse in tourism, perhaps the most important source of private revenue has promted some Russian plans. If the pension and public wages will get the promised big rise the Crimean economy will be dominated by the state.

According to data from the Russian tourism watchdog, Rostourism, nearly 6 million tourists visited Crimea last year, of which 65 percent were Ukrainians and 25 percent, Russians. The 2014 season will be different, warned Irina Schegolkova, a spokesperson for Rostourism.

"This year, the Crimean government plans to welcome about 3 million people, the majority of them Russians," she said, adding that in previous years most Russians either drove to Crimea in their cars or traveled by rail. For Russians, that means a detour through potentially hostile territory, which most will be unwilling to risk, she added: "The only alternatives are developing direct flights to Crimea or ferry connections."

So after talking about a moderate reduction in tourism demand a month or so ago the have at least cut them to a more propable number, only 50%. Still too high in my books, but we will see.

[kaur]

1 opinion.

Russia intends to sit and watch Kiev suppress the rebellion in the southeast.

There are probably two reasons for this. The first is the fear of economic sanctions that the U.S. and Germany have threatened to impose in the event of any military intervention. The second is that Moscow does not want to get involved in a conflict that could be potentially destructive for its economy over large territories with large economic problems and a predominantly Ukrainian population whose sentiments are far from uniform, which Russia has never been particularly interested in.

Ukrainian forces will most probably regain control over those territories in time to make it possible to conduct a presidential election on May 25 with at least a semblance of legality.

It would however be erroneous to interpret this as a sign that an end to the Ukrainian crisis is in sight. A military operation, conducted by poorly trained troops and with support of paramilitary nationalist groups, cannot but cause anger among the population.

Ukraine is doomed to a long political crisis with a further radicalization of politics, with the factors of ethnicity, language and religion coming to the fore.

By refusing to intervene in Ukraine's southeast we have not averted the threat of sanctions but have just bought ourselves some time to prepare for them by re-orienting our economic, science, technology and other ties towards Asia and by putting import-replacement programs in place.

http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/book/Rus...-Ukraine-16623

[kaur]

Why Germans Love Russia

MAY 5, 2014

BERLIN — Like most foreign-policy experts, I was shocked by Russia’s

annexation of Crimea and its continuing “soft invasion” of eastern Ukraine. Can such a naked land grab really be happening now, in 21st-century Europe?

But Russia’s actions were not the only surprise. If you have followed the German debate about the Ukraine crisis, you have witnessed another strange phenomenon: a parade of former politicians and public figures going on TV to make the case for Russia.

According to these august figures — including former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt — NATO and the European Union were the real aggressors, because they dared to expand into territory that belonged to Moscow’s legitimate sphere of interest. And it seems part of the German public agrees.

You thought that Germans were the champions of international law and a rules-based world order? Think again.

Both versions of anti-Westernism have been around for decades; until now, though, they have been confined to the political fringes. These days they are accepted by parts of the elite and sections of the political center. That, combined with the enormous investment by German companies in Russia, is placing constraints on how aggressively the government of Angela Merkel, Germany’s strongly pro-Western chancellor, can act against Russia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/op...wergin%2F&_r=1

[kaur]

Putin Too Clever by Half on Delaying Russian Referendum

May 8, 2014

Putin is engaged in the classic Leninist approach of two steps forward and one step back: He has absorbed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine and now will receive credit in some circles for being a peacemaker. He has made it more difficult for the West to come up with a united position because it is certain that some capitals will say this is not the time to push forward. Yet, he has left all his options on the table, not agreeing to any substantive change on Ukraine or anywhere else.

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ed...4#.U2ydY9oaySN

According to one Ukrainian site (written in 2011) "Donetsk Republic" was organised by Aleksandr Tsurkan, who worked in Yanukovich presidential election team in 2004. Yanukovich lost to orange revolution and Tsurkan left to Donetsk to organise movement that could act as opponent to president Yuschenko. Last biggest event was protest meeting where gathered 15 persons. After Yanukovich became president this organisation became quiet.

http://zrada.org/hot/26-nation/244-p...a-ukrainy.html

2012. "Donetsk Republic" opened their "embassy" in Moscow in the office of Dugin's youth movement. That year Putin became president again under "Eurasian Union" banner.

http://gazeta.ua/ru/articles/politic...9?mobile=false

Autumn same year Dugin's people arrived to Donetsk to share know how about Eurasianism. There was talk about "Eurasian Union", which is Putin's geopolitical project.

http://rusmir.in.ua/pol/3362-v-donec...a-nauchno.html

7.05.2014 Russia's present day "useful idiot" Bckman is in the game.

Ukrainian separatists opening mission in Helsinki
The eastern Ukrainian separatist group calling itself the "Donetsk Republic" will be opening a representative office in Helsinki, according to Finnish academic and activist Johan Bckman.

