A Premature Party for Poroshenko

7 Replies to “A Premature Party for Poroshenko”

1. This article, like almost all the media coverage, ignores ethnic and geographical facts and that the conflict is almost on the Russian homeland.

   There have been centuries of Russian emigration to Ukraine so that the 2001 census has 29% of the Ukraine population speaking Russian as their first language and 56% of those as ethnic Russians. They are mainly in the cities of East and South Ukraine.
   Kiev is only 756km from Moscow. That is closer than Brisbane and Sydney, or Washington and Chicago, which are just over 900km apart.

   Kiev is 7862km from Washington. Los Angeles is 3,696 km from Washington.

   How would the west view the situation if Russia was involved in Californian politics and economics to the extent of suspicion of supporting a Chilean style coup to replace an elected government and California became a battleground? There is no exact comparison because nowhere in USA has connotations of “Mother England” while there are strong historical connections between Russia and the areas in contention.

   What would the public expect of an Australian government if many Australians had settled in PNG and that government was attacking them?

   A historical and philosophical overview is in this essay by John Kozy, a US army soldier in the Korean War, now retired professor of philosophy and logic, and of Ukrainian parentage:

   http://www.jkozy.com/Mother_Russia.pdf

   This is a link to Professor Michael Hudson’s analysis of the financial and economic issues behind the new cold war:

   http://michael-hudson.com/2014/05/the-new-cold-wars-ukraine-gambit/

   In a long Anglo tradition going back to Ireland and the British Raj in India, this is about a resource grab. It has the enthusiastic complicity of the West’s media.

   This from another Michael Hudson article:

   http://michael-hudson.com/2014/09/losing-credibility-the-imfs-new-cold-war-loan-to-ukraine/

   “Vice President Joe Biden’s son, R. Hunter Biden, recently was appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company registered in Cyprus, long a favorite for post-Soviet operators. The firm has enough influence over Kiev politics to make prospective gas-fracking lands a military objective. “Ukrainian troopers help installing shale gas production equipment near the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which they bombed and shelled for the three preceding months, the Novorossiya news agency reports on its website citing local residents. Civilians protected by Ukrainian army are getting ready to install drilling rigs. More equipment is being brought in, they said, adding that the military are encircling the future extraction area.”[6]

   One report notes the extent to which “pro-Russian” means opposing a gas grab:

   The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development. They even wanted to call in a referendum on that subject. … Countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and France have given up plans to develop shale gas deposits in their territories. Not only them but also all-important Germany, which two weeks ago announced it would halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over groundwater pollution concerns.[7]”

   1. Alex,
      It is not clear from your post whether you are for or against:

      • spheres of influence
      • military intervention in foreign countries on behalf of ethnic minorities

      If you believe in the democratic right of citizens of a country to elect a government of their choosing, then I can’t see how you can support either of the above.

      Now I don’t see NATO tanks massed on Ukraine’s border or NATO boots on the ground in the Ukraine; so it is quite clear who is attempting to exert undue influence.

      BTW the distance between Berlin and Paris is 877 Km.

2. I think it is more complex than being for or against ideas expressed in a few words. The USA makes the whole world, including Australia, a “sphere of influence” on behalf of their favoured investors.

   In the case of Ukraine the eastern areas were originally part of the state of Russia and were added on to Ukraine by Soviet leaders for various reasons during the 20th century. The citizens then would have had no democratic vote about those decisions, any more than they have now.

   In the most recent elections in Ukraine no nominations for election from the east were allowed.

   1. “In the case of Ukraine the eastern areas were originally part of the state of Russia”

      I think you are referring to the Russian empire under Katherine the Great which included large swathes of Eastern Europe.

      1. Re Ukrainian territorial changes:
         In the mid 17th century Ukraine held a small territory about a tenth the size of the country’s present day borders.

         Russian czars over the centuries from Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) onward tacked additional territories onto Ukraine’s central and northern flanks. Catherine the Great (1729 – 1796) also added territory in the south, with the Crimea Khanate annexed in 1783.

         Lenin (in office 1922 – 1924) added on the territories of what are today’s industrial east (eg Donetsk, Kharkov, Luhansk, etc) and historic cities to the south, such as Odessa.

         Stalin (in office 1922 – 1952) took Galicia out of Poland in 1939, and annexed it to Ukraine in 1944.

         Krushchev (in office 1953 – 1964) added the Crimea in 1954.

         The above is from an article in “Flashpoint in Ukraine” by Jeffrey Sommers, a professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

         He says “Ukraine, thus had built in centrifugal forces that at any moment could tear it apart from within or in combination with external influences of Russia or the United States from without.”

         The article is not on the net but this is a link to a shorter article by Sommers with some similar content:
         http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/03/ukrainian-hangovers/

      2. Why start in the 17th century? The Scots lost their independence to the English in the 14th century and still consider themselves a separate nation.

         This is from Wikipedia:

         The territory of Ukraine has been inhabited for at least 44,000 years. Prehistoric Ukraine as part of the Pontic steppe has been an important factor in Eurasian cultural contact, including the spread of the Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, Indo-European expansion and the domestication of the horse.[1][2][3]

         Part of Scythia in antiquity and settled by Getae, in the migration period, Ukraine is also the site of early Slavic expansion, and enters history proper with the establishment of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, which emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages but disintegrated in the 12th century. By the middle of the 14th century, present Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers: the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland, during the 15th century these lands came under the rule of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (since 1569), and Crimean Khanate.[4] After a 1653 rebellion against dominantly Polish Catholic rule, an assembly of the people (rada) agreed to the Treaty of Pereyaslav in January 1654. Soon, the southeastern portion of the Polish-Lithuanian empire east of the Dnieper River came under Russian rule, for centuries.[5] After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) and conquest of Crimean Khanate, Ukraine was divided between the Tsardom of Russia and Habsburg Austria.

         A chaotic period of warfare ensued after the Russian Revolution. The internationally recognized Ukrainian People’s Republic emerged from its own civil war. The Ukrainian–Soviet War followed, in which the Red Army established control in late 1919.[6] The conquerors created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which on 30 December 1922 became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. Initial Soviet policy on Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture made Ukrainian the official language of administration and schools. Policy in the 1930s turned to russification. In 1932 and 1933, millions of people, mostly peasants, in Ukraine starved to death in a politically induced famine (Holodomor) due to the “liquidation of the Kulak class”. It is estimated that 6 to 8 million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, of whom 4 to 5 million were Ukrainians.[7] Nikita Khrushchev was the head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1935.

         After the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, the Ukrainian SSR’s territory was enlarged westward. Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for Ukrainian independence against both Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations.[8] After Stalin’s death, as head of the Communist Party of Soviet Union, Khrushchev enabled a Ukrainian revival. Nevertheless, there were further political repressions against poets, historians and other intellectuals, like in all other parts of the USSR. In 1954, the republic expanded to the south with the transfer of the Crimea.

         Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

   2. You either respect international borders or you don’t. It is clear how rapidly the world descends into chaos when you don’t.

Comments are closed.