bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
Not trying to sound like a smart asre mate but do you actually know the history of the Crimea?
Riots in Ukraine
- Thread starter davidloach
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Not trying to sound like a smart asre mate but do you actually know the history of the Crimea?
bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
Much recent comment on Ukraine in the British press has been marked by a barely forgivable ignorance about its history and politics, an overhasty willingness to put the blame for all its troubles on Vladimir Putin, and an almost total inability to suggest practical ways of bringing effective Western influence to bear on a solution.
So perhaps we should start with a short history lesson. A thousand years ago Kiev was the capital of an Orthodox Christian state called Rus with links reaching as far west as England. But Rus was swept away by the Tatars in the 13th century, leaving only a few principalities in the north, including an obscure town deep in the forests, called Moscow.
What became known as Ukraine – a Slav phrase meaning “borderlands” – was regularly fought over by Tatars, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Turks, Swedes and Cossacks. One large chunk, including Kiev itself, joined Russia in the 17th century. Galicia in the west fell to the Austrians in the following century, but was taken by Poland after the First World War, when the rest of Ukraine joined the Soviet Federation. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin handed Galicia and its capital Lviv to Ukraine in 1945. All these changes were accompanied by much bloody fighting.
Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula followed a different but equally tumultuous path. The seat of a powerful and predatory Tatar state, it was conquered and settled by the Russians in the 18th century. Stalin deported its Tatar minority in 1944 because, he said, they had collaborated with the Germans. They were later allowed to return. Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954, when Khrushchev gave it to Kiev as a present.
Ukraine became an independent country for the first time since the Middle Ages when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It had many of the requirements for success: an educated population, good links with the outside world and substantial industry, though its economy remained distorted by the Soviet legacy. But it was still divided, with an uncertain sense of nationhood. Today 77 per cent of the country’s population is Ukrainian. But 17 per cent is Russian, a third of the population speak Russian and many of these people have strong family ties with Russia. Only the Ukrainians from Galicia look unequivocally to the West.
Meanwhile, most Russians feel strong emotional links to Ukraine as the cradle of their civilisation. Even the most open minded feel its loss like an amputated limb.
Things started well enough. Russia and Ukraine negotiated a sensible agreement to allow the Russian Black Sea Fleet to remain in Crimea. With well-judged concessions, the Ukrainians assuaged the demands of Crimea’s Russian inhabitants for closer ties with the motherland. But the Ukrainians were unlucky in their country’s new leaders, most of whom were incompetent or worse. They failed to modernise the economy; corruption ran out of control. Then Putin arrived in 2000, ambitious to strengthen Russia’s influence with its neighbours. And the West began its ill-judged attempts to draw Ukraine into its orbit regardless of Russian sensitivities.
Despite his best efforts, both overt and covert, Putin has failed to shape Ukraine to his will. He got his puppet Yanukovych elected president in 2004, only to see him overthrown in an Orange Revolution supported by millions of dollars of Western money. The “democratic” leaders who then emerged proved incompetent as well as corrupt. Yanukovych was re-elected in a fair election in 2010, but was even more incompetent and corrupt. His forceful ejection at the height of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, intended to showcase a modern and powerful Russia, was a humiliation for Putin and an unintended consequence of his intrigues. He is a vindictive man who will want revenge.
Although he is also a cunning politician, he already looks incapable of calm calculation. His apparent threat – or intention – to use force in Crimea would up the stakes in ways whose consequences neither he nor anyone else can foresee.
He may of course believe that the West will be unable to find an adequate response, and he may not be wrong. Western policy towards Ukraine has had two inadequate parts. The first is respectable but merely rhetorical: Ukraine is entitled to decide its future for itself, and Russia has no legitimate claim to a voice. The second is a piece of old-fashioned geopolitics: Russia can never again become an imperial threat if Ukraine is incorporated into Nato and the European Union. This part of the policy is impractical to the point of irresponsibility. It ignores four things. The members of Nato and the EU have lost their appetite for further enlargement. Most Ukrainians do not want their country to join Nato, though they would be happy to join the EU. A majority want to remain on good terms with Russia.
Above all, the West does not have the instruments to impose its will. It has no intention of getting into a forceful confrontation with Russia. Lesser sanctions are available to it, both economic and political, but they will hardly be sufficient to deflect a determined Russia from its meddling.
The alternative is for the West to talk to the Russians and to whoever can speak with authority for Ukraine. So far the Americans have been ineffective on the sidelines, the British seem to have given up doing foreign policy altogether, and only the Germans, the Poles and the French have shown any capacity for action.
An eventual deal would doubtless have to include verifiable agreement by the West as well as the Russians to abandon meddling in Ukrainian affairs, a credible assurance that Nato will not try to recruit Ukraine and arrangements for the both the Russians and the West to prop up Ukraine’s disastrous economy. The sums involved are vast ($35bn has been mentioned). The task of ensuring that they are properly spent will be taxing in the extreme.
