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Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2014 15:09:12 GMT
TO understand why Ukrainians are risking war with Russia to try to pluck themselves from Moscow’s grip, I came to this village where my father grew up. The kids here learn English and flirt in low-cut bluejeans. They listen to Rihanna, AC/DC and Taylor Swift. They have crushes on George Clooney and Angelina Jolie, watch “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy,” and play Grand Theft Auto. The school here has computers and an Internet connection, which kids use to watch YouTube and join Facebook. Many expect to get jobs in Italy or Spain — perhaps even America. “We feel our souls are European,” Margaryta Maminchuk, 16, told me. “That is why we are part of Europe’s future.” The village school, which is in my great-uncle’s old family mansion, invited me to speak to an assembly, and I asked the students how many identified as European. Nearly all raised their hands. These villagers aren’t “important” and claim no sophisticated understanding of international events. But it’s average Ukrainians like them who are turning this country around, defying President Vladimir Putin of Russia and his military, quite simply, because they dream to the West. Granted, significant numbers of Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country feel deep bonds with Moscow and want more autonomy. In the short term, despite a diplomatic accord reached with Russia and Ukraine that aims to defuse the crisis, President Putin may succeed in dismembering Ukraine. But, in the long run, he is both undermining his own economy and also driving Ukrainians forever into a Western orbit, as surely as the Soviets propelled Czechs to the West when they invaded in 1968. Even here in the village, Ukrainians watch Russian television and loathe the propaganda portraying them as neo-Nazi thugs rampaging against Russian speakers. “If you listen to them, we all carry assault rifles; we’re all beating people,” Ilya Moskal, a history teacher, said contemptuously. For people with such fondness for American culture, there is disappointment that President Obama hasn’t embraced Ukraine more firmly. “The U.S. is being very slow and cautious,” said Anatoly Marinchuk, a retiree, scolding gently. “You should be firmer, and quicker with financial assistance.” As Wesley Clark and Phillip Karber, two American military experts, suggested in a report to the Obama administration, the United States can do a far better job supplying nonlethal assistance to the Ukrainian military, in part to deter Russia. We can make clearer that Russia would face devastating banking sanctions if it invades Ukraine. We can send more officials on visits, and Obama would warm hearts if he found a way to quote the national poet and hero, Taras Shevchenko. We should take heart from the recognition that backing Ukraine places us on the right side of history. Ukraine has had wretched national leaders, so today leadership is coming from ordinary people who are driven by deep popular aspirations like those reverberating in my family’s ancestral village. Without moving an inch, this village has been an ever-changing place. When my father was born, it was Austria-Hungary. Throughout his childhood, it was Romania. In the 1940s, it became the Soviet Union. In 1991, it became the Republic of Ukraine. And, in 2014, by popular will, it is becoming part of the West. Ukrainians hope to avoid a war with Russia that they know they would lose. But many believe deeply that their futures depend on reorienting their country to the West. That they won’t compromise on. Ukraine faces difficult times ahead, but tectonic forces are propelling it westward. In the battle between Putin and Taylor Swift, I bet on Swift.
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Post by Admin on Apr 25, 2014 14:37:19 GMT
Secretary of State John Kerry says U.S. intelligence shows Russia is playing an "active role" in destabilizing Ukraine. John Kerry said on Thursday that unless Moscow took immediate steps to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, Washington would have no choice but to impose additional sanctions. He said it would be a grave and "expensive mistake". Kerry's comments came amid an increasingly bitter war of words over who is to blame for the crisis, which is becoming steadily more violent. The Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, made the strongest comments yet on Friday when he accused Russia of trying "to start world war three" and acting like a gangster. The US says Russia is fomenting unrest and separatist sentiment in eastern Ukraine following its annexation of the strategic Crimean peninsula. Russia accuses the US of encouraging a pro-western government in Kiev to adopt anti-Russian policies. The US accused Russia of reneging on the Ukrainian peace deal on Thursday, as both sides insisted on contradictory explanations of clashes overnight on Wednesday with pro-Russia militants. Russia says it is once again staging military drills near the border of eastern Ukraine. Russia's defense minister says the exercises are a reaction to NATO maneuvers in Eastern Europe and what he calls "Ukraine's military machine." The Russian military carried out similar maneuvers while well-armed, well-trained Russian troops seized key objectives in Crimea. One question now is whether Russia's military is ready to take on a much larger challenge by invading eastern Ukraine. After Russia completed its annexation of Crimea, this video appeared on YouTube titled: "On the accomplishment of the objective of detachment 0990 from February 22 until March 22 on the territory of Crimea." For a little more than 7 minutes, it shows a Russian military unit taking key objectives: the Crimean parliament, administration and security buildings, and bases. At first the music seems incongruous, but you quickly realize that it reflects the precision and discipline with which these troops are carrying out their mission. You see masked gunmen entering buildings, securing them, emptying armories and collecting weapons.
