The latest polls, jointly conducted by KIIS (Ukraine) and Levada (Russia), show that the collapse in Ukrainian sentiment towards Russia may be turning a corner.
Legend: Ukrainian attitudes towards Russia [blue]; Russian attitudes towards Ukraine [orange]
For the first time since April 2014, more Ukrainians have a positive impressive of Russia than the converse. Attitudes are basically 50/50 even in West Ukraine.
However, there is no particular cause for premature celebration amongst Russophiles. This is still greatly down from the 80%-90% support before 2014. Support for open borders/no visas with Russia slightly exceeds those who want closed borders by 48% to 39%, and while another 4% want outright political union with Russia – up from minimums of 2% in the past three years – this is still cardinally down from 15%-20% prior to Euromaidan.
Moreover, this has to be set against 51% vs. 23% support for EU accession, and 40% vs. 31% support for joining NATO. In contrast, 43% of Ukrainians oppose joining the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan versus 24% who support; this might be up from ~15% support/55% opposition in the past four years, but before 2014, this option was as popular as the EU one. Meanwhile, in a direct choice between the two, 46% of Ukrainians favor the EU to 14% for the Customs Union. Before 2014, they were level pegging.
The only good thing from Russia’s perspective is that neither the EU nor NATO accession for the Ukraine is on the table for now.
However, these latest polls do allow us to attempt to sketch out the likely future course of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship.
Barring any further flare-ups on the Donbass Front, or in the Sea of Azov, I assume these improvements will continue, but they will never reach the pre-2014 state of affairs for the foreseeable future. In the post-Soviet space, we have two examples of the template according to which relations might continue to develop: Georgia and Moldova.
Georgia has restored full-fledged economic ties with Russia, and Russians can visit it at will, requiring no visa. Tbilisi enjoys a great reputation amongst Moscow hipsters. After some hiccups following the 2008 war and Saakashvili’s departure, it has resumed fairly vigorous growth and is now quite a successful state, at least by Caucasian standards (e.g. corruption may be almost as low as in the Baltics). However, it has not geopolitically reorientated towards Russia. It votes with the West at the UN, and there is near universal support for Western integration; a state of affairs that Leonid Bershidsky has called a “NATO of the Mind“, which as good as locks out Russian political/cultural influence.
On the other end is Moldova, where pro-Russian forces fought a war in the early 1990s to carve out the statelet of Transnistria. It is an extremely corrupt and economically failed state, the absolute poorest in Europe (Ukraine is second). It so much of a joke state that an Israeli Jew managed to steal 13% of its GDP from its banks – the equivalent of $350, or four months worth of wages for every working Moldovan – and who then, instead of getting arrested and jailed after his conviction, somehow became the mayor of a Moldovan town and entered parliament. In Moldova, pro/anti-Russian political forces typically poll 50/50, and more people view NATO as a threat than as protection.
In terms of socio-economic success and state capacity, the Ukraine is certainly closer to Moldova. Its GDP per capita (PPP) is about a third of Russia’s, and half of Belarus’. Even the most strongly pro-Ukrainian outlets, such as The Atlantic Council, have been forced to admit that Poroshenko, far from snuffing out corruption, has merely reinforced the oligarchic system. The Ukraine is also culturally much closer to Russia. It was part of the same ancient medieval state, and major parts of it have been (re)integrated with Russia to some extent or another since the 17th century (Georgia and Bessarabia were acquired early in the 19th century). Ukrainian is much more similar to Russian than is Moldovan, which is basically Romanian but with a bit more Slavic vocabulary, and infinitely closer than Georgian, which is an entirely different language and script. Ukrainians are genetically almost indistinguishable from South Russians, while Moldovans are a Romanian/Slavic metis and Georgians are, once again, very distant. Finally, the Ukraine is surrounded by Russia from the East and the South. This suggests the Ukraine may follow a Moldovan vector.
However, there are also several factors militating against this possibility. The more primitive Russophile propaganda to the contrary, the Ukraine isn’t an eternally collapsing economic basket-case. The economy has recovered, and western Ukraine is now even better off than it was in 2014. Economic growth is nothing to write home about, but it is well above zero and should trundle along at around 2%-4% (if well short of the 6%-7% that it really needs for convergence with Russia or Visegrad). Foreign exchange reserves are now safely back to pre-Euromaidan levels, with the risk of default receding into the background. Meanwhile, while pretty much all Moldovans would agree theirs is a joke country, this is not the case for the Ukraine, which has strong homegrown traditions of svidomism and nationalism. In principle, their country of ~35 million people with an average IQ of perhaps 95 could still be a reasonably successful and prosperous European state… if they ever get their act together. Of course there are major challenges in the future. The completion of Nord Stream II and Power of Siberia this year will blow a $3 billion hole in their meager budget, where every billion counts. And there might be another global recession looming, which may again collapse natural resource and steel prices (though Russia will be affected too of course).
I do not know which of these factors will be stronger. However, I think it is reasonable to posit that – all else equal, and with no drastic developments (e.g. a Democratic President in the US that has it out for Russia and starts to energetically lobby for Ukraine’s NATO membership, like George W. Bush in his second term) – that Ukraine’s course and social attitudes will converge to some point between those of Moldova and Georgia. This means the resumption of normal economic relations between Russia and the Ukraine, and direct flights between Moscow and Kiev. However, the victory of pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine has been ruled out for the foreseeable future, it will be consistently voting with the Western Powers at the UN, and deepening its security integration with NATO and EU structures as the opportunity presents itself.
AK: Thanks.
This is probably meant to be “show” instead.
Is that supposed to be “prices” after “resources”?
A good, balanced update about Ukraine, following a similarly informative update about Kazakhstan. You seem to be on a roll, Anatoly.
The poll shows that Russians have, and always had, a dimmer view of Ukraine than the other way around. And, as I said before, the future of Russian-Ukrainian relations will be determined by Russian, not Ukrainian, attitudes.
I may be wrong, but judging by the state of Western elites, we may not recognize the world that we’ll see in 2025, just like people from 2007 would be astonished at the current state of affairs. Your analysis only holds in the absence of a black-swan event, which IMHO is rather high – when even the BIS warns about an imminent global recession, it has to get ya thinking…
That joining the EU is so popular is reflection of how poorly the EU serves its people and how poorly the Ukrainian government serves their people.
‘Barring any further flare-ups on the Donbass Front, or in the Sea of Azov’, the author is hopeful of improving relations between Russia and Ukraine. His balanced article uses some interesting statistics. The core of the problem is that Ukraine is a dangerous flashpoint for confrontation between the West and Russia. Globally, tensions are rising: the South China Sea, the Middle East, South America – not just Europe. Although in Europe, from Moscow’s perspective, it needs a security buffer zone against NATO, something it has not enjoyed since the Cold War. That is not to deny the right of self-determination for other nations, only to acknowledge that every nation’s legitimate security interests must be respected (if that is realistic or possible). Because the evidence of history suggests we are blindly crashing towards world war three.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Yeah, yeah, but in Lviv there is a new IT call center where young Ukrainian girls in folk costumes answer phones with non-stop multi-lingual action, and get over 500 Euros per month! Try to beat that.
And the 1/3 living standards? Why does that matter? Potatoes in Ukraine are cheap, and – never forget! – post-Maidan Ukrainians might not live well, but relatively speaking, and proportionally, when you adjust for losing Poltava, and include Moldova with 1913 living standard compared to Spain, and then adjust for the fantastic music Karl Habsburg composed – well, it is just so much better. Right AP? Am I getting your technique right? (Tactical nihilism uber alles, why bother with reality?)
Ukraine has definitely – most 100% definitely – not collapsed yet. Porky looks well fed, his bags are packed, he could win. Dead people voting is not a fraud, properly understood it is a miracle. Viva Mazepa! could the Swedes again send a junior prince to reign over this earthly paradise? I believe, Carl Bildt is currently unemployed.
Adding my two cents on Georgia and Ukraine (don’t know much about Moldova):
If there ever was a “pro-Russian” element in Georgian politics, it’s long gone. The two main parties here, the ruling Georgian Dream and opposition UNM (Saakashvili’s party), are firmly pro-U.S. and pro-E.U. The only real difference between them is that the UNM is center-right while Georgian Dream is center-left. Georgia was one of the first countries to recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, for example. Admittedly, some of this is due to how the Caucasus works: the tight-knit, clannish nature of the people here translates into very homogeneous politics (see the recent election in Armenia, where Armenians gave Pashinyan’s party a two-thirds majority after giving the Republican Party, ousted in last year’s revolution, a two-thirds majority in every previous election).
Georgian Dream’s and the UNM’s platforms are similar enough that in the presidential election last December, their candidates, Salome Zurabishvili and Grigol Vashadze respectively, both got accused of being Russian stooges by clueless Western observers. Zurabishvili was accused of being Putin’s puppet because she (correctly) said that Georgia bears some blame for the war with Russia, and Vashadze was accused because he used to hold Russian citizenship ten years ago (never mind that Bidzina Ivanishvili, the leader of Georgian Dream and former PM, also held Russian citizenship up until 2013).
The reality is that both Zurabishvili and Vashadze are enmeshed in the U.S./E.U./globalist web. Both of them served as foreign minister under Saakashvili, Vashadze spent most of the 90’s and 00’s hobnobbing with the American power elite in New York, and Zurabishvili was born and raised in France, served in the French diplomatic corps, and even speaks Georgian with a French accent (LOL).
Barring a major political realignment, this is likely the direction that Ukraine will head in. Like Georgia, the “pro-Russian” (a misleading term because the “pro-Russian” politicians aren’t actually pro-Russian, they’re pro-neutrality) parties in Ukraine are completely marginalized. The top contenders in the presidential election (Poroshenko, Tymoshenko, Zelensky) are all pro-E.U. Maidanists. The best that can be hoped for from a Russian perspective is an Ivanishvili-type leader who will back down on overt belligerency while continuing the country on its track towards E.U./NATO integration.
If anything, I think Anatoly is too optimistic about Ukraine. Georgians resent Russia for invading and occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but Georgians are sufficiently racially/culturally distinct from Russians that they don’t feel the insecurity that Ukrainian nationalists do. The narcissism of small differences will fuel Ukrainian belligerence towards Russia, and the increasing demographic dominance of Western Ukraine that Anatoly pointed out last year will also make any kind of significant rapprochement with Russia increasingly unlikely. (I imagine demographics are even worse in Eastern Ukraine than the official stats show; given that those regions got hit the hardest economically after Euromaidan, a disproportionate percentage of the Ukrainian gasterbeiters in Poland are probably from there. Pretty sure LOT didn’t start direct flights between Warsaw and Zaporizhia because the Poles see it as a great vacation spot.)
The biggest hurdle for improved Georgian-Russian relations and Ukrainian-Russian relations is that Georgians and Ukrainians see Russians as illegally occupying their country. Nationalists from small countries HATE HATE HATE it when they lose territory; go ask an Azeri what they think of Armenia. At the same time, at least in the case of Ukraine, the Maidanist government rather cynically doesn’t want Donbass/Crimea back because it would deprive them of a casus belli against Putler (and because so long as those regions are not under Ukrainian control, their inhabitants can’t vote in elections, depriving Opposition Bloc and other anti-Euromaidan parties of much-needed support).
Without a massive, Europe-wide political sea change, the status quo will likely continue in these countries for the foreseeable future.
You hit the nail on the head. Regardless of the games Russians elites might be playing, from the perspective of ordinary Russians the prospects of good relations with Ukraine are dim. Russia replaced by domestic production virtually everything it used to import form Ukraine. Ukrainian steel industry is ~50 years behind Russia and developed world technologically, it is only economically viable because of pathetically cheap workforce (way cheaper than Chinese). The rest of the industry, including Nikolaev shipbuilding and automobile production everywhere, is dead or half-dead.
However, even now Russia is a bigger trade partner of Ukraine than any other country (despite Kiev regime’s propaganda that Ukraine is at war with Russia). But this does not include consumer goods: label “Made in Ukraine” would shoot down sales prospects in Russia, regardless of product quality or even its price. This is part of Russian psyche: in Russian culture, traitors are considered maybe just a notch above child molesters.
This seems rather silly, as Ukrainians are not Russians. Ukrainians, on the other hand, understand that Russians are not Ukrainians and therefore don’t think of them as ‘traitors’ but more accurately as
invaders. Get the difference?
What’s up with the poll which shows that <70% of Russians see NATO as a threat? They must be either brain-dead, Putin haters, or CIA assets.
Clarification
Good reason for that, given what has transpired in Ukraine – inclusive of the many more leaving Ukraine for Russia than vice versa.
You make an important point: AK”s balanced analysis is based on extrapolating current trends and on reasonable analogies. But trends continue until they don’t and all analogies are imperfect.
Black-swan events are not random, but only in retrospect we see their germination. I also think the global economy will be the likely destabiliser – current cycle has been going on since 2008-9: 10 years is usually a limit for economic tensions to accumulate. Obama’s 8-year of sleep-walking has slowed down the natural economic cycle, but with Trump barging in and EU’s internal hollowing-out, something will happen to shift the economy.
The likely impact on Ukraine would be in less in remittances from its gastarbeiters, lower commodity prices and less charity money from the West. It would also put a firm Stop on EU integration dreams – the idea that struggling Brussels with diminishing resources would take on a large, poor country with 35 million people expecting to receive aid is far-fetched. If that happens, how valid would today’s polls be? And more importantly: what is Kiev’s plan B? Turkey? China? Poland (they could merge)? or possibly all young pack up and migrate towards the mythical north-west?