All that would involve much eating of words on all sides. It would enable the West to show that it can move beyond fine rhetoric about democracy to real deeds. It will be very hard to achieve. It may already be too late. But the alternatives are liable to be far worse.
From the article by Rodric Braithwaite who was ambassador in Moscow in 1988-92. His last book was Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89
So perhaps we should start with a short history lesson. A thousand years ago Kiev was the capital of an Orthodox Christian state called Rus with links reaching as far west as England. But Rus was swept away by the Tatars in the 13th century, leaving only a few principalities in the north, including an obscure town deep in the forests, called Moscow.
What became known as Ukraine – a Slav phrase meaning “borderlands” – was regularly fought over by Tatars, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Turks, Swedes and Cossacks. One large chunk, including Kiev itself, joined Russia in the 17th century. Galicia in the west fell to the Austrians in the following century, but was taken by Poland after the First World War, when the rest of Ukraine joined the Soviet Federation. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin handed Galicia and its capital Lviv to Ukraine in 1945. All these changes were accompanied by much bloody fighting.
Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula followed a different but equally tumultuous path. The seat of a powerful and predatory Tatar state, it was conquered and settled by the Russians in the 18th century. Stalin deported its Tatar minority in 1944 because, he said, they had collaborated with the Germans. They were later allowed to return. Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954, when Khrushchev gave it to Kiev as a present.
Ukraine became an independent country for the first time since the Middle Ages when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It had many of the requirements for success: an educated population, good links with the outside world and substantial industry, though its economy remained distorted by the Soviet legacy. But it was still divided, with an uncertain sense of nationhood. Today 77 per cent of the country’s population is Ukrainian. But 17 per cent is Russian, a third of the population speak Russian and many of these people have strong family ties with Russia. Only the Ukrainians from Galicia look unequivocally to the West.
Meanwhile, most Russians feel strong emotional links to Ukraine as the cradle of their civilisation. Even the most open minded feel its loss like an amputated limb.
Things started well enough. Russia and Ukraine negotiated a sensible agreement to allow the Russian Black Sea Fleet to remain in Crimea. With well-judged concessions, the Ukrainians assuaged the demands of Crimea’s Russian inhabitants for closer ties with the motherland. But the Ukrainians were unlucky in their country’s new leaders, most of whom were incompetent or worse. They failed to modernise the economy; corruption ran out of control. Then Putin arrived in 2000, ambitious to strengthen Russia’s influence with its neighbours. And the West began its ill-judged attempts to draw Ukraine into its orbit regardless of Russian sensitivities.
Despite his best efforts, both overt and covert, Putin has failed to shape Ukraine to his will. He got his puppet Yanukovych elected president in 2004, only to see him overthrown in an Orange Revolution supported by millions of dollars of Western money. The “democratic” leaders who then emerged proved incompetent as well as corrupt. Yanukovych was re-elected in a fair election in 2010, but was even more incompetent and corrupt. His forceful ejection at the height of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, intended to showcase a modern and powerful Russia, was a humiliation for Putin and an unintended consequence of his intrigues. He is a vindictive man who will want revenge.
Although he is also a cunning politician, he already looks incapable of calm calculation. His apparent threat – or intention – to use force in Crimea would up the stakes in ways whose consequences neither he nor anyone else can foresee.
He may of course believe that the West will be unable to find an adequate response, and he may not be wrong. Western policy towards Ukraine has had two inadequate parts. The first is respectable but merely rhetorical: Ukraine is entitled to decide its future for itself, and Russia has no legitimate claim to a voice. The second is a piece of old-fashioned geopolitics: Russia can never again become an imperial threat if Ukraine is incorporated into Nato and the European Union. This part of the policy is impractical to the point of irresponsibility. It ignores four things. The members of Nato and the EU have lost their appetite for further enlargement. Most Ukrainians do not want their country to join Nato, though they would be happy to join the EU. A majority want to remain on good terms with Russia.
Above all, the West does not have the instruments to impose its will. It has no intention of getting into a forceful confrontation with Russia. Lesser sanctions are available to it, both economic and political, but they will hardly be sufficient to deflect a determined Russia from its meddling.
The alternative is for the West to talk to the Russians and to whoever can speak with authority for Ukraine. So far the Americans have been ineffective on the sidelines, the British seem to have given up doing foreign policy altogether, and only the Germans, the Poles and the French have shown any capacity for action.
An eventual deal would doubtless have to include verifiable agreement by the West as well as the Russians to abandon meddling in Ukrainian affairs, a credible assurance that Nato will not try to recruit Ukraine and arrangements for the both the Russians and the West to prop up Ukraine’s disastrous economy. The sums involved are vast ($35bn has been mentioned). The task of ensuring that they are properly spent will be taxing in the extreme.
All that would involve much eating of words on all sides. It would enable the West to show that it can move beyond fine rhetoric about democracy to real deeds. It will be very hard to achieve. It may already be too late. But the alternatives are liable to be far worse.
