Ukraine's European Revolution?

[Maladict]

The Netherlands are just a breakaway region of Germany.

The Netherlands is singular, not plural.

Breaking away from a country 300 years before it was born is pretty cool

[KRonn]

The website of the "President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights" posted a blog that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to the Council's report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout was a maximum 30%. And of these, only half voted for annexation – meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.

The fate of Crimea, therefore, was decided by the 15 percent of Crimeans, who voted in favor of unification with Russia (under the watchful eye of Kalashnikov-toting soldiers). 

No surprise. Did anyone really think otherwise? The "official" results showed well over 90% vote for annexation, a result which couldn't have been true and everyone knew it. But it was good enough, no matter how contrived, to give Putin the justification he needed to enact annexation. The rest of the world seemed to let the vote slide, or not make a big fuss about the implausibility of it.

[Valmy]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/05/putins-human-rights-council-accidentally-posts-real-crimean-election-results-only-15-voted-for-annexation/

That is just too good to be true.

[Valmy]

The Netherlands is singular, not plural.

Breaking away from a country 300 years before it was born is pretty cool

Punctuality used to be such a defining feature of the Dutch.

[Viking]

Who were these people who were burned?

Trans-Dniestrians.

All of a sudden I lost all sympathy.

You love the propaganda that confirms your biases ?

From what I've seen on the bbc, the funerals seem to be taking place in Odessa.

People crossing borders for the purpose of getting into political street fights sort of can only blame themselves for whatever happens to them.

[The Brain]

Who were these people who were burned?

Trans-Dniestrians.

All of a sudden I lost all sympathy.

You love the propaganda that confirms your biases ?

From what I've seen on the bbc, the funerals seem to be taking place in Odessa.

People crossing borders for the purpose of getting into political street fights sort of can only blame themselves for whatever happens to them.

Why do you hate 19th century America?

[The Brain]

posted a blog that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste

The fuck?

[DGuller]

 

[Queequeg]

As the first heavy fighting begins in eastern Ukraine, with an attempt by Ukrainian forces to retake the town of Sloviansk, and as violent clashes spread elsewhere, including now Odessa, in the country's southwest, there is a growing sense that a larger confrontation, one that could involve Russia and the West, may be unavoidable. Such a perception is a terrible mistake. There is nothing inevitable about the future course of the conflict. It is absolutely essential for Western governments to focus on what they can do to avoid war, preserve democracy, and keep Ukraine united.

What they cannot do is help the government in Kiev to win with military force in the east. The rebel forces that have taken control of cities of the Donbas, the Russian-speaking industrial and mining region in the east, appear well organized, have much local popular support, and are implicitly backed by the 45,000 Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border. It would take many months—more probably, many years—for Ukrainian forces to reach sufficient strength to retake the Donbas swiftly and relatively bloodlessly, or to defeat a Russian invasion of the east and south of the country. Moves to raise Ukrainian nationalist volunteer forces should be strongly discouraged by the West. The intervention of such groups would risk repeating what has just happened in Odessa, where dozens of people were killed in street battles on May 2. It would make a Russian invasion a certainty.

And the West itself will not fight for Ukraine. All the blowhard posturing of US and European government officials cannot hide this essential fact. In these circumstances, to give the unelected interim government in Kiev the idea that we are giving it military backing is irresponsible, immoral, and contemptible. Did we really learn nothing from the experience of Georgia in 2008? For that matter, did we learn nothing in the playground at the age of six?

If Ukrainian forces continue their assault on rebel strongholds in eastern Ukraine, then only three things can happen, separately or in sequence: they will be beaten back with the help of Russian weaponry—such as that used to shoot down two Ukrainian helicopters at Sloviansk on Friday; they will retake one or two towns, after which Russia will reinforce other towns with lightly-disguised Russian special forces, making their capture much harder; and if Ukrainian forces resort to heavy weaponry to blast the rebels from their positions, Russia will invade. The only question then will be where the Russian army will stop: whether Moscow would be content to hold the Donbas, as it previously held South Ossetia and Abkhazia as quasi-independent statelets formally still part of Georgia, or whether it would go on to seize half of Ukraine.

What is truly strange and terrible about this looming disaster is that all the leading players already know and agree about what the only solution can be, even if they disagree on the details and the timing: a federal Ukraine with elected regional governments and robust protection for regional interests. This, not further separation, is what Moscow is proposing; and this is what the Ukrainian interim president, Olexander Turchynov, has publicly hinted at for the Donbas. Although the rebels in Donetsk and other eastern cities have declared the Donetsk Republic and are now planning an independence referendum on May 11, many easterners, too, have indicated that they want some kind of federalization and not independence or annexation to Russia. As interviews published in Sunday's New York Times make clear, even some rebel commanders themselves hope to keep Ukraine united.

It is extremely important to note that regional autonomy—accompanied by a threat of independence—is what the government of the western region of Lviv, controlled by Ukrainian nationalists, declared for itself back in February, when it seemed that President Yanukovych would remain in power and take Ukraine into the Russian-dominated Eurasian Union. If Lviv could demand this as an insurance for its identity and interests when the national government was going in a direction it did not like, it is very hard to argue that Donetsk does not have the right to do the same. Nor is there any moral reason why the West cannot support federalization. The United States, Germany, Canada, and half a dozen other Western democracies are all federal states. Of course, we all know that a fundamental moral principle of Western foreign policy is that sauce for the goose can never under any circumstances be sauce for the gander—but to oppose a federal solution for Ukraine on such grounds is ridiculous.