But there are other black-swan events: accidental military escalation, assassination, Tymoshenko marrying Putin (are they still single?), and my favourite: Slovakia winning Euro Cup in 2020, by far the least likely.
AK said:
But when Ukrainians are asked if they favor EU and Customs Union membership in separate questions, EU membership is only twice as popular (51% vs. 24%), not 3x as popular.
I suspect the reason for this is that most of those favoring the “neither” option in the direct choice question actually favor (or at least lean toward) CU membership.
Anyway, so long as EU membership isn’t actually available to Ukraine, the only meaningful poll question is yes or no on CU membership.
Even better – look at the NATO=protection sentiment for Serbia, Russia and Belarus.
They probably polled some minorities and proclaimed it pluralism.
Anatoly, a pleasure to read an article about Ukraine without all the UKONAZI references.
This is the core issue, as it was on Maidan and before that in the failed Orange Revolution. Most Ukrainians would like to be allowed to join EU, we get that. I suspect most Nigerians and Bangladeshi feel the same way.
But it is not about what they want, it is about what we – the ones in EU – want. Adding Ukraine to EU would add 7-8% in EU population, and around 1.5% in GNP. It would add 35 million people to the receivers of aid, making aid to the current recipients (looking at you Poland!) inevitably less. It is also likely with Britain leaving (or at least not contributing), and France-Italy in very bad shape, that the ratio of givers to receivers would soon be 1 to 3 even without Ukraine. Simply unsustainable.
On trade: is there a single thing that EU wants to sell in Ukraine today that they are not allowed to sell? Probably not, Porky is probably importing coal (he actually is) and if Ireland wants to sell potatoes to Ukraine, Porky would scream in excitement and send the trucks himself. In other words, no gain for EU in ‘more free trade‘ with Ukraine. But major losses, Ukrainian low-end stuff can be both low quality and cheap.
The reason EU dangled the membership in 2013 was much simpler: get free trade with Ukraine in order to re-export through its Ukrainian subsidiaries to the large Russian market. That back-door option to the Russian market is gone. So why bring Ukraine in? For EU, Ukraine without customs union with Russia is almost worthless. That was the real economic discussion in 2013, Kiev ended up losing both because it was too eager to please just one. At the end they are the losers.
In case you aren’t aware, French minister for European Affairs – Nathalie Loiseau – explicitly stated that EU won’t be expanding until it reforms and solves its internal issues.
https://www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php?yyyy=2019&mm=02&dd=25&nav_id=106281
Realistically, EU already has all the strategic and profitable states as members, and favourable, exploitative agreements with tributaries like Serbia.
If Ukrainian film makers and musicians desire to make money will keep Russia and Ukraine culturally close at some level regardless of the politics.
Yes, but the Georgian masses take nationalism to another level in comparison with Ukrainians. They have a much bigger superiority complex over Russians than Ukrainians do. This doesn’t stop them from putting on a performance for the visiting Russian tourists of course, after all “20 dollars is 20 dollars”.
Ukraine would be far better off reaching some kind of rapprochement with Russia (especially if there was room for some kind of “special” but non-NATO relationship with the West) than be the victim of an international destabilization program. Plus, I presume Ukraine could “give” Russia back the Crimea, which would undermine the international case against Russia.
On the other hand, does Ukraine control its own destiny? They may be stuck with a choice between being a Russian puppet or a Western puppet.
Certainly looks more likely than Hungary qualifying for the same.
Lol, do Georgians have a superiority complex over Russians? I wonder if Stalin has a large modern-day fanbase in Georgia, since he killed millions of Russians and made the whole Russian nation his prison bitch.
Ethnic superiority complexes seem to be common among Russia’s smaller neighbors. It must be endlessly frustrating for manlet countries like Georgia and Estonia to look down on the vodka-drunk barbarians and yet always lose wars to them.
Well spotted. Relevant.
Reality sucks. Reality is not polite and totally lacks PC. That’s why a lot of people prefer their dreams. Especially those with severe inferiority complex, one of the symptoms of which is a hysterical claim of superiority.
At least some of them(so-called noviopy) certainly do. Then reality happens and they self-destruct in truly hilarious fashion, just look at recent Kikabidze fuck-up and especially normie russian reaction, which was a hearwarmingly unanimous FUCK YOU CHURKA SCUM. ^_^
On a tangential note, recently NPC from Moscow told me that Georgia is really well now because it became easier to register an automobile and to grow weed. Kind of shows you the depth of thinking there, lol.
Considering Stalin fanbase, it is certainly there, but they try to focus on positives like enormous nepotism and preferences they enjoyed over the rest of the Union.
Then Union was no more, and fruits of this process, like beforementioned Kikabidze, withered quickly.
Oh, and Estonia is not a country but farm equipment. Sometimes german, sometimes russian, but neither ever thought to have a war with a shovel.
Urm, no. Georgia produces and exports quite a few spices, one of which is a peudo-saffron made from marigold petals. It’s an ingredient in quite a few of their dishes. When ground it looks a bit like turmeric ….. or lead chromate (the powder pigment in yellow leaded paint). Look at the figures in table 1, it’s mind-blowingly bad and has been for decades, yet nobody has bothered investigate the source, despite the country being awash with NGO-funded journalists. Given just how high those figures are (1-2% lead by volume), and the fact that the brown coloured spices are less affected, it seems likely it’s down to adulteration, testing for chrome as well as lead would confirm. It’s believed that about 20% of Georgian children have technical lead poisoning.
https://journals.lww.com/jphmp/Fulltext/2019/01001/A_Spoonful_of_Lead___A_10_Year_Look_at_Spices_as_a.11.aspx
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16061585
Worse than being able to bung a traffic cop $10 to get out of a $20 ticket don’t you think.
This is exactly what I expect of Russian-Ukrainian relations too. I would say that geopolitical attitudes towards Russia should be significantly closer to Georgia than Moldova. Moldova never confronted Russia to the extent that Georgia did, but Ukraine’s current confrontation fell maybe 1 step short of Georgia’s confrontation 10 years ago. And West Ukraine has heavy svidomism that Moldova lacks.
Once the Ukrainian state pursues a Georgia 2.0 policy, expect Ukrainians to adopt a more Moldovan approach in terms of the actual amount of Russian-Ukrainian interactions. Georgia-Russia relations nowadays involve far more Russians going to Georgia than the opposite (unlike Moldova), while I expect more Ukrainians to go to Russia than vice versa just like Moldova now. Don’t get me wrong: A lot of Russians will be visiting Ukraine, mostly as tourists to Kiev, Odessa, and even Lviv, and definitely pre-Maidan levels of Russian businessmen too.
80% of Ukrainians are not feeling richer, probably because the costs of living and costs of bribes have skyrocketed past whatever miserable wage increases they may have seen.
Whether the Ukro-Russian relations settle down in a Georgian or in a Moldovan fashion, it would be highly desirable to put some kind of an end to the Donbass war. People continue dying there on a basically daily base. Thankfully, most casualties right now appear to be combatants and not civilians but still, since the West is perfectly comfortable with this carnage on European soil (Western media gave up reporting on these casualties a long time ago and one needs to resort to local sources via Google Translate to learn what’s going on), shouldn’t Russians and Ukrainians sober up a little bit and put an end to this insanity by themselves? The Trump precedent leads one to be cautious but it seems that a Zelensky victory in the upcoming elections over Poroshenko would definitely be preferable to this end.
In spite of my extensive journeys throughout Eastern Europe, I wasn’t aware of that phenomenon. What would it based on? The superior size of their noses? Their supremacy in the strategic business of street market fruit stalls?
The Ukrainian events had a psychological factor that is usually ignored. Russians consider Ukrainians as inferior village relatives (this attitude has a long history, perhaps since the 17th century). One of the reasons that caused the Maidan was the desire of Ukrainians to prove to themselves and others (primarily to Russia) that they are not village idiots but cool guys. The result is known-Ukraine again and again dipped face in the toilet, under the caustic laughter in Russian social networks.
From this point of view, if Ukraine will achieve in future at least small successes that Ukrainians will have some reasons to respect themselves, their hysterical psychological complexes will decrease.
That’s not quite the right analogy. Georgia suffered a crushing defeat in the 90s from the Abkhazians who raised the rebbelion. This uprising was accompanied by ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Georgians from Abkhazia (for a small Georgia – a monstrous figure). Before the uprising Abkhazians made up 17% of the population of Abkhazia and Georgians – 45% (now Abkhazians make up the vast majority in Abkhazia). These events have no analogies in Ukraine.
2,500 Georgian citizens received Russian citizenship in 2018 (with a total population of 3,727,000). Its not counting immigrants from Abkhazia and North Ossetia.
I don’t know the scale of the movement in the opposite direction, but I think this movement is much much weaker
No surprise that Georgia is popular with NPCs from all over the ex-USSR after that weed legalization. They supposedly have a big electronic music scene too – you hear Tbilisi being promoted as “the new Berlin” a lot, which is a bit silly.
About the corruption level in Georgia – it’s pretty admirable that they got it as low as they did, since the Caucasus region is one of the most corrupt on earth.
Still, it’s nowhere near as clean as Estonia, which is a totally different culture in every regard. Estonians are basically a Nordic Finnic people who were traditionally Protestant and belonged to Northern Europe, which automatically makes them the least corrupt of all ex-Soviet states.
Overrated Bershidsky
So says the not so great JRL/Bloomberg propped Bershidsky, who also says that he had to leave Russia because of his opposition to Crimea’s territorial change back to Russia.
At last notice, Georgia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence, unlike the official NATO line.
Lower commodity prices would hit Ukraine’s Eastern steel industry (gone in Donbas but still existing in Dnipropetrovsk and Mariupol) but would also mean cheaper gas prices for the entire country and would not affect sectors of the economy such as IT. It would probably accelerate the shift in economic center of gravity from east to west within Ukraine.
Excellent article.
No, it began later. As AK showed, in 17th century Ukraine was still ahead of Russia culturally:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/human-capital-in-early-modern-poland-and-russia/
(look at Table 7, extrapolate the Ukraine line backwards into 17th century)
Ironically the reverse is also true – Ukrianians traditionally viewed Russians are inferior, barbaric, vulgar, etc. relatives.
Poster in Ukraine:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/AntiRussianPoster.jpg
LOL.
Good article, as always. I’m especially happy that you point to the near inevitability of Ukrainian economic growth, for I feel that Russian nationalists make too much hay of Ukraine’s backwardness, which hurts their argument (the economy is the least of it, or should be) and will make them look like fools when Ukraine’s economy does grow, as it surely will.
Some other reflections:
We all like polls here, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that attitudes are easily swayed by propaganda. Just have a glance at those Russian figures for 2009-2010 in the first chart. A huge drop in positive attitudes followed by a steep climb, reflecting, I assume, the “gas wars” and the election of Yanukovich. Nothing that should change attitudes to a whole country, you would think, but that’s the power of propaganda for you.
Dmitry once posted a similarly hilarious chart that showed how Russian attitudes to Turkey reflected the official line to a tee. Everything was hunky-dory until Turkey shot down that plane in Syria. Now Turkey was suddenly the arch-enemy, and popular attitudes dropped like a stone. But then Putin and Erdogan kissed and made up, and positive attitudes shot up again. People, eh?
On a similar note, we should be careful not to extrapolate too long into the future. It’s true that Ukrainians feel that their future lies in the West, but it’s still an open question what that western world will look like in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time. In some ways, the future of Europe is far harder to predict than the future of Ukraine. Just consider a Europe overrun by 100+ million Africans fleeing global warming. This may well be our future.
So, this is what really keeps you up at night, keeps you rallying against Banderstan 24/7 on this website? Worried about a mass of Ukie provocateurs overrunning Slovakia and turning you out from your beautiful flat?
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1699711eff4139a248b96fe9a755f50cd9239076/0_0_4368_2912/master/4368.jpg?width=700&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3ff2837a3a4b274381d00e979dab3fa0
There is an assumption in many of the comments that there will be an EU and a NATO to join. They may not disappear tomorrow, but there are a lot of cracks that could lead to a dissolution or reduction in both. If Ukraine joined NATO I would expect Russia to absorb the Donbass and heavily arm the border with Ukraine … that would not be good for peace or the NATO alliance.
There is a joke:
– When will Ukraine join the EU?
– Right after Turkey.
– And when will Turkey join the EU?
– Never.
I found this cartoon to be even more funny – somehow it reminded me of you leaving Donbas and moving to Tennessee. No need to return. 🙂
https://i.redd.it/gqixoyqftcc21.jpg
Maybe you should consider moving to Turkey, No…?
What is this nonsense of “Russian puppet”. Belarus and Kazakhstan provide zero support, politically and financially for Crimea and Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia,unlike the blackmailing US thugs ,doesn’t act like that.
Belarus, in proportion and individually ,has done far more trade with the baltics and EU, than Nazi Ukraine has managed to do
Don’t forget Gruzia’s major help, or “neutrality” to the point of assistance to Chechen terrorists throughout the 90s and even after that
Ukrainians define themselves in relations to Russians and their national self-esteem is predicated on degrading Russians. Ukrainian fascination with Rus is devoted entirely to proving that Russians have ‘nothing to do with’ and ‘stole’ Rus and nothing to do with the actual history of Rus or its supposed accomplishments. Ukrainians behave just like any other nation with an inferiority complex, albeit with more fanaticism.