From the article by Rodric Braithwaite who was ambassador in Moscow in 1988-92. His last book was Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89
I'm certainly biased, but I don't put much credit in what the Russian state reports as "true," and I find significant conflict between claims of "protecting ethinic Russians" and a declaration of direct military assault. I do not believe that Russia has no interest in the welfare of ethnic Russians in Crimea and near regions, but I do not for one minute believe that Russia's "interest" is in protecting ethnic Russians. I believe this is a foil to larger interests, protecting Russia's land/border/economic interests. As someone from the US, I understand that I may divide these interests too far, as the common Russian may not see any large distinction between these interests. And indeed was fascinated to learn that "Red Army" essentially means "Beautiful Army," an association that someone from the US would not easily make (although freedom/patriotism is likewise conflated, probably assisting my responses here).
Still, feed me the Kremlin response to these events and it goes directly into the bin. I may be entirely wrong in this, but that's how I read it.
pbeyer
Player Valuation: £6m
Appreciate all the effort to enlighten us all mate.
bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
The only valid thing that the Kremlin's statements have in them mate, is the fact that the vast majority of Russians regard the Ukraine as historically a part of Russia, whilst accepting its now a separate sovereign state the ties both emotionally and in a lot of cases via friends and family who live their and through shared bonds of history is very strong. Something a lot of us brits don't grasp the effect of a lot of the time
Similarly mate I'm not unbiased in the situation my wifes Russian and my homes their now, although i try to remain objective as i believe that an important factor in being aware as a person.
As I read this the relevant facts seem to be that (1) Russia sees Ukraine as belonging to itself, (2) Putin's chosen governor has been displaced, (3) the majority/half of Ukrainians do not want to return to being a Russian state, (4) Russian troops descend upon Ukraine to take/regain control.
Not seeing this as about Neo-Nazis or Western meddling, but maybe I misunderstand.
I could make a reasoned argument, or post a video.
Easy choice for me. The metaphor contained within is timely.
Easy choice for me. The metaphor contained within is timely.
bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
All valid points really, only one I'd say is way off mark is the western interference one - their its more in the form of political rhetoric and egging on, the interesting point i find is that the problems aren't cause by pro Russian or pro western, its like with many countries corruption, the de3posed leader was corrupt, the new regime is effectively just as corrupt - only its an acceptable corruption type for the west as its pro EU, the appointment by the new regime today of 4 Oligarchs since the change, 3 to govern provinces and one as a interior minister, the poorest one of them is worth approx 300m kind of highlights the major issues the country faces.
The Russian government played a blinder today though with the UN security council though by calling a emergency meeting at which the presented the evidence why their intervention was legal abd according to the UN rules and regulations
Rook
Player Valuation: £80m
Probably the best case situtation is now to broker a deal in which Russia pulls out in exchange for a vote of succession from the east. The country is crazy divided with much of the West voting in the range or 90/10 or 80/20 in favor better relations with Western Europe and the East voting 90/10 in favor of better relations with Russia.
Its probably for the best that the Ukraine seperates into 2 different countries.
People think that there is red and blue America but even still the democrats get at least 40% of the votes in places like Mississippi while the Republicians get 40-45% in the northeast.
Its probably for the best that the Ukraine seperates into 2 different countries.
People think that there is red and blue America but even still the democrats get at least 40% of the votes in places like Mississippi while the Republicians get 40-45% in the northeast.
The whole thing is rotten isn't it? We're not going to do anything because there's so much Russian money pumping through British society. The Germans aren't going to do anything because of all the oil/gas flowing to Europe (not to mention the German products going the other way).
The actual people come waaay down the list of priorities.
pornpimol2
Player Valuation: £1m
I sort of know whats happening but this WILL HAPPEN
bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
Afree 100% Mate, simple fact is the EU receives approximately one third of its supply of Oil and natural gas from Russia, the vast majority of it coming through the Ukraine pipelines, for some countries that percentage is a lot higher (Germany for example), Germany being by far the most powerful voice in Europe presently isn't going to let the crisis get to the stage where sanctions become imposed as it will be reciprocal and quite likely start a economic crisis again across europe due to the damage on stock markets and the effect of a renewed fuel crisis across mainland europe/uk.
Its a mess, one worsened by the involvement of the west which will only galvanize the Russian determination to look strong, and sadly the actual people seem to be getting completely forgotten about by all parties, then again that's always the way of the world, the rich take care of themselves and sod the average joe
Would like to see Obama authorize export of US Crude and LNG. Putin can GTF exploiting his neighbors for a dime.
*Maybe I should calm down. It's not like every other state hasn't made the same mistake. Sad, though, seeing this error repeated over and over. 'Tis our fate as humans.
An interesting read
It's like no one learns from history though isn't it? You can see Crimea being 'sacrificed' here and Russia allowed to take over the territory in the hope that that will satisfy Putin, just as Germany was 'allowed' Czechoslovakia in the same hope.
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