Johan Bckman says that the representative office will be opened on the 18th of this month at a conference in Helsinki where the keynote speaker will be Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, an ideologist of the creation of a Eurasian empire. Bckman added that he has had talks in Moscow with Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin on setting up a western European representative office in Helsinki. As Pushilin is on the EU sanctions list, it is unlikely that he will be present for the opening.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/ukrainian_sepa...lsinki/7226818

Bäckman is working for Russia's front organisatins for some time. He was one of the most active international election monitors in Crimea. In Finland he is representative of Russia's RISI institute, whose head is retired special service general. If you tell to Finn "Backman", usually very calm people lose their temper

It's very hard not to agree with Paul Goble.

[Fuchs]

Why Germans Love Russia

pro Russia:

Schröder - de facto disrespected former Chancellor, without substantial political influence in Germany

Schmidt - much-respect elder statesman and former Chancellor (West Germany), but he was already over 70 when the wall fell...he hasn't exactly the most agile mind nowadays

Gysi - 100% political opposition (far) left wing figurehead with rhetoric gift, but without ability to influence national policies

far right wingers - some are in love with authoritarian strongman Putin as anti-homo, anti-Muslim crusader et cetera, others prefer to foster their condescension towards slavs.


There is a (correct) assertion that the mainstream media reports on the Ukraine with a bias, preferring the counter-Putin side of affairs. The fascist component of the revolution and of the new cabinet didn't get much attention in the news and negligible political groups such as the Klitchko brothers were hyped, for example.
Now imagine how the other Western media are biased if in a country accused to be too pro-Russia the mainstream media can be correctly accused of having a counter-Russia bias.

I suppose it's a 'both sides are bad' case - as usual.
Principles are still to be applied on 'good' and 'bad', and the right to self-determination was with Russia in the Crimea case as it was with the EU in the Kosovo case. At least Russia didn't bomb the Ukraine generally for months before it invaded the Crimea (as we did with Yugoslavia/Kosovo, supposedly to stop atrocities which were afterwards almost entirely disproved).

Russia's methods are illegal, but it has a point: The self-determination right of the people in the majority Russian districts (the sovereignty of the Ukraine stems from the same principle).


Now it's possible to point at a plurality of opinions in Germany and to point at non-enthusiastic opinions in Germany which take the greyscale nature of the conflict into account and to assert that Germany is Russia-friendly.

Well, I suppose a pluralistic society looks like this. It might be better to appraise the difficulty of the conflict than to go into an all-out adversary mode knowing only "containment", "sanctions" and turning the Ukraine into a proxy.
It's unlikely that the international community finds cure the root of the problem if major countries have a 100% adversary stance. I think the poorly-drawn borders are the problem, not a Putin regime attempt to re-establish the Russian empire. He may want it, but it would be way out of reach if the borders weren't so poorly drawn.


------
P.S.: Germany has a positive attitude towards Russia, and it goes both ways.
Germans thank Gorbachev more for the reunification than Bush, Mitterand and Thatcher combined. Russians have forgiven WW2 better than the Dutch or English, for example. Warsaw Bloc 'communist' ideology drove reconciliation efforts during the Cold War: According to ideology, it wasn't nationalities but plutocrats and fascism which caused the war. This may have helped relations despite the real-economy leeching of East Germany.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the USSR/Russia reached Germany in the past two decades, many of which (notionally all) were descendants of German immigrants to Russia of the 18th century.
Germany supported the Russian state with substantial loans during the 90's without visible strings attached.

It's naive to expect Germans to ditch a fairly good relationship in an instant only because Russia and another non-allied country are now in conflict. There were some lessons learned about how deteriorating relationships in Europe can have severe consequences - lessons which Americans never learned.