Same silly argument can be made about Russians degrading Ukrainians.
Yeah, having grown up in Ukraine I would say this is the biggest difference. Ukrainians define themselves in relation to Russians, even if it’s to prove how much more European, pure-blooded, civilised they are in comparison to Russians. Russian identity on the other hand doesn’t revolve around Ukrainians in the same way. Honestly, before 2014 many Russians earnestly had no idea how much Ukrainians nationalists despise them. They simply weren’t paying any attention and would have been surprised to find out they were involved in an imaginary rivalry with Ukrainians.
@AP
IT is a service industry. Service industry does not make nearly as much money as manufacturing. Especially when the world economy is crashing.
FYI talked to some ex regime people about how things are going in Kiev and they told me better then couple of years ago but surrounding villages it’s complete shit.
Biggest mistake you can make is thinking about the Ukraine as a real, living nation, given how fragmented it is: people in Kharkov and Galicia speak different language, go to different churches, travel to different countries for work… in effect they have nothing in common with each other.
The Ukraine remains a deeply divided country. There is no such thing as Ukrainian public opinion: people in the West and South-East have wildly different views. Russian policy in the Ukraine needs to account for this fragmentation and, ideally, encourage it.
It was 53 million at the time of independence…Let’s face it, the Ukraine IS a collapsing basketcase. It’s collapsing in the very real demographic sense.
Honestly, I don’t get where Karlin’s Ukro-optimism is coming from. Economic history of the Ukraine is full of sharp crashes followed by periods of consolidation as people gradually adapt to new, diminished standard of living.
I have worked for a while, bringing Ukrainian truck drivers to Europe. The vast majority of them came from the East.
https://youtu.be/kAmeIM5r9WE
This is an influence of Polish propaganda on the feeble minds of Ukrainian kholops.
History literally doesn’t know a country called Ukraine, and it has been largely imposed upon the Ukrainian masses because the Russian revolutionaries needed allies and found them among Ukrainian nationalist fabulists.
A nation larger than Poland, with a country larger than France should not feel inferior. But they ought to realise that they have no claim to the long history, and are rather a product of efforts of nineteenth century nationalists.
Yegor Prosvirnin said in one of his podcasts that he went to the Maidan to see if an alternative Russian state can emerge from the protest movement.
He could not even understand what the Maidanites were telling him. LOL
I heard the IT industry makes 4% of Ukraines economy, and employs several hundred thousand people.
But really, that’s not enough.
I think it was Romano Prodi, who said that Ukraine will join the EU right after New Zealand. LOL
But I think in the future, should Ukraine regulate her Donbass conflict, renew trade with Russia, and should the EU consolidate after Brexit, there may be a chance Ukraine will be considered for membership.
Russians have a tendency not to even notice the Ukrainians. I have heard that up until the mid-19th century, the Tsarist government considered all the people of Right Bank Ukraine to be Polish. They certainly only dealt with local nobility which was polonised.
The problem is also that the popular culture of Little Russia, on which the Ukrainian nationalism is based on, is of the village. The towns in Ukraine were either Russian speaking or until latter 19th century Polish speaking, and in Western Ukraine they remained Polish speaking until WWII.
The Bolsheviks attempted to equalise these country bumpkins but this vyshyvanka, sharovary stuff was more a decoration.
Following 1991, in a typically sovok fashion, Russian media completely failed to report on Ukraine. This makes the post-2014 hysteria that we see in Russian media rather comical. I would say the Euromaidan caught many by surprise.
This is likely the case because the drop in support for the CU did not lead to any drastic increase of support for the EU.
But I would say there is a degree of sincerity in favouring the neutral option. Seeing that pro-Russian orientation has lead to 2 Maidans, and conflict with Russia, there are people who want to opt out of geopolitics.
Says a fucking American in Arizona.
Many Ukrainians do not burn with the desire to return Donbass and Crimea, and don’t think of these territories as Ukraine. That’s because Ukraine is an artificially created country, and Ukrainians don’t have any history winning wars against invaders.
https://insomniacresurrected.com/2019/03/21/a-reminder-that-ukrainian-nationalists-havent-won-a-single-war-ever/
Ukraine has been completely constructed by benevolent Muscovites. First the Provisional Government gave Ukraine the gubernias of Russian Empire, then Bolsheviks gave Ukraine Donbass, then Comrade Stalin conquered Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak territories, then Khrushchev gave Ukraine Crimea.
What kind of victories do Ukrainian patriots have in defending their territory. Azov killing the policemen of Mariupol? Or perhaps smoking Strelkov out of Slavyansk? LOL
Uh no. In addition to Patriotic duckspeaks there is an objective reality, and it (among other things) is expressed in a huge number of Ukrainians “traditionally” moving to Russia. Ukrainians on the Maidan tried to prove to themselves and others that they cool guys, but didn’t achieve success ( to put it mildly). And those people who loudly scream about the Ukrainian superiority, in the depth of soul perfectly realize what reality is (that’s why they scream so loud). If Ukraine had real achievements-they wouldn’t have such hysterics.
It used to be, at your old stupid blog, that you pushed the idiotic thesis that it was ‘Poles and Austrians’ that created Ukraine, now it’s the ‘Muscovites’*? It must be difficult to remember anything at all after so many years of ‘blazzing’? Well, at least you’re still consistent at being a Ukrainaphobe. LOL trying to spread your various forms of BS!
*Why not try floating a new theory where it’s the Ameicans that created Ukraine? It makes more sense than the stupid shit you’ve come up with so far.
BTW, Budvar, I’d like to point out to you (once again) your inconsistencies. First you ban me at your blog (for the great crime of posting a ‘whataboutism’), then I notice that you’re following me around here at Karlin’s blog, stalking me, as if you can’t get enough interaction with me. What gives? 🙂
In this context, “should” is the same as “if”. And it’s a series of big “ifs”. As Russian joke, with which Putin not so long ago flummoxed translators and Western public, has it: “if grandma had balls, she’d be a grandpa”.
Yes, Ukraine was (and even minus Crimea and Donbass still is) a very heterogeneous country. But in and of itself this did not doom it. If Ukrainian leaders (all of them since 1991, not only the US puppets installed after the coup in 2014) actually cared about the country, rather than about lining their pockets, they’d promote things that unite people, not those that divide them. Instead they decided that primeval tribal nationalism is the best smokescreen for their thievery. Suppression of all non-Ukrainian languages (Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Crimean Tatar, with the latter becoming one of the official languages in Crimea only after it ran away from Ukraine and became a part of Russia) was and still is particularly devastating. Nationalism doomed this would-be country that actually had decent potential, but blew its chances. Switzerland has four official languages, so does Singapore, and this contributes to the stability of these entities. But now it’s too late to cry over spilled milk: life is irreversible, what’s done is done and cannot be undone.
That’s it Janissar, keep on plugging for all of the ethnic groups in Ukraine, minus the largest one of all, the autochtonous Ukrainians. The last time I brought up that the Ukrainians are only following the lead of their ‘Big Brother’ in deemphasizing ethnic languages, I got banned from another janissar’s blog. I’m sure that it doesn’t bother you at all that Ukrainian schools and other cultural organizations have been consistently eliminated in Russia? I think that you forgot to mention Somali and Ubangi language rights too? There’s at least 10,000 Rusyns in the mountains that the FSB has been agitating for, for several decades?…
No, this is a top dog/underdog dynamic, not a two-way street. I will quote Lawrence Glarus again
https://www.socialmatter.net/2018/07/26/a-letter-to-an-imperial/
He writes of cultural exchanges, but the same dynamic is obvious when one looks at how young and insecure countries define themselves. Poland (also self-abasing, just like Ukraine) defines itself in relation to the great Western powers and Russia, but Poland, by and large, doesn’t figure in how these countries define themselves. Similarly, Norway defines itself in relation to Denmark and Sweden, but this is not at all reciprocated.
Agreed. I always roll my eyes at Ukrainian attempts to trace their country’s history further back than that. It all reads like Whig history to me. Strong regional identities and separatist movements you find in any large country. The one difference here is that the Bolsheviks turned the Ukrainian ones into a country.
To be a banderista, you must be consumed by a severe inferiority complex and either actually be clinically dumb, or at least pretend to be clinically dumb and incapable of reading and comprehension. Congratulations, you qualify.
Reminds me of a Ukrainian joke:
New teacher comes to class, says:
– Let’s get acquainted. I am Mykola Petrovych, Bandera follower.
A girl rises:
– I am Natalka, Bandera follower.
A boy rises:
– I am Vova, separatist.
– Why are you a separatist, Vova?
– Well, my father is a separatist, my mother is a separatist, my sister is a separatist, all my friends are separatists, so I am a separatist.
– What if your father were a drug addict, your mother a prostitute, your sister a slut, and all your friends complete idiots?
– Then I’d be Bandera follower.
People were just protesting against gender violence in some kinds of feminist “Women’s March” in Kiev
“gvaltuvaty”- rape
https://www.instagram.com/p/Buwi5vYFSfW/
Russian sources desperately portray Maidan as a failure for Maidan people. Melanf believes it.
Honestly, if it wasn’t support of Polish nobility and the Austrian government, Ukrainehood might not have emerged at all.
And you cannot prove this statement wrong.
And you cannot prove me wrong on my assessment of territorial creation of Ukraine the state. Mind you, it is not the same contribution as in the case of the Poles and Austrians.
Again, hilarious that a guy from Donbas keeps referencing prostitutes. Well, on second thought, I suppose it makes complete sense…
Bandera followers are in Galicia.
Where are prostitutes from in Ukraine?
HIV prevalence in Ukraine:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg/400px-Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg
Observation of an American moral degenerate/journalist in Moscow:
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7573
“Lola, my whore, came from Severodonetsk, a toxic dump in the Lugansk oblast, the Russified east of Ukraine.I rented her late on Sunday, November 28th — the same day that the Ukrainian governors of several pro-Yanukovich regions were holding a congress in Severodonetsk, threatening to create a breakaway southeastern Ukrainian republic if the “orange” revolution in Kiev succeeded. It was one of those coincidences that writers invent to give a sordid story some relevance — but invention in this case isn’t necessary. We’re talking about whores here, folks. Any john in Moscow knows that Yanukovich country, the pro-Russian southeast of Ukraine, is the snapper-basket of Europe, the white world’s most fertile breeding ground for whores, the Golden Triangle of prostitution production.”
::::::::
So your joke is like a guy from Detroit making fun of street crime in Tokyo.
There is nothing Ukrainophobic in the truth. Ukraine would do much better if she accepted reality in all things. Can you deny Comrade Stalin joined Western territories to the country? Can you deny Ukrainian nationalists haven’t won a single war? Can you deny the Austrian government supported Hrushevsky? Can you deny Khrushchev gave Ukraine Crimea? Can you deny Ukraine was given all her territories by various Muscovite governments?
If you can deny any of my claims, you have a right to call me an Ukrainophobe. Until then, you are just butthurt svidomite.
I’ll have to disappoint you about the Americans, they will not fight Ukraine’s struggles.
I know personally people from Ukraine, who says a lot of his friends and colleagues (which are educated people, with professions like computer scientists), wish for Ukraine to repair relations with Russia.
You pay more for “Miele” washing machine, not because you love the politics of German companies which were working through the Second World War – but because “Made in Germany” has a better connotation of product quality than “Made in Somalia”.
I would prefer to buy products from Ukraine than from Western countries, if the quality was equivalent. The problem is, they are not usually attractive. Anyone here like the taste of Roshen chocolate, or can eat it without feeling sick from the sweetness? (I received a huge box of Roshen chocolate last year, and was not a fan).
The Muscovites gave Ukrainians their own Bantustan, so they don’t get absorbed by the culturally superior Greater Russians into a Common Russian culture.
They had a referendum in 1991 in Transcarpathia, and they chose autonomy that Ukraine ignored. So Ukraine didn’t allow the separate development of Carpatho-Rusyns but demands Russia have a respect for Ukrainian culture?
Moscow gave Ukrainians a Bantustan, Ukraine didn’t give Rusyns a Bantustan.
A skewed PBS segment on the church situation in Ukraine:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/russias-war-in-ukraine-leads-to-historic-split-in-the-orthodox-church
Ukrainians were something like 1/4 or 1/3 of the Soviet army total;, without them the USSR would have lost the war. The Western territories were the spoils that Ukraine earned from this fight, they were not some sort of “gift” that was “given” to them.
And the Russians supported the Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvian nation-builders to check the powers of the Poles and Baltic Germans, respectively. Does this make the Baltic nations some sort of creations of the Romanovs?
Ukrainian nationalists fought on the side of the Central Powers during World War I against Russia. This side defeated Russia.
The struggle in so-called Novorossiya was at least a draw. Pro-Russians wanted to grab all of Eastern and Southern Ukraine, all the way to Odessa. They got bottled up in the urban half of Donbas only.
At any rate, given that the Russia has over three times the population of Ukraine, I’m not sure that being able to defeat the Ukrainian nationalists is something to gloat or brag about.
I believe the state of Ukraine-Russia relations are unsustainable for Ukraine. Sooner of later, Ukraine will mend relations with Russia because that’s the only pragmatic solution.