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Post by Admin on May 11, 2014 22:37:39 GMT
"Self-rule" referendums have been held in Ukraine's easternmost areas, with pro-Russian separatists claiming nearly 90% voted in favour in Donetsk region. The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic election commission Roman Lyagin told journalists that 89% voted in favour of self-rule, with 10% against, on a turnout of nearly 75%. There are no results from the Lugansk area so far. A Donetsk separatist leader, Denis Pushilin, told one Russian news agency that once the results are announced, all Ukrainian military troops in the region would be considered "occupying forces". Some polling stations, like this one in Mariupol, have seen long queues The shooting incident, in which separatist officials said at least one person had been killed, took place in Krasnoarmiisk, west of Donetsk city, after armed men supporting the Kiev government closed down a polling station. A photographer with AP news agency reported seeing two people lying motionless on the ground. A few hours before polling was due to close, separatist officials claimed turnout in Donetsk region had been close to 70% - but there was no independent confirmation. Many ballot boxes bore the logo of the Donetsk People's Republic In some rural areas, a portable ballot box was used Thousands of Ukrainians went to vote at a polling station set up in Moscow - here people hold up their passports The ballot papers in Ukrainian and Russian ask one question: "Do you support the Act of State Self-rule of the Donetsk People's Republic/Luhansk People's Republic?" A second round of voting is planned in a week's time, on joining Russia. Organisers also say they will boycott Ukraine's presidential elections on 25 May. Ukraine's interim President Olexandr Turchynov has admitted many in the east supported pro-Russian militants, but warned the referendums were "a step towards the abyss".
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Post by Admin on May 13, 2014 20:58:42 GMT
You have to hand it to Vladimir Putin. Sure, he’s immoral, corrupt, despicable, tyrannical. But he’s also a power politician of the first order, and right now he’s playing the West like a Stradivarius. Last week, facing growing calls for sanctions on Russia in the U.S. and Europe, he announced that he was pulling his troops back from the border with Ukraine and ending his support for a referendum this weekend among pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine who desire Anschluss with Russia. This rhetorical feint provided a fig leaf of legitimacy for those in the West who don’t want to do anything about Russian aggression. But then of course Putin did not follow through. According to NATO intelligence reports, Russian troops still have not redeployed from the Ukrainian border. And on Sunday Russian separatists held a rigged referendum in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which delivered a predictable–if hardly believable–majority in favor of breaking away from Kiev. In Donetsk the pro-autonomy measure won 89 percent of the votes; in Luhansk a truly fantastic 97.5 percent. Pretty incredible when you consider that opinion polls just a month ago showed only 30 percent of eastern Ukrainians wanting to go their own way. These kinds of election “results”–reminiscent of years of rigged elections in the Soviet Union which reliably delivered 99.99 percent majorities for Communist candidates–are only credible to Putin’s mouthpieces on RT (Russia Today) television. But the results serve to further muddy the waters: They undermine Kiev’s attempts to assert its sovereignty over the breakaway eastern provinces and they call into question the legitimacy of the looming May 25 election in Ukraine–how can a free and fair ballot be conducted when Russian gunmen are in control of substantial parts of eastern Ukraine? Putin is now being extra cagy. Unlike in Crimea, he is not using this rigged referendum as an excuse to immediately annex eastern Ukraine. Instead he is demanding that the government in Kiev negotiate with the “demonstrators” (really, Russian provocateurs) who have taken power in the east–as if the two forces were of equal legitimacy. Putin is thus avoiding the onus of outright annexation, which could bring about not only more costly Western sanctions but also guerrilla warfare against Russian troops. Instead he is continuing to destabilize Ukraine and preparing the way to create autonomous Russian-controlled enclaves in that country as he has previously done in Moldova and Georgia, thereby helping to undermine the independence of all these post-Soviet republics. You have to give Putin points for cleverly if amorally pursuing his realpolitik objectives. If only the leaders of the West were half as clever in stopping him. But they’re not. While Putin is playing geopolitical chess like a grandmaster, his opponents are playing checkers with the skill of not-overly-bright six-year-olds. No wonder pieces of the map keep falling to Russia.
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2014 21:19:49 GMT
The Ukraine crisis reverberating across Europe recalls 1914 before the outbreak of World War I as Russia, the U.S. and European governments risk sleepwalking into conflict, said former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. “I don’t want to encourage a third world war and especially not calls for more money for arms for NATO,” Schmidt, 95, was cited as saying in an interview with Germany’s best-selling Bild newspaper today. “But the danger that the situation intensifies as in 1914 is growing day by day.” Schmidt, who was German chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and fellow Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, who held the post from 1998 to 2005, have warned against imposing sanctions on Russia and moves by the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to forge closer ties with Ukraine. The interventions by past chancellors highlight the dilemma in Germany over how to deal with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel, 59, a Christian Democrat who grew up in communist East Germany and rules with the SPD as junior partner, has taken a harder line in threatening to intensify EU sanctions if Ukraine’s May 25 elections are disrupted. The outspoken elder statesman of German politics added: "The situation to me seems increasingly comparable" to the eve of war a century ago. "Europe, the Americans and also the Russians are acting the way author Christopher Clark describes the start of World War I in his very readable book, like 'sleepwalkers'." The best-seller "The Sleepwalkers" by Australian historian Clark re-evaluates the eve of WWI, focusing on how clueless the leaders of Europe's great powers were about the carnage of the first industrialized war that would follow. Schmidt was born a month after World War I ended in 1918. He served with the Nazi Wehrmacht in World War II on the eastern and western fronts and was taken prisoner by British forces in 1945. “Europe, the Americans and also Russia are behaving in the way that the author Christopher Clark, in his book that’s very much worth reading, describes the start of World War I: like sleepwalkers,” Schmidt said, according to Bild. Jan Techau, head of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment, disputed Schmidt’s comparison with 1914. “We don’t have those kind of blind military alliances that drag countries into war, no country now calculates that war would be good thing as in 1914, and the U.S. has made it clear to both Ukraine and Moldova they it won’t get involved militarily,” Techau said in a telephone interview. “We are living in an age of nuclear deterrence, which means this can’t escalate like in 1914.” Schmidt also said that the European Commission, the EU’s executive, has been wrong to seek closer ties with Ukraine and with Georgia. “A reminder: Georgia is outside of Europe,” he said. “This is megalomania, we have no business being there.”
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