Indeed, a constitutional solution to the crisis has already been supported by all sides—including Russia, the US, and Ukraine—in the Geneva Declaration of April 17, which called for Ukrainians from all parts of the country to disarm and take part in a national dialogue that would recognize regional interests. The problem with Geneva is that it did not set out an outline of the constitutional settlement—which will have to be agreed in advance before the rebel militias in eastern Ukraine will put down their weapons. There is also of course profound disagreement on the process by which constitutional change should be introduced, and how much regional autonomy should be granted.

President Turchynov suggested a referendum on autonomy for the Donbas to accompany the new presidential elections planned for May 25; but after the latest developments in Odessa and east Ukraine, it must surely now be acknowledged that these elections cannot take place on schedule, or until peace is restored. Nor, given the precedent in Lviv and the current protests elsewhere in Ukraine, can a case be made for a special status for the Donbas region alone. Far better to have an equal federation across the whole territory of Ukraine. (As for Crimea, we will have to content ourselves with formal statements to the effect that we regard Crimea as still legally part of Ukraine, while in practice making Crimea the subject of separate processes and talks—rather as with the northern Cyprus issue in the past. Unfortunately, if we make a peace process in Ukraine conditional on Russia giving up Crimea, there will be no peace process.)

Reality, and the long experience offered by such conflicts, shows that agreement on a new federal constitution for the country as a whole must be reached first, and ratified by a national referendum. The rebel militias in eastern Ukraine and the camp of demonstrators on the Maidan in Kiev should both agree not to use force and not to disrupt such a solution–-since clearly neither regional nor national democracy is possible if governments have to submit for approval to unelected crowds. Elections for the presidency, parliament, regional assemblies, and regional governorships can then be scheduled to take place simultaneously later in the year. Ideally, some kind of observer force would need to be put in place with United Nations backing to report on compliance by all sides.

Since the tragic killings in Odessa, it is no longer possible to deny that the Ukrainian crisis involves a serious threat from extreme nationalist groups as well as pro-Russian ones—and some of the extreme nationalists are sitting in the present interim government in Kiev. On the other hand, Russia undoubtedly has armed local allies in eastern Ukraine, which it has strengthened with some disguised Russian officers. But the masses of civilians who have blocked the path of Ukrainian troops in the Donbas show that the rebels also enjoy a very considerable measure of local support.

What all this reveals is something that should have been blindingly obvious ever since Ukraine became independent in 1991 and that is deeply rooted in Ukrainian history: Ukraine contains different identities, and cannot be ruled unilaterally by one of them alone, or pulled in a single geopolitical direction, without risking the breakup of the country itself. The huge demonstrations in Kiev this winter showed that Yanukovych's and Moscow's hope of taking Ukraine into the Eurasian Union was impossible, because many Ukrainians would literally give their lives to prevent it.

Now, events in the east and in Odessa make clear that a Ukrainian state that defines itself purely in pro-Western and anti-Russian terms is also out of the question, because a great many Ukrainians will not tolerate this either. In these circumstances, it is no good for one side to hope for absolute victory. When Russia tried for this with Yanukovych, the result was a fiasco, which among other things destroyed Russia's influence over Ukraine as a whole. The West is now risking an even greater failure in the opposite direction.

Critics of federalization say that it would allow Russia to block Ukrainian moves toward NATO and the EU. What is surely apparent however is that Moscow and its allies in Ukraine have already done this. The goal of the West must be to get all the opposing forces in Ukraine off the streets and back within a legitimate democratic process that is recognized by a majority of Ukrainians, and that will allow the possibility of economic and political reforms by democratic means. Time is short. We saw again and again, in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and elsewhere in the 1990s, that once fighting begins, previously possible solutions quickly become impossible. This would be a tragedy—Ukraine does not need to be Yugoslavia or Georgia.

Contrary to what is said in much of the Western media, most of Russia's allies in eastern Ukraine are not separatists. Rather, what many in the Donbas fear is that a government in Kiev—one that is either unelected or elected by a small majority, and which is under the sway of extreme nationalist demonstrators—will be able to decide their fate unilaterally. Thus, they are deeply opposed to the interim government in Kiev, but many of them continue to envision being a part of Ukraine in which they would have greater autonomy and recognition of regional rights and interests, rather than full independence. Until now, every opinion poll and election in the east has also suggested this.

But once a few hundred people have been killed, this reasonable position will quickly be destroyed. To return power to a reasonable majority, the international community must put forward the outline of a constitutional settlement on which a majority of Ukrainians can agree. It is hopeless to expect that the opposing sides themselves will be able to abide by a compromise proposal on their own, without outside help. The question then is whether Russia, the US, the EU, and the various parties in Ukraine including the Ukrainian government can reach agreement on the outlines of a federal constitution, which the UN Secretary General could then put forward. This will be an immensely difficult task in the days and weeks ahead. But the alternative could be catastrophic.

By Anatole Lieven for the New York Review of Books.

[The Brain]

  So did he like Being Jordan or not?

[Valmy]

If Lviv could demand this as an insurance for its identity and interests when the national government was going in a direction it did not like, it is very hard to argue that Donetsk does not have the right to do the same.

Wait is the assumption here that if Lviv wants something it must therefore be universally applied to the entire world?  If Lviv asks for free cookies is it impossible to argue that Donetsk is not also entitled to free cookies?  Note that Lviv did not actually get the cookies, they just demanded them.

[The Brain]

Lemberg is universal.

[Tamas]

Psellus, nobody else here is interested in Putin-apologetism.

[Valmy]

Psellus, nobody else here is interested in Putin-apologetism.

What I like about that article is that we are contemptible, immoral, irresponsible, and equivalent to six year olds overreaching in our attempt to turn Ukraine into a puppet state 100% aligned to the west and in our grasp of evil....yet at the same time have already agreed to the solution he says will save the day for weeks? 

[Eddie Teach]

Lemberg is universal.

I prefer L-WOW.