There are a lot of normal people in Ukraine, some of whom are my friends and relatives. But they all tolerated Nazis for many years, and do not act against current regime. So, I don’t know, but something must be seriously wrong with the population there. Personally, I prefer American washers and driers to European ones. They handle large things, like small rugs and comforter covers, much better.
Porky screwed up not only chocolate. Remember Kiev cake? It was really tasty. Now his freaking Roshen makes it. The cake contains peanuts instead of pecans, palm oil instead of butter, and tastes disgusting, worse than American sweets.
Actually the modern nationalist “nation-building” began in the last decade of the 18th century, not the 19th century. It was done by people of petty noble and Cossack officer backgrounds and was focused on their own ancestors’ briefly independent and later autonomous state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Hetmanate
There is nothing eye-rolling about descendants of the people who led this state tracing their country’s history back to it.
I guess they also turned the Baltic states into countries?
Ukrainians voted mostly for Ukrainian nationalist parties prior to Bolshevik rule. These parties formed the local government that declared independence, also prior to Bolshevik rule. After about a year the Bolsheviks invaded, and after a couple more years they occupied this area but kept it as a “Ukrainian SSR.” Somehow in your world this means some sort of transformation of Ukraine into a country by the Bolsheviks.
Always part of somebody else’s horde. The second example is particularly bad because the Ukrainian nationalists lost once they were abandoned by the Central Powers.
The Baltic nations did not think of themselves as Russians. Ukrainians were literally created out of a regional branch of the Russian people. Russians were put in concentration camps in Bohemia and Austria. Your comparison doesn’t quite match the issue…
And it doesn’t prove me wrong. It’s just whataboutism.
Did they now?
The Antimaidan in Kharkov flew both Russian and Ukrainian flags. The Antimaidan in Odessa wanted maximum autonomy. Only in the Donbass did the situation spiral into a separatist uprising, which heavily depended upon Russian assistance. The latter was actually rather limited.
Because unlike the pro-Russians, I bet the Kremlin realised that creating Novorossiya was not feasible.
Anyway, Ukrnazis couldn’t even properly defeat some East Ukrainian vatniks. Congratulations!
Moya khata z krayu, nichoho ne znayu!
Even a butthurt idiot like Stalin realized that it made more sense to add Ukrainian ethnographic territory to Ukraine, and not somewhere else. All of the territories added to the Ukrainian state included a majority of Ukrainians. The Ukrainian project had become the dominant orientation of the vast majority of Ukrainians that lived in these territories. Only Crimea, ‘gifted’ to Ukraine by Khruschev in the mid 20th century included a majority of Russian ethnics, but even still the second largest nationality there was comprised of Ukrainians. To listen to idiots like you one would have to believe some sort of nonsense that the only reason the Ukraine was put together, was because the commies wanted to somehow arrest the development of Russian nationalism in these lands – this is a large pile of dog excrement that you and those like you like to try and peddle. For the umpteenth time, take a look at these photos taken in Kyiv in 1917 and see how large the crowds were that attest to the robust nature of the Ukrainian movement:
http://ukrnationalism.com/media/k2/items/cache/c3eb6db5c2cf3d3a7927d51dac47136e_L.jpg
How much can Halychyna trace its history to the Cossack Hetmanate? The idea of the Ukrainian nation really crystallised in the late ninetieth century.
That is not to say that it was in large part based on the culture of the Hetmanate.
The only butthurt type here is you. Ethnographic territory is what Ukraine is based on LITERALLY! Not history, not tribal allegiance, not religion… ethnography!
I mean, I don’t mind but claims of Ukraine to Crimea and Donbass are rather tenuous…
Remember, I think it was Rudnytsky, who divided Ukraine into the core and periphery. I never doubted the strength of the Ukrainian nationalist idea in Central and Western Ukraine.
So WTH should Ukrainians bend over backwards and afford this unsympathetic bunch of chauvinists their own schools and other cultural attributes where they can continue their 5th column activities?
Let them all pack and go back to their own version of Mongolia, to serve the current and future czars.
Nobody in Ukraine is too worried about 10,000 hillbilly misfits. Outside of Ukraine, only misfits and troublemakers like you and unemployed grant eaters take up the cause. ‘Rusyns’ – give me a break – go and cry on somebody else’s shoulder.
Well, Galicians went there in large numbers. The second most significant Zaporozhian leader, Sahaidachny, was a Galician. Khmelnytsky studied in Lviv.
It was a renaming – and nothing more – of the Little Russian nation that began a century earlier. Reading some Little Russian stuff is identical to reading Ukrainian nationalist things – Russians are Mongols, Little Russians are true Rus, etc.
No, in the early modern times they thought of themselves as a Rus people and the people we know as Russians, as Moskal people who were not Rus people.
You may think that names are magic but by that logic Romanians are a branch of the Romansch people of Switzerland. Or of the Romans.
They were going to grab half of Ukraine and people (like you?) were bragging that soon half of Ukraine would join Russia. It didn’t turn out that way, did it.
Somebody forgot to tell the huge crowds of protestors about your views regarding the Ukrainian movement. They all stood out there and braved the cold and violence for months on end only because of ‘Ethnographic territory’. Well, so be it I guess?…
https://youtu.be/-nNFrvGOb9o
Oh, and let’s not forget about Ms. Nuland’s milk and cookies. Isn’t that the way that it goes?
For those who don’t speak Ukrainian, it means “my house is on the side, I don’t know anything”.
However, this does not explain it all. This attitude is even more prevalent in the US than in Ukraine, yet the people in the US are doing so much better. It might be the combination of this attitude with artificial nationhood, widespread thievery viewed as norm, almost a virtue, and severe inferiority complex.
Some in Ukraine proclaim that thievery is even patriotic: “Putin will come, but everything is already stolen”.
So in Banderastan – no money for camera’s installed at polling stations ( for me this is quite big necessity in post-soviet state elections, and has become a big part of the furniture in Russian elections in the last decade)….but plenty of money for gay parades and feminist marches!
Alleging wide-scale fraud is the default position of Soros/State Department organisations, cameras installed at stations, available to be monitored online by any loser/”concerned citizen” via the internet ,is a strong wasy to deal with it – zero surprise to hear the sound of silence from these clowns on the absence of them in this election ( and of millions of Ukrainians in Russia who can’t vote)
I’ve also come to the realisation that in this pseudo-democracy fraud, the idiotic listing of 40 candidates, means that there is no compulsion for there to be any debate between the main 4 candidates ( maybe could list 6 candidates as deserving a television debate). As such it means Poroshenko gets away from being slaughtered in a televised debate ( the only possible outcome) …although at the same time he isn’t anywhere near the same planet of understanding as Putin, to be able to get away
This Soros/State Department enabled “no cameras at polling stations”policy also gives a green light to massive state fraud, in favour of Poroshenko.
Also your picture is in Kiev, her instagram is written entirely in Russian( “surprise”)…but this bitch is holding a placard written in ukrop? entirely manufactured garbage.
Because Romania was a core part of Rome from the time of the Roman Kings and contained its original capital, right? And who can forget when the Roman elite packed up and moved to modern day Romania. Way to prove my earlier silly comment right, by the way.
Ukrainians are not the same people as Russians, but this is not the product of Russians being ‘Moskals’ but of Ukrainians being colonized by Poles. Colonization of East Slavs by a West Slavic culture produced a different culture than what came before. A rough analogy would be if a section of Germany were conquered by Sweden and ruled by a Swedish elite for 500 years. Those people would be linguistically and culturally distinct from the rest of Germany, and may or may not act with hostility when the time for German unification came.
There is nothing wrong with Ukrainians asserting their nationhood, but they are the newer culture, the separatists, the offshoot – not Russians. It’s interesting to note that the obsession with Rus does not exist in Russia. It’s simply regarded as an earlier form of their culture, while for Ukrainians it contains the basis for their legitimacy and the entirety of their ‘stolen’ glory. This is despite Russians being the only ones to preserve Old East Slavic texts and Bylinas, examples from Ukraine are non-existent.
LOL…….nobody was saying that Russia was going to miraculously acquire an extra 2 trillion dollars in it’s budget and pay for these territories! As it is- 6 million from Crimea and Donbass, plus 3 million Ukrainian working in Russia already, 100000+ high-skilled professionals throughout the country who have gone to Russia since the coup…….that’s not far from half in an already deserted country.
The embarrassing realisation for cretins as yourself ( albeit from thousands of km’s and zero connection at all to Ukraine) is that without threat of EU/US sanctions and the prospect of internationally unrecognised territories, plus oligarchs empowered at the time by them ( such as the excrement Kolomoisky in Dnepropetrovsk) then definitely Kharkov ( where Boiko is leading by some distance in the polls for the fake election this week) , Donetsk,Lugansk, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporizhiya, Nikolaev, and maybe Kherson would have leapt to join Russia you sick imbecile.
Militarily there is no doubt that if they wanted to grab half the territory…then they could have you idiot……..they were hardly resisted in rule over this territory for centuries. It’s a miracle what the LNR & DNR forces have managed to hold and achieve ( they seem less eager to indulge in suicide for pleasure , as their opponents do)
An understanding of history and a stupid analogy that would shame a 6 year old with severe brain damage.
Difficult to know where to start, but for lowlifes as yourself is equally funny the the realisation that the founder of Moscow is buried in Kiev ( in a church tried to,but failed so far , to be seized illegally) . There are centuries of the ruler of Kiev being a person inextricably linked of having rule over/with Russian territory. In the rare years of this not being the case, the Polish dickead in charge has been desperate to lure a Russian into bed and become his wife and give birth to an heir . Prokofiev, Bulgakov, Gogol and others are buried in Moscow and self-identified, and viewed by others as entirely part of Russian identity.
No such identity exists for Banderatards
So, according to Ukrainian historiography, Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire won WWI? That’s news to everybody, particularly to Germans and Austrians.
I suggest you stop defaming Ukraine by your idiocy. For all others I must state: only Ukies are this demented, Ukrainians are not.
LOL…………..much more sense to play habitually anti-Russian Poles off against Banderatards in a united territory of Poland ( also undermines the Polish Catholic Church) , you idiot. After all ,there is no “Ukraine” but a Polish nefarious influence and a 95% Russia that comprises “Ukraine”. This was simply an issue of balancing territories. Give land to Poland from Germany, take land from Poland and give to Lithuania, take land from Poland and give to Ukraine ( and the “majority” issue is not true for the Hungarian and Romanian regions given you thick POS). Ethnicity was the very least important issue you cretin.
Further proof for the nonsense of your lies is if you look at Stalin’s decisions on territory for Armenia/Azerbaijan and Kirgiziya/Uzbekistan or Kirgiziya/Kazakhstan. Or multiple examples of how easy the USSR managed to just deport the problem away…..no real problem in a relative ghostown area of USSR which is what the western area was you clown
Stalin, as a fact, is the father of the Ukrainian nation ( what excuses these demented ladyboys fantasising about being part of the Golodomor when that territory has f**k all to do with it ?) You are disrespecting your master….and should apologise profusely for it. and nor is there a “Ukrainian” ethnicity
It was a very generous gesture by Stalin….who deserves statues in Banderastan
The April Fools Day picture is beyond cretinous in it’s usage and inerpretation
Was Russia these things?
Who said Russians are different because they are Moskals? I was simply pointing out that even in the late 15th century/early 16th century the Rus in what is now Ukraine considered Russians to be Moskals rather than fellow-Rus. This sense of being a different people dates to much older times than the 19th century.
More accurate: if the local elite adopted the Swedish language for a few centuries.
But a generally good analogy.
A better (but still far from perfect) analogy would be if the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal was long-lasting, resulting in rule by a French elite and massive transformation of the speech in Portugal. Meanwhile Brazil still spoke Portuguese and had the royal family ruling it.
Then the two countries fight over who is the real Portugal. A very silly thing to do, because actually neither one really is.
Similarly, both Ukrainian and Russian engage fairytales when they claim they are Rus. FFS, the Nordic Rus spent the first centuries selling Slavs as slaves and massacring them for disobedience.
Both are offshoots, in different ways. Russians come from the Suzdal principality, a periphery. Moscow was not even founded until Rus was disintegrating into different principalities. Russian ethnogenesis begins in the 12th-13th centuries (had Russia been based on Novgorod, the argument would have been stronger). As you correctly note, Ukraine comes from the part of Rus that was owned by Poland. Its ethnogenesis really begins in the 14th-15th centuries.
Similarly, the English as we know them really started at the time of the Norman invasion.
Also, although the Polish impact on Ukraine was massive and much greater than Tatar/Mongol impact on Russia, the latter post-Rus influence on Russia was not slight. There is no linear relationship between the Rus of Kiev and modern Russia in terms of these being the same people.
Ukrainian history emphasized Cossacks as much as if not more than it does Rus. Ukrainian nationalists just deny that Rus was Russia, so perhaps Russians notice that part more.
Bylinas were preserved in only a small part of Russia, not everywhere in Russia. They were thought to be extinct until someone found them in an isolated region and then popularized them. So the idea that they were preserved in small corner of Russia that everyone forgot about proves that Russia has a stronger connection to Rus is absurd. Some obscure old Scottish folk songs are preserved in Appalachia but lost in Scotland itself. That makes Americans the real Scots?
