Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Tukhachevskii]

Yes, it's Ukraine and it would be funny if weren't also sad. I like the fact that the speaker had an umbrella with him to shield him from the eggs....

I do think the opposition is right, though. Yanukovych is selling the country out. The USG is so behind the curve. Russia has been buying up land and businesses in crimea for years. They've also been distributing propaganda and encouraging russian nationalism. In 2008, the USG figured out that it might be smart to put some money in and engage in crimea in an attempt to balance the equation somewhat (heading up to the election). They channeled existing and new project funds to crimea and attempted to show a good american face down there. People still voted en masse for Yanukovych and the russian option and now I'm sure the USG is kicking themselves for sitting on the sidelines for so long.

Secondarily, I wonder whether recent events in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and current realities in Ukraine (bad economy tentatively propped up by the IMF) might push people to respond with violence (beyond the usual paid mobs and such)? Time will tell, I guess.

Lets not forget the large Russian diaspora in the Crimea and the fact that legally speaking Khruschev's reorganistion of the Republic boundaries during the 1960s had dubious legality even by the Soviet constitutional standards of the day. Prior to his incorporation of the Crimea into the Ukraine the Crimea was a province belonging to the Russian SFSR. To this day the controverial move still rankles Russian lawmakers and politicians who inherited the Soviet constitution and its political problems. Indeed, the legal situation is roughly analogous to the status of Chechnya within the Russian Federation; the original conflict began when Dudayeav asserted the right of Chechnya to seced from the RF based upon the claim that Chechnya had been accorded Republic status according to the 1990 Soviet constitution which was repealled, adopted, abolished and then partlty incorporated into Russian law (Checnya was now an Autonomous region again though with certain Republic-like powers). The Russian diaspora, like the one in Kaliningrad, is hardly an illigitimate matter for the Russians to be concerned about and neither is their ability to acces a warm water port. IMO the Ukrainian's need to show maturity rather than, as you claim the Russians are doing, of turning it into a nationalist issue with which to contest the recent elections. Of course, it would hurt for the Russian's to think-out-of-the box and show some maturity too