The Ukrainian language itself contains more archaic words (in addition to Polish ones). Apparently, graffiti from 12th century Kiev looks more like vernacular Ukrainian than like modern Russian:
https://hromadske.radio/vlasna-dumka/mova-drevnogo-kyyeva-chy-dopomozhe-sofiyskym-grafiti-ukrayinskyy-kulturnyy-fond
The article refers to the 12th century speech in Kiev as “Ukrainian” which is ridiculous, but the fact is that it resembles Ukrainian more than Russian (such as names on the graffiti, Petro, Pavlo and grammar such as vocative tense that continues to exist in modern Ukrainian, disappeared in Russian).
I guess you can’t read. They won the war against Russia. Russia was forced to accept their terms.
You should become one of Budvar’s devotees. He’s in big need of gullible retards like you that believe any bit of Ukrainaphobic nonsense. Can’t you see that he’s camped out over here at Karlin’s blog fishing for morons?
Really? Then how come the Germans (along with their puppet Hetman Skoropadsky) hastily retreated from the territory they ostensibly got according to the Brest peace treaty? Something does not jibe.
They defeated Russia but lost a year later to other countries.
Is that hard to understand?
Ukies never fail to surprise by their denseness. Russia withdrew from the war with Germany, essentially using the strategy of the Chinese monkey-king: watching the two tigers fighting. Then it got the spoils won by the blood of others. Some defeat.
The ‘spoils’ being Bolshevism and massive territorial loss, of course.
Russia got Bolshevism before Brest peace. It lost a lot of territories after Bolshevik revolution. Taking what Germany occupied was the beginning of restoration of the former Imperial territory. On the brink of WWII among former parts of the Russian Empire only Finland and Poland escaped.
However, every colonial Empire discovered the hard way that there are territories that you are better off not having than having, because of dismal quality of the inhabitants. Russia figured this out late, it got rid of parasites only as the result of the breakup of the USSR. The funniest thing is that the EU voluntarily took a lot of the same flat worms that sucked lifeblood out of Russia. Sometimes greed is its own punishment.
You’re right, my mistake.
She’s a software developer, originally from Donetsk. But I guess now in Kiev, is that you write protest signs in Ukrainian.
I think the protest is related to the #MeToo which is fashionable suddenly in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, #MeToo movement has started 2 months ago apparently, so they are just matching the West with completely random timing and a few years delay lol. .
Actually, it was just on international women’s day.
Bullshit. Regarding WW II, it’s more accurate to say that without the rest of the USSR, Ukraine would’ve been zilch.
Agree.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/09/29/reassessing-russian-ukrainian-past-present-and-future.html
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09052016-ongoing-russian-ukrainian-intricacies-analysis/
Reminded how “pistachio ice cream” in the US now often has almonds in place of pistachios. At last notice, Friendly’s is an exception.
Some Ukrainians, as the overwhelming majority of them didn’t take part in such a vote. In point of fact, Hrushevsky and Vynnychenko joined up with the Bolshes, with the Galician Ukrainian army en masse accepting the command of the Whites. There was also Skoropadsky’s edict for an All-Russian Federation, inclusive of Russia and Ukraine:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/22052011-pavlo-skoropadsky-and-the-course-of-russian-ukrainian-relations-analysis/
Hence, it’s quite wrong to suggest that the pre-Soviet Ukrainian level of support for a separate Ukrainian national identity (including opposition to a loose union state arrangement with Russia) was on par with the present day situation. It clearly wasn’t, as evidenced by Petliura’s grand failure, resulting in his becoming a puppet for Pilsudski’s revanchist Polish imperialism.
There’s no doubt that the Ukrainian national movement is on more solid ground today than it was in 1917 – 1921, but it’s evident that there was quite a bit of support for some sort of an independent Ukrainian state back then. All you have to do is to study the four different universals declared in Kyiv during that period that opted for a more independent course (away from Russia) with each successive iteration. Of the four successive governments that held sway in the capital of Kyiv though, it was Skoropadsky’s regime that lasted the shortest amount of time. The Ukrainian peasants just weren’t interested in sequestering foodstuffs and other goods needed by the German war machine during this chaotic and violent era, and thus Skoropadsky lost any support that he may have had. Here’s another photo that is comparable to the street photos in Kyiv in 2014 from 1917:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Mityng.jpg/300px-Mityng.jpg
I am glad people remember me, Budvar
By that “logic”, Germany didn’t lose the first war but withdrew only to conquer France at a later time. And it didn’t lose the second war, it only withdrew and then economically dominated Europe at a later time.
If the USSR had 1/3 fewer troops it would have lost the war.
Some people believed Russia would intervene and help liberate the South East. But as it turned out, places like Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Kharkov had a strong pro-Ukrainian element. Russia was not interested in liberating these territories.
If you haven’t noticed, Russia only comes where it is welcome. South Ossetia, Crimea, Donbass. Dnepropetrovsk has supplied most of the meat for the meat grinder. Why should Russia be saving a bunch of svidomites?
This is utter bollocks.
Russian sources desperately portray events in Crimea, Illovaysk, Debaltsevo, etc.
as a failure for Maidan people.
But the true Ukrainian patriots know that in fact it was a brilliant Ukrainian victory (at sea, the Russian fleet surrendered to Ukraine without a fight, on land, the Ukrainian militia surrounded and utterly defeated the enemy regular army which had an overwhelming superiority in numbers and equipment). Undoubtedly all these events have shown that the Maidan people cool and smart. Any Ukrainian “patriot” believes in it
LOL, because that was what Maidan was about. And all events in 2014-2015.
Maidan was about getting rid of Yanukovich, reorienting towards Europe, eliminating corruption, and increased prosperity. First two were successful, corruption was a massive failure, and the last thing is in progress. The parts of Ukraine that supported Maidan are wealthier now than they were at the time of the Maidan. Kharkiv is poorer, but it wasn’t pro-Maidan in the first place. The idea that Maidan was some sort of failure is a Russian fantasy, desperately clung to.
Starting from the 1440s the Volhynian Chronicle described territory of Grand Duchy of Lithuania as “all the Rus lands” and Russia as Muscovy. In a list of different lands, Muscovia was categorized alongside Bulgaria and Moldavia as Orthodox, but not Rus. The Battle of Orsha (1517) was described in the Volhynian Chronicle as a battle of Lithuanians and Rus against Muscovites.
In those times, the Muscovites meanwhile described themselves as Rus but the Eastern Slavs to the west as Poles or Lithuanians. Muscovite sources refer to Muscovites as Russkie Liudi but to Rus from Lithuania or Poland as inozemtsi, Poles or Lithuanians. So the Karamzin chronographer refers to “Lithuanian foreigner Ivan Storovsky.”
So both peoples recognized that the other was not them, which was common sense and true.
The ideology that it was eternally one people came later.
You see, I’m not really all that bad, and you? Did you really give up vaping the bud for drinking it instead? 🙂
I don’t know what the total soviet armed forces figures were, but Ukrainians:
https://mfa.gov.ua/en/article/open/id/2503
Yea, right. Ukrainians also dug out the Black Sea, built Egyptian pyramids, and Latin evolved from Ukrainian.
Ukies beat the inmates of every madhouse any day.
You know, I couldn’t really say, I wasn’t there. The fact that Ukrainians fought under the flag of the hammer and sickle was in itself a tragedy. But you tovarisch, a former citizen of the Republic of Donbas, I’d think that you’d take pride in the accomplishments of comrade Alex Berest? Moscow must have been impressed, why not you?
Why Ukrainian nationalists hate Donbas people even more then they hate Russians?
Sounds like another comrade Ogilvy. Orwell in 1984 described current Ukraine better than anyone. Suffice it to say that Kiev regime created the first Ministry of Propaganda in Europe after parteigenosse Hitler. However, German Nazis were quite capable, whereas Ukie wonnabe Nazis are pathetically incompetent in everything they attempt. As the Russian saying puts it, “what the horse does with its hoof, crayfish tries to do with its claw”.
I only take pride in real accomplishments, my own and those of others, not in wild fantasies and outright lies of propaganda (Soviet, American, and degenerate Ukie propaganda included).
Simple: Donbass people beat the crap out of Ukies, whereas Russia never joined the war.
It seems something deeper than that. You can read on AP and Mr. Hack posts a slight difference between feelings showed toward Russians and toward East Ukrainians. Toward Russia they feel a mix of envy with hate; but toward East Ukrainians they feel a strange mix of contempt, deeper hate and they wish suffering and death for people living east of the river. That’s something very weird if they consider East Ukrainians as fellow countrymen.
Donbass people embody what Ukies vehemently deny: by their very existence they show that it is possible to be a Ukrainian without being a Ukie (=wannabe Nazi). Not to mention that Donbass people are real winners. Ukies want to be winners, but are sore losers instead. Hence blind hatred.
Keep repeating the same BS. Germany was overextended. What you’re saying is somewhat on par with the claim that the USSR would’ve lost without Western aid. Granted, it would’ve been more difficult without the Western aid and/or Ukraine.
As previously noted: as a comparison, it’s more accurate to say that in WW II, Ukraine would’ve been zilch without the USSR.
Without Maidan Yanukovych would have been displaced as a result of the defeat ( absolutely inevitable) in the elections (which were to happen in 2014). That is the same “first two” but peacefully, without civil war and loss of territories.
But “Maidan people ” managed to change the President in the most destructive way for Ukraine. To claim that the Maidan is a triumph for Ukraine-well it is probably suitable for psychotherapy
Not really. Regardless of national origin, a good number treat traitors (real and exaggerated) of a given group worse than the outside opponents of that given group. A point that (from my perspective and that of some others) leads to some of the so-called Russian liberals, who pretty much uncritically go along with the Western based/influenced neocon and neolib preferences.
AP sees East Ukrainians as deracinated Sovok degenerates, neither truly Ukrainian nor Russian. In many ways it’s an understandable attitude, but I find it a bit funny that he considers these areas core parts of Ukraine when he looks at its inhabitants with disdain.
One has to assume that there was some strategic thinking behind it, but possibly not. The achievements of Maidan would have all happened if the regular elections were allowed to happen later that year and Yanukovitch would lose. The costs of Maidan would almost certainly be avoided in that scenario.
Given that the main beneficiary of the rushed Maidan in February was Russia – they got Crimea, destabilised Ukraine, planted seeds of future conflicts – one would think that the final, mindless storming of the government buildings in Kiev was stage managed by Kremlin. Among the possibilities available to Russia at that time, it was the best one.
Even in their ‘victory’ Ukrainians managed to lose. But they have those call centers in Lviv now, so it was all worth it. Was it?
So, are they Novorussians? Or former Crimean khanate subjects.
Not as an end in itself, but in a (cargo-cultish) belief that such reorientation would lead to European living standards.
Increased relative prosperity, not just absolute, the latter being inevitable whether Maidan happened or not. And as AK noted, convergence with Visegrad requires per capita real GDP growth of at least 6%, not 3%.
“In progress” in the same sense that it was already so pre-Maidan, and is also so virtually everywhere. Economic growth is the norm, it is very rare for any country not to have net-positive real GDP growth over a period of 5 years or more. Achieving this does not make Maidan a success.
Maidan was primarily about the promise of significant progress toward ending both Ukraine’s extreme corruption, and its economic stagnation relative to Europe and Russia. It has utterly failed to achieve either of these things, while costing the country over 10% of its territory. By any reasonable standard it is clearly a failure.
Funny thing is, the idea that Maidan was organized by the Kremlin (apparently, Nuland, Merkel, McCain (may he rot in Hell), and the rest were dispatched by Putin, too) is gaining popularity in Ukraine. Considering the damage Maidan did to the country, it is only natural to accuse whoever you see as an enemy of organizing it.
As dark humor joke in Ukraine has it, after some Nazis violently demonstrated against Porky and Ukrainian police even arrested a few, “agents of Kremlin attacked agents of Kremlin to give agents of Kremlin pretext to arrest them”.
My money has been on Maidan being simple incompetence and a random chain of events. The question is whether anyone in the middle of it figured out that there can be some gain in the chaos. For example, there is no question that Russia has had a contingency plan to re-unite with Crimea. They needed a triggering event – and Maidan very conveniently gave them one.
All sides had the experience of Orange Revolution and how it fizzled out – all sides were better prepared in 2014. The violent storming of the government by Maidanistas and the resulting short-term chaos were literally the only scenario under which Russia could take Crimea. All other scenarios would inevitably lead to eventually losing Crimea and the Russian navy headquarters, with Nato sooner or later moving to Sebastopol. The 150-year old Crimean war would finally be won by the West and it would change everything.
This was known to the Western planners. They either failed to account for the speed of how quickly Russians moved, or – more likely – their foot soldiers on Maidan messed it up with too much emotion and not enough quick action. One person who might know is Yanukovitch – he may feel that he was sacrificed by Putin for Crimea.
One can see that Washington was stunned and realised quickly that they lost. The Plan B we is to needle Russia with sanctions and establish Ukraine as mortal enemy of Russia. It is a pale and inferior strategy the West had to settle for.
Yanukovich had too much at stake to give up power peacefully. Already the preliminary steps were being taken (one opponent had his offices raised and was looking at eventual prosecution, another was deemed ineligible). Another strategy would have been to turn Ukraine into a parliamentary republic with Yaukovich as PM and the new president as a figurehead.
It is better that he was overthrown, than if he was given a chance to hold onto power, and then the moral opposition with clean hands sat grumbled quietly in their apartments or in exile.
Well, if your diet about what is happening in Ukraine consists of what the Russian media feeds you, it must indeed seem that way.
That, but also closer links to European states, and European governent processs (elections rather than Yanukovich being a Lukashenko-type post-Soviet despot).
I suspect growth in the Western parts of the country may be closer to 6% (or at least 4%-5%). In early 2017 when I was there Lviv already looked pretty much like Krakow did 10 years earlier and noticably better than in 2013. It was cheaper than Krakow of course, indicating that incomes were lower in absolute terms, but there has been significant convergence.
So keeping in mind that Maidan was the work of western and central Ukrainians (not eastern ones), there is some convergence, albeit slow.
You are cherry-picking the parts that didn’t work and ignoring the ones that did. Number one goal was eliminating Yanukovich and his regime, according to polls at the time. They wanted closer to ties to Europe, which happened. They wanted a democratic system and not a despotism, which happened. They wanted to end corruption – indeed, this part has failed. The country overall is where it was before Maidan relative to most of its neighbors but given the shift in the economic center of gravity in the country, the western and central parts collectively have probably improved relative to most of the neighborging countries.
Where have I ever expressed any hatred towards Russia, its culture or its people, liar? I consider Moscow to be my second home and love my family and friends there.
The only thing you got right was “contempt.” I certainly do not wish suffering for those people, nor do I hate them.
This appeared in a Ukrianian TV comedy sketch once. It was shown on Russia media as an actual class in Ukraine, and many Russians actually believe that Ukrainians schools teach this.
It is hilarious and totally expected that you are one of the believers.
A lot just leave without relation to conflict except as a desire to escape it and the poor economy.
I don’t know any people from Donbass personally. But I see ones who are acquaintances of friends in social media – e.g. in the same family: half of family immigrated to Kiev and other half to Moscow.
I agree that Crimea with the naval base at Sevastopol was one of the most coveted prizes for the Empire. As Russian joke has it, Ukraine without Crimea is like a purebred stallion without balls. Based on their other actions, I strongly suspect that both Western elites and midanistas were too stupid to see a few moves ahead, so they did not anticipate that Putin would use this occasion to reunite Crimea with Russia (which was a desire of a great majority of Crimean population ever since 1991).
I think that the other purpose of the Empire and its sidekicks was to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia. Because of hubris and deep ignorance, they did not know the Ukrainian reality and did not realize that something rotten through and through cannot serve as a battering ram. So, they were frustrated twice: Crimea was taken away and the rest of Ukraine turned out to be quite useless (Russian expression is “suitcase without a handle”).
I am not sure Putin actually planned for this. My impression is that in his dealings with the Empire and what it made out of unfortunate Ukraine, he follows English saying “when you see your enemy committing suicide, do not interfere”. Both midanistas and imperial “strategists” essentially delivered Crimea to him, and he reacted fast.
As to Yanuk, the only thing on which Russians and Ukrainians of all persuasions agree is that he is a piece of shit. I think now Putin regrets saving him from the Nazi mob, he’d be a lot more useful as a martyr than as a living sleazeball that he is.
Well, if Western Ukrainians despise so much Easterners, they have right to fight for their own state in order to avoid living as second class citizens in a state ruled by a regime that want to oppress them.
Are you saying that ridiculous claims that the earliest human civilization was in Ukraine (http://www.inerton.kiev.ua/Abstract_Indo-European_Prehistory.html) was never voiced?
Are you claiming that Viatrovych, who is now the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, did not spread any lies? Even Western sources were shocked by his outrageous manipulation of history (https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/the-historian-whitewashing-ukraines-past-volodymyr-viatrovych/).
I can dig out more links, but what’s the point? The two I cited show to anyone willing to see the kind of crazy lies that pass in current Ukraine for history. Digging out Black sea or tracing the origins of Latin to Ukrainian are on par with these.
Yes, much of the opposition to Skoropadsky was on the basis that he had a right of center land owning class perspective at a time when there was a leftward trend.
It’s also true that as a condition for being Germany’s guy, Skoro wasn’t permitted to have (by the Germans) much of an armed force – something his armed opponents took advantage of when WW I ended.
There’s a historical noting of Russian White forces being well received in Kiev at about the same time the Galician Ukrainian Army had arrived there, with a positive reception as well.
Russian Civil War era Ukraine had something for everyone.
But now Ukies are mad at Bulgakov, who in “The White guard” ridiculed their ideological predecessors in his usual scathing manner.
That is always a bad idea. Even best battering rams are hard to handle and expensive to maintain. They are also slippery. Maintaining ‘allies’ all around the world is costly and unproductive – when are richer countries going to learn this basic historical lesson?
If he didn’t, he shouldn’t be the president. It comes with the job to plan for these contingencies. I suspect Russia had a number of plans ready for years. Crimea is too important for them.
The part that I don’t get is how could Nuland and Co. mishandle it so catastrophically – all they had to do is put some force inside Crimea ahead of time, be quiet for a few weeks, pretend to be nice to Russia. By April-May the ‘reunification’ would simply not be possible. These are very obvious things that even low-level primitive societies are usually capable of doing. The crazy in-your-face cookies and baseball bats assault with simultaneously not preparing anything makes one wonder what kind of morons are in charge. It is almost scary, the sloganeering incompetence. Kremlin probably couldn’t believe their luck.
That depends on perspective. What spiritual ancestors a country picks for itself is in some sense a matter of choice. The convention in Sweden is to trace our history to the founding, in the year 1521, of the house of Vasa (Sweden’s counterpart to the Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, only documents words used in books printed after this date), but Scania, our most separatist province, was part of Denmark until 1658, and after that, occupied by Denmark on and off until 1711*. Modern Scanians’ sense of identity, then, should rightfully be twofold, but it’s not, for they long ago bought into the idea that they are Swedish.
With Ukraine, about which you know far more than I do, my impression is that the regions within its present borders were for most of the past centuries an unholy mess of nations and polities, and that any meaningful countrywide (by which I don’t mean national) identity only formed in the late years of 19th century, at the earliest. What could there possibly have been in common between someone in Mariupol and someone from Ivano-Frankivsk, half a Europe away? The natural setup for such a place, as I always keep telling people, would be to become a “cool Switzerland” and accept the historical curiosity of all this diversity, but instead we get history revisionism and tyranny of the majority.
I don’t know what Putin planned and what he didn’t. Thank goodness, I never was close to the ruling circles in any country. I am also not 100% sure that Putin should be president. He looks so good only by contrast with pathetic nonentities passing for leaders in the West, who are, indeed, remarkably ignorant, stupid, and incompetent. Compared to normal people he is just an ordinary man with reasonable intelligence, capable of learning on the job (remember his first years?).
Yes, the Empire with its Ukrainian operation shot itself in the foot twice. They were right on one thing only: a large fraction of the populace turned out to be dumb enough to believe them and their European vassals. Everything else was miscalculated.
Now the Empire is stuck with the monster it created. There is little doubt that Porky will engage in whatever falsifications are necessary to elect himself “president”, as his other options are dismal: hasty flight or a lengthy jail term. The Empire never learned that choosing the lowliest scum possible to do your bidding is a self-defeating strategy. It tries to repeat the same thing in Venezuela.
Re-electing a sitting president would be a first for Ukraine. If it happens, the clock will start ticking till next Maidan like convulsion. I am puzzled how relatively unpopular Tymoshenko is, she was a quasi-hero on Maidan after she was releases from jail. But people must have long memories.
What makes Putin different is his oddball normalcy – he was the most accidental president when he was chosen. And you are right he learned on the job. Most Western leaders go through decades of selection process where they lose any specificity and become interchangeable. The latest crop, people like Trump, Macron, Salvini are a Putin-like phenomenon, relative outsiders breaking in. It doesn’t always work.
The state organism resistance in the West is extremely strong – it rejects any new bodies with vengeance. That’s biologically sound, but evolutionary deadly. The increased insularity of the Western establishments and thinking is a sign of mal-adaptation. What happens inside these system bubbles is that stupidity reigns supreme, morons end up celebrating each other, and it all goes to hell very quickly when environment shifts – as it always eventually does. Putin’s opportunism, his appearance of a guy who is not quite sure of himself, and his unpredictability would serve West well today. They shouldn’t just hate him, they should learn from him, but that requires an amount of humility that Western elites are simply incapable of.
LOL, so claims about huts being an early proto-civilization (some crazy Russians have similar theories about Russia) and denial of UPA crimes (no different from Soviet denial of Katyn) are really the same as claiming Ukrainians dug out the Black Sea.
Generally, they were no different than the different parts of Poland that were separated during the time of the Partitions (Transcarpathia is a little different). Galicia and Volhynia and the Right Bank were all part of Poland until it was partitioned. Then Galicia became part of Austria for about 150 years. This gave the Galicians a Central European political culture, earlier mass literacy, etc. But Galicia hosted exiles from central and eastern Ukraine. These exiles, with their Cossack-based ideas, gave the Galicians their national ideology. There has also been a flow in the opposite direction. One of the most famous hetmans, Sahaidachny, was a Galician. In general, the regions were not as atomized as you seem to believe.
Between Ivano-Frankivsk and Mariupol are Vynnytsiya, Cherkassy, Dnipropetrovsk, etc. and there is a fairly smooth transition between these. There are meanwhile similarities in language, village customs, etc.
There will be a lot of grumbling and hot air in Ukraine, but no Maidan. Believe me, I grew up there, I know. They will swallow Porky’s falsifications and keep running away from their accursed country.
I don’t understand where the legend of Putin’s unpredictability comes from. I suspect he spreads it himself. In fact, he is as predictable as a clockwork. Besides, he always tells what he means to do, sometimes years ahead (remember Munich speech?), but morons do not learn to listen. Part of his surprise is that he does what he says, whereas no Western politician ever does what s/he says, they all lie on principle, as if there is glory in it.
It’s psychotherapy ” we’re not losers.” I know one similar situation-Georgians have a theory that the” preventive ” war of 08.08.08 saved Georgia from occupation. People hate to know that they’re idiots, so they come up with tales in the genre of alternative historiy, for their own consolation.
I noticed the same thing, they have an unhealthy fear of being perceived as losers so they medicate themselves with silly narratives. In the past people were simpler, they would just say ‘God willed it’ and moved on. Today strange verbiage is trotted out to justify almost anything.
He is steady, I agree. He tells people what he means to do, true. And yet if we would have to guess what he will do about let’s say Venezuela, or post-Ukrainian elections, or if Poland puts a missile base on Russia’s border – do we know? Only in retrospect it seems obvious – like what he did with Crimea. A test of any theory is its predictive power – I don’t know what Putin will do, that makes him ‘unpredictable’.
The paradox is that the Western leaders who say whatever comes to their mind and lie freely, are quite predictable. Maybe it is because none of their decisions is actually theirs, it is the holy permanent Western system speaking through them – no variances are allowed, so we are never surprised. You just know that Trump was going to bomb Syria (as would Clinton or even Bernie Sanders) – that’s the kind of predictability that the elites refer to as ‘values’.
Yeah, like the biggest decision of all in recent times, the election of Donald Trump. Even Donald didn’t really think that he had a chance to beat the ‘systems’ first choice, Hillary Clinton. Lots of nonsensical hyperbole on your part.
And similarly, Many Galicians (and other Ukrainains as well) moved to Zakarpattya throughout the centuries, bringing with them their ideals of a vast Ukrainian nation.
Look at yourself. More strange hyperbole.
It is very cute that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum have gotten together here. The guy who insisted that there was no American auto factory in the US soil despite living in a state with a massive GM plant, and the guy who claimed Yanukovich won the election in Transcarpathia in 2010 where he actually lost by 6%. Two experts sharing their “wisdom.”
I can predict all three. If I am right, then I understand Putin’s international policy.
Ukrainian elections. I expect that Russia won’t recognize the results. It is now certain that it will have plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons not to recognize this farce. Even puppet masters grudgingly acknowledge that the elections are going to be the dirtiest in the history of Ukraine. Porky did not allow not only Russian observers, but “wrong” observers from other countries, as well. Internet-connected constantly broadcasting cameras showing ballot boxes (now common in Russia; BTW, absent in the “democratic” US and EU) are prohibited in Ukraine. Both things are natural: when you commit a crime, you don’t want any witnesses, except your accomplices. Not to mention that millions of Ukrainian citizens working in Russia were deprived of their right to vote.
US missile launchers in Poland. That’s the easiest one. Russia will target the sites, and say so publicly. If Poles want to live in cross-hairs, so be it. In fact, the US authorities, however dumb they might be, understand that. They already switched plans to just building military equipment depots in Poland.
Western politicians lie because the elites that wholly own them expect people to be much dumber than they really are. Despite massive propaganda Dr. Goebbels would wholeheartedly approve of, a lot of people in the West still remember Colin Powell’s tube with laundry detergent at the UN. Now there is another “tube with laundry detergent” – Mueller’s report after two years of blatant lies. Western MSM are getting close to the achievement of Soviet MSM by 1991 – zero credibility. In their stupidity and hubris the elites do not see how dangerous this is for them.
OK, I buy that for now, but even then, the Polish partition puts us in the late 18th century, which means that Ukraine’s lands, apart from being divided between two countries, now soon also hosted Jews (through the Pale of Settlement), immigrating Russians, and sundry other minorities. And more important, this also means that this new cultural soup simmered for 150 years before the western parts were brought into the fold again. This is a long time for new cultures and traditions to develop*.
The basic error of Svidomism is precisely this: that it pretends that the Russian and Soviet years didn’t leave a mark. In my view, as I have probably made clear, the Russian and Soviet years are modern Ukraine, and to wish to see them undone amounts to patricide.
Let’s take it a level deeper on all three:
In Ukraine it depends on who ‘wins’. I agree about Porky, Russia will simply not recognize him. With Zelenskyi/Tymka-girl they might recognize and will try a new start. The question is what will Putin do if Porky ‘wins’ and starts a military assault on Donbas, or Russian language is outlawed in public places, or any other provocation. Porky is cornered, he would have to escalate if he stays in power. I am not sure I know what Putin would do.
I agree that US is so far wisely refraining from placing their missiles in Poland. A storage depot to scare the Russians is a bit of a joke. But over time, it will happen, and not just in Poland. To say that Poland will be in ‘cross-hairs’ is true, but also not actionable. Again, do we have know how Putin would react? He is legalistic to a fault, cautious, but he is ageing and might get cranky. He also understands that if a conflict with West is inevitable, he would be better of picking the time and place.
I can’t read Putin, my sense is that we are not done with him yet, he might surprise. That worries me.
Sure, it may well be 4-5% in the western regions. Undoubtedly there are some places in Ukraine that are doing better than they would have without Maidan- it would be strange and unusual to have a revolution that benefited absolutely nobody. But Maidan wasn’t sold as a revolution to benefit one part of the country at the expense of another, with no overall change. It was supposed to benefit (end the relative economic stagnation of) the entire country. Instead, the result has been faster growth in the west, slower growth in the east, about the same in the center and overall. If you’d asked Maidan supporters in 2014, whether such an outcome would constitute a success, I highly doubt that a majority would have said yes (even without mention of civil war and the loss of 10% of the country’s territory).
Also, slower growth in the east is not irrelevant to the quality of life in the west: It means less tax revenue from those regions for the central government, and hence less money to spend on health care, other social services, and physical infrastructure everywhere.
That’s meaningless, people are usually going to ascribe the more noble-seeming motive to themselves. But it’s obvious that Maidan was primarily about economic aspiration: If Yanukovich had signed the economic association agreement, he would probably not have been overthrown.
They still don’t have a democratic system. Ukraine remains a dysfunctional oligarchy. Even the neocon, anti-Russian outfit Freedom House currently only rates Ukraine as “Partly Free”, the same category it occupied pre-Maidan. The best you can say for Ukraine is that overall it may be slightly more free today than under Yanukovich (though this is highly debatable, as for example there is less freedom of speech now with all the banning of Russian media). And even assuming that to be true, those small gains could have been achieved in a much better way.
Ukrainians are basically Soviets, they deny their ghouls committed crimes. Unlike them, the Russians have largely moved on.
That would be a pleasant surprise but, mind you, the Kremlin recognised the Maidan putschists.
If Porky wins, he won’t start high-intensity war in Donbass, as he does not need yet another huge loss. He wants to keep stealing, not to endanger his place at the trough. His army and Nazi battalions will continue shelling Donbass, like they did for years, trying to do as much damage to civilian infrastructure as possible, but that’s all. I am sure Russia is already supplying freedom fighters with sufficient ammo and weapons. If Porky is dumb enough to start an offensive, like he did twice in 2014, Russian help will include specialists in anti-battery fire, possibly others, and Ukie army will be defeated like in 2014. I don’t think there will be Minsk-III, so Donbass republics will push Ukie hordes to the boundaries of Lugansk and Donetsk regions. Putin’s job would be to make sure they stop there. If Porky is forced to allow someone else to win (which I doubt), be it the clown or the gas princess, Putin would be tempted to make a mistake of attempting a new start (a mistake because they are all shit). My bet it, that start would lead nowhere, so the situation would return to exactly where it is now.
You are right that eventually the Empire will attempt to place real missile launchers in Poland or some other country crazy enough to host them. I don’t think Putin’s (or, more likely, his successor’s) reaction would be more than just targeting them. If any of those missiles get launched, any country hosting them would disappear from the face of the Earth, but nobody would notice, because that would mean the war between grown-ups, and the US never cared about aborigines.
I don’t think Putin will get cranky and as short-sighted as the imperial “strategists”. The weakest thing about Russia is that Putin has no obvious successor. Unless he grooms one ASAP, that would be the weak point for the Empire to exploit. They will try to bring some traitorous sleazeball to power, like they did in 1991. I hope that the people won’t accept another piece of shit like Yeltsin, but you never know. That’s the only big unknown, as far as I can tell.
Judging by recent actions, Putin is preparing the ground for refusing to recognize Porky’s election. If Porky is forced to let the clown or the gas princess win, Putin might make a mistake of recognizing them. More fool he, if he does.
You are probably right on all three, but where is the black swan going to land?
In Venezuela, Russia’s strategic interest is to create instability, not to worry about Maduro or the guy who showed up and said ‘I am your president now’ (that was funny).
Georgia-like scenario in Ukraine is bad Russia, and so is a missile stalemate on its border. A possible black swan event is that in the next economic crisis in the West, Russia will attempt to clean up all the issues around its borders. They are historically hesitant and clumsy, but once they saddle up what is there to stop them? Germans not buying their gas, London freezing oligarchs’ money, a nasty editorial in NY Times that this time ‘they really did it‘, who would care?
In that way, Atlanticist ideologues are right – the mostly fanciful ‘invasion’ descriptions from the last 10 years, could come true. If one has a reputation as a lawless brute, what’s the downside in being one? Putin might even sell a few more calendars.
You are forgetting that Putin wants to remain popular. Prevalent sentiments in Russia are that the only good thing that came out of the breakup of the USSR is that Russia got rid of parasites, “brotherly” republics and “brotherly” eastern European countries, all of which got a lot more from Russia than the other way around. Ordinary Russians don’t want to reacquire parasites.
However, if Russia is attacked, like it was by Napoleon and then Hitler, all hell breaks loose. In the nuclear age this means that we all die.
That has been the repeating pattern in Russia.
Overall I agree, but I think it is more volatile. We have a few stewing stalemates that cannot go on for much longer. Putin’s strength is his patience, his weakness is that he has little initiative – he fights on others’ terms.
Both Ukraine and Georgia are too expensive as non-contributing vassals who are not in NATO. They need to earn their keep, and shouting at rallies won’t do it. There is also the danger that over time they will simply empty out: Ukraine is already down from 50+ million to around 35 million, Georgia too. To be an irritant for Russia is not a permanent role. Washington doesn’t want the status quo – so they will force a change. Any action on its border is a lose-lose for Russia, Putin knows this. He might not want to leave the mess to his unpredictable successor.
In 2014, Russia did what they had to stay relevant, but not an inch more. What has changed since then is that Ukraine is weaker, EU looks like a fading dream, the North Stream 2 is about to complete, Russia has untangled from an economic dependency on the West, China has chosen Russia’s side, and Ukrainians are restless, see the clown.
This will not go on for another 5 years. Even if Porky steals it and ‘wins’, he shouldn’t unpack. I suspect he wants out with dignity, his goal is to do well enough (by cheating if necessary) to not be a joke like Yushenko became after his 5% in 2010.
People make a distinction between Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. The parasitic nature varied a lot.
I wasn’t suggesting a take-over in Ukraine or Georgia, that will never happen. But today both Ukraine and Georgia are more anti-Russia than their self-interest would dictate. The elites are more anti-Russia than the people and the Western sponsors would prefer even more hostility. That creates tensions.
Russia needs more normal elites in charge, as it is in most neighbouring countries. If they are patient and wait long enough, it will eventually happen naturally (e.g. like with Austria or Germany). But I don’t think the other side will allow that to happen without at least one more escalation. That’s when ‘all hell breaks loose and we all die‘.
According to independent estimates, there are ~22-25 million people living in Ukraine now, so with ~10 million working in Russia, Poland, and other countries it might be about 35 million. Their population keeps dwindling.
Georgia is a funny case. On the one hand, they don’t have diplomatic relations with Russia and their leadership keeps spewing BS about South Ossetia and Abkhasia, which they lost for good. On the other hand, they introduced visa-free travel for Russians. According to the people who went there, they are cheap and very accommodating, even subservient.
I am not sure Putin can afford to retake Ukraine: his popularity would quickly go down, and the expense would be enormous. Ditto Georgia, although it is small and would be cheap by comparison. The Empire might keep trying to use both against Russia, but I don’t think they have a chance to succeed: both are inconsequential weaklings.
You are right that the level of parasitism was different, but people living in Russia are now looking even at Belarus and Armenia askance. Huge destitute Ukraine would be a no-no. Especially now that Russia replaced by domestic production practically everything it used to buy from Ukraine. So, even if it installs a sane government, their industry won’t get any contracts.
As to Porky, he and dignity cannot be in the same sentence. You are right that he shouldn’t unpack. As Russian saying goes, the most important thing for a thief is to run away in time. By rights, Porky deserves gallows, but Russia does not have death penalty any more. I think DNR and LNR have it, though. They’d enjoy hanging him for the war crimes his regime committed.
Yasenyuk managed. So did Yanuk. They know how to run when the time comes.
You are probably right about Ukraine not finding back its way to normal relations with Russia. For us – right to the west of Ukraine – that is a bad thing. The emptying of Ukraine has costs: Ukrainians literally pack all lower level service jobs, construction, kitchens, and other professions that are better left unspoken. It lowers the ambiance in our cities, their poverty is unpleasant, they have old cars, no places to shower, they had very bad medical and dental care.
In general, most are very nice people wanting to leave everything behind: Ukraine, their names, their ethnicity – what we hear most often is ‘I want to forget Ukraine‘. True refugees. The fact that we are quite similar makes them feel they can disappear into our societies. And they will, but there are still tens of millions left in Ukraine. At this rate, it will become an issue.
There is also the suspicion that they are responsible for their unhappy country, and that running away is a cop-out. Most are apolitical, or pretend to be. What is completely lacking is any sense of pride – a total opposite of what one sees among the yellow-blue marchers in Kiev. Once Porky bails on Ukraine, he will be the same: bravado gone, just a thief who got away.
Keep in mind that Poland was divided at the same time but people aren’t saying there are three Polands.
In the context of many centuries, 150 years isn’t much. The Polish parts were divided about as long yet no one speaks of Poland as different countries.
Contrary to Ukrainian nationalist complaints, the Russians under the tsars were rather hands-off in Ukraine. Austria was much more active, Ukraine was as it had been under Poland until the Polish rebellions in the 1830s when Russia first started to de-Polonize the place. But the elite remained Polish-speaking: IIRC Kiev’s university was taught in Polish until the Polish rebellion of the 1860s (I could be wrong). In 1897 less 6% or less of the population in Ukrainian lands was Great Russian-speaking. Ukrainian activists could be jailed or exiled but Russia wasn’t engaging in a rival nation-building project. Large-scale Russification was a Soviet project.
Interesting.
Ideally Ukraine would have had good trade integration with both east and west. However the two were mutually exclusive. If Ukraine were orientated towards Russia, the deracinated Soviet people and ethnic Russians in Ukraine would do relatively well, the ethnic Ukrainians in the west would do less well, and the central Ukrainians would be in the middle. And vice versa with western integration.
So whom should the Ukrainian state have served? The non-Ukrainians or deracinated people of the east, or the ethnic Ukrianians of the West and Center? Who btw were a slim majority (with Crimea and Donbas gone they are now a healthier majority).
When Yanukovich went eastward, the natives took their country from him. And so the west prospers and actually slowly catches up relative to Ukraine’s neighbors, while the east falls more behind. The country on average is about the same, but average is meaningless when the circumstances vary by region. The Center is neutral economically but its people prefers their co-ethnics in the west and take their side out of ethnic solidarity.
It’s unfortunate that the East suffers but would the West, cut off from Europe, suffering have been better? That was the alternative scenario.
So the ethnic Ukrainians took their country and their parts of the country are doing better. I wouldn’t want Russia to be controlled by Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians etc., for their benefit rather than Russians’ benefit, why should Ukraine be different?
Technically speaking, the USSR might have been able to still win the war without Ukrainian manpower if it would have had large-scale Western (specifically British and American) manpower to compensate for this. I’m unsure that this was completely impossible; after all, if the USSR looked like it was on the verge of collapse, it does seem a possibility to me that Britain and the US would have sent a lot of their own forces to the Eastern Front to help the USSR fight Nazi Germany. Sure, this would have meant much, much more British and US casualties, but France and Britain both previously endured a lot of casualties in WWI and yet didn’t give up due to the fact that they believed that they still had a chance of winning this war.
I do agree with you, though, that Ukraine needs (and certainly needed, up to 2014) Galicia and Volhynia in order to ensure that it never falls back into the Russian orbit. These territories are the guarantee that Ukraine has that it will never again fall under Imperial Moskali Domination (IMD–trademarked)!
I do agree with you that Ukraine would be a more equal partner within the European Union than it would have been within the Eurasian Economic Union. In this regard, I agree that the pro-Western course of action was the best for Ukraine.
Still, one does wonder whether more eastern Ukrainians should have signed up for the Russian idea in 2014. I mean, the Donbass did suffer extremely heavily from its war with the rest of Ukraine, but this is largely the result of Russia refusing to annex it like it did with Crimea. With a Russian annexation, things in the Donbass could have been much, much better right now.
Wasn’t the Soviet project creating a Russian-flavored Sovok identity for the entire population of the Soviet Union?
Also, I wonder how much Ukrainian-language literature was smuggled from Galicia to Tsarist Ukraine in the pre-WWI years and decades.
It does seem like it might be a good idea for Russia to have a program that would encourage Russians, Russophones, and Russophiles in Ukraine to move to Russia. I mean, Russia might not want the country of Ukraine, but it could still benefit from the immigration of some of its people.
You forgot to mention Yiddish-speaking.
You are right. Moreover, that has already happened. A lot of engineers and qualified workers from the industries that are dying or have already died in Ukraine have moved to Russia, where they found suitable jobs. This includes shipbuilders from Nikolaev, engineers and workers from Motor Sych that used to make helicopter engines for Russia, which are now made in Russia, airplane builders from dying Antonov, etc. Millions of unskilled and semi-skilled people from Ukraine also work in Russia, millions more in Poland, some in Slovakia, Czech republic, etc. Russophones are not a problem, nor a good criterion. As tricky Google non-question (in what language do you want your questionnaire, Ukrainian of Russian) shows, about 70% of Internet-literate people in Ukraine prefer Russian. Only uncouth village-dwellers in Ukraine do not speak Russian. Hence the hysterics of Ukie nationalists. However, some Ukie Nazis also speak Russian. So, it is not easy to separate grain from chaff. Those who prefer Ukrainian are not necessarily Ukies. For about 10-15% of the residents in Donbass Ukrainian is their first language. My grandma and grandpa spoke mostly Ukrainian. Most of Donbass Ukrainians say: “we are Ukrainians, but they (occupying forces) are banderistas. So, the issue is not the language, but the state of mind. After all, Schiller, Goethe, and Hitler spoke the same language, but that’s the only thing they had in common.
You could have noticed that “sense of pride” in those marchers in Lvov and elsewhere is hysterical, which actually betrays a deep-seated inferiority complex. Propaganda promotes a slogan “Ukraine above all” (reminds of “Deutschland über Alles”), which those marchers hysterically repeat.
The majority of Ukrainian population is guilty only of inaction: they allowed Nazis to dominate their unfortunate country. Now they run away in droves and are ashamed to call themselves Ukrainians. Millions of Ukrainians go to Crimea (Ukie propaganda and MSM of their Western masters would never tell you that), and some explicitly say that crossing the border into Russia feels like you are escaping from a madhouse. From my perspective, this is one of the crimes of the current regime: they made it feel like a curse to be a Ukrainian or to speak Ukrainian. Ukrainian language is really beautiful and melodious, but now it gets associated with the regime in Kiev, so people in Crimea and Donbass cringe when you speak Ukrainian. I saw it in Crimea with my own eyes.
I understand that Poland, Slovakia, and Czech republic cannot cope with millions of Ukrainian refugees. Even much bigger Russia has difficulty absorbing these numbers. I hope that one day sane people come to power in Ukraine, and at least some of those unfortunates return and rebuild their lives and their country. But they would have to hang thieves and Nazis first. Nobody will do it for them.
And Hungary and Austria. The flow of people from Ukraine is endless. Lifting of visas has made staying permanently much easier because there are no time controls – the Ukrainian migrants are still illegal, but there is no way to easily prove when they came. As all migrants around the world they prefer big cities – they refuse to go to places where we need people (and Ukrainians would fit in) and crowd into the largest cities, often living in incredibly bad conditions.
If Ukraine suddenly collapses for whatever reason, there could be a few million people marching west. We have prepared refugee accommodation for 5k close to the border. None of this makes sense. It was a completely mismanaged affair driven by badly thought out emotions and thievery. At what point are people responsible for whatever it is that is done in their name? This is what Ukraine’s neighbours struggle with, rewarding stupidity may lead to more stupidity.
If this is true, it does not bode well for the future of Ukrainian statehood.
By ethnic Ukrainians, are you referring to its Jewish Prime Minister, Armenian Minister of the Interior, or the Georgians it actually invited into its government to help with its anti-corruption efforts (because having Georgians rule over Slavs worked out so well for the Ukrainians last time around)? Furthermore, its leading candidate for President is a Russophone Jew in cahoots with a Jewish Oligarch. And, of course, American involvement in Ukrainian government is strictly in Ukrainians’ best interests, not for America’s benefit.
Bolsheviks murdered Russia and created a disgusting Frankenstein’s monster out its corpse. This shambling creature was Russian-speaking and linguistically Russified what it touched.
A decent amount, given that it was used to teach people to enough of an extent that Ukrainian parties won the vote in the 1917 election.
If it lasts long-term, perhaps. The hope is that eventually the east will start to prosper too. It’s decline has stopped and it’s growing again, just more slowly than are the west and center. But it has fallen behind them. The easterners are outvoted so they can’t change the country’s course. Note that the Russophone South is doing better than the East and polls show that the South prefers EU to Customs Union now, though not as much as do the West and Center.
The government that was overthrown featured an ethnic Russian-Belarusian president from the eastern corner of Ukraine (Donbas), a PM who was a Russian immigrant who came to Ukraine in the 1980s when he was already in his 30s (!!!), and a Russian immigrant defense minister (came to Ukraine in his 20s) who oversaw the self-destruction of the Ukrainian military.
The ousted President was (barely) voted into power on the strength of the ethnic Russians in the East and Crimea then lost popularity. The Russian immigrant PM’s government never won a popular vote in Ukraine. These were the people leading Ukraine to economic union with Russia in the interests of the deracinated and non-Ukrainian East against the interests of the West and Center where the Ukrainians live.
The current government, whatever the ethnic makeup of its people, has won elections and been chosen by the Ukrainian people. Ukrainians could have chosen a Chinese, who cares – is is their choice.
Ukraine’s Jewish PM is from Ukraine’s ethnic heartland, Vynnytsia, which is between Lviv and Kiev. The Armenian interior minister came to Kharkiv as a child. Ukraine also has a Russian foreign minister who came to Ukraine in his 20s. Overall this government is much more native than the pre-Maidan one, and more importantly has been chosen by the Ukrainian people.
USSR barely pulled off the victory, I doubt it would have done so with 1/3 fewer soldiers.
Highly doubt it. The end would have come too quickly. Moscow would have been lost and Stalin would have made peace.
Personally, I pity those Ukrainians more than the countries where they migrate. Maybe because of my Ukrainian roots.
But as for EU, it was shooting itself in the foot so many times that it became habitual. Only a total idiot or someone intent on destroying the EU could have accepted Bulgaria or Romania. Only a total idiot or someone intent on destroying the EU could have supported US “sanctions” against Russia. Only a total idiot or someone intent on destroying the EU could have given Ukraine visa-free travel.
As Russian saying expresses it (although the rhyme is lost in translation) “what you fought for has befallen you”. I don’t mean you personally, but Europeans in general brought all their woes on themselves, including huge numbers of immigrants from Africa, ME, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc. I won’t be surprised if the fate of EU is the same as the fate of the USSR, largely for the same reasons.
Loss of manpower would not be good.
The real problem would be the loss of resources (wheat, coal) and strategic depth.
Without the Ukraine in the USSR presumably German forces would reach the Caspian Sea by the start of July, severing communications with the Caucasus and thus the USSR’s oil supply.
Game over.
Well, history does not have subjunctive mood. As Russian joke has it, “if grandma had balls, she’d be grandpa” (Putin flummoxed translators and the West with this joke not too long ago).
Europeans today suffer from extreme weakness, especially the Western half. One way to look at it is that Europe has been like a large, very rich version of Ukraine. The pathologies are often similar, but in many ways the Ukrainian version is more attractive: yearning instead of ennui, pride instead of self-hatred, greed instead of apathy.
A more rational version of Ukrainian nationalism could have reinvigorated Europe. Instead we are getting another burden and an unresolvable, unnecessary conflict with Russia. In the meantime Pakis and Nigerians are massively colonising the continent and could care less about these issues. Maybe we are the side-show.
“Rational” and “Ukrainian nationalism” (or any nationalism, for that matter) cannot be in the same sentence. Rational nationalism is a contradiction in terms. Europe should simply protect its borders and never let illegals cross them. If Western Europeans manage to elect leaders caring about Europe (like De Gaulle) ASAP and stop being vassals of dying Empire, Europe has a chance. Otherwise, it is doomed. The same applies to Eastern Europe. Italy and Hungary are glimmers of hope, but there are too few of them for optimism.
I disagree. Nationalism is a natural reflection of our biology: we like who we, who our ancestors were, and we should. Rationalism is just a method – do things in a reasonable, thought-through way, with accounting for context and environment.
The modern post-nationalism has not worked – it is based on obvious untruths like all breathing humans ‘are equal in every way‘, or that one has no more links to his related people than to aborigines in Papua. It is wishful non-thinking combined with stupidity. Without a sense of nation – ‘nationalism’ – there eventually will be no borders to protect.
A rational Ukrainian nationalism would accept where they live and what is possible. The western-yearning version that Maidan has promoted is self-destructive. For one thing, most Westerners do not distinguish among different cyrillic-azbuka cultures, they despise them all. Ukies by prancing around and posturing against anything ‘Russian’ are in effect mocking themselves and reinforcing Western stereotypes against themselves. That’s irrational. But liking one’s land, language, family, history – what’s is there not to like in that?
That’s natural, every person should feel positive about his language, culture, history, cuisine, etc. That’s not what I call nationalism, that’s patriotism. Nationalism begins when other languages are prohibited and other cultures and countries are viewed as enemies to be destroyed. At that point all rationality vanishes. From my perspective, nationalism is the ideology proclaiming that “my tribe is better than your tribe”, and that’s fascism or Nazism, pick your term. Patriotism has no problem with people of different nationalities, races, and cultures, but nationalism has that problem. That’s why patriotism is compatible with development and prosperity, whereas primeval tribal nationalism ruins any country where it rules, as we are witnessing now in Ukraine. Nationalism is driven by a deep-seated inferiority complex: you prohibit other languages only when you think that yours is inferior and bound to lose in a fair competition. Like I said before, Ukrainian language is beautiful, but it does not mean that it should be pushed down people’s throats. I believe it is viable, even though the regime in Kiev damaged it by associating with Ukie Nazism. Ukrainian history is shorter than most and checkered like all of them. Patriot acknowledges the reality, whereas nationalist vehemently denies it and creates ridiculous myths.
That’s too simplistic. I believe that my ‘tribe’ is better than the others, what’s wrong with that? I like our food, music, poetry… better. But I have zero desire to control others, and absolutely none to ‘destroy them‘ – unless they come into my territory and try to control or destroy us.
The terminology of ‘nationalism-patriotism-chauvinism’ is very imprecise and used in a lazy way to in effect suppress all of them. At what point is self-defense labelled an aggression? All of our history is about those distinctions. I stay away from trying to like one, dislike the other, based on what are at the end just subjective nuances.
Regarding the specific Ukrainian case and their language policies: they screwed up. What happened post-Maidan was not rational nationalism, it was a combination of trying to please the West and a defensive – and very weak – impulse to lash out at anything Russian. It may fit the definition of nationalism, but there was nothing rational about it. Unless we narrow it to a specific Galician-Kiev version of Ukie sub-nationalism, in effect regionalism. They are hurting Ukraine, and they don’t seem to care.
It’s one thing to like your “tribe”, and quite a different thing to dislike all others. The first boils down to “my tribe is no worse than yours” and is compatible with living in peace and cooperation with people belonging to other tribes within your country and in other countries, whereas the latter leads to hysterical attempts to suppress and destroy everything different. The first is a sign of confidence, whereas the latter is the sign of insecurity and fear driven by inferiority complex.
and a defensive – and very weak – impulse to lash out at anything Russian.
That’s a confession of a giant inferiority complex. It is weird because Belarussians lack such an emotional trauma. They’re OK being Belarusian brothers of big Russians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_A_and_B
Having the word ‘white’ in your name might help…
So, the word “little” explains the whole trauma?
Come to think of it, you may be onto something. Russians and Poles rarely agree on anything, but here… Russians call it “little Russia”, Poles call it “little Poland”, and both consider it a big shithole now.
The definition of a cargo cult culture.
Hahahaha! No- because you are a misdirecting attention-whore I am not going to fall for the trick of a ridiculous tramp as yourself trying to artificially make Russians & ukrainians argue over their joint efforts . A tramp as yourself has no connection to these great people of the USSR/Russian world who defeated the Nazis. Ukrainians and Russians are the same people fighting together with the same purpose, same soul, same mentality, same war songs, same food, marriages, same intelligence collection& analysis ( totally different to the British & Americans who were only sharing selective parts of intelligence and limited joint activity)and so on……..Americans & British though, clearly weren’t. Nor Romanian,s Italians and Hungarians fightingwith the Nazi’s you idiot.
Ukraine was fully taken over by Nazi’s you dumb, misdirecting POS. USSR winning their defense and then starting their offensive against Germany ,of course began before then..not to mention talk of industrial output being the result of Russia and the rest of the USSR
…that is why the further into the artificial souless Banderastan you get – the lack of Hero cities and stories of heroism becomes more and more apparent you idiot.
Crimea, Kiev, Odessa ( that reminds me how the Ukrop sailors arrested over the Kerch incident were just about the most Russian-world people imaginable you tramp- just so easily recognisable), Kiev were deservedly awarded Hero status, plenty in Belarus….and several other cities in the Novorossiya area were extremely unlucky not to get that status also………
once you get out of there it becomes obvious and more into this braindead Banderaland and nutjob/Deliverance style thinking and actions……no Hero cities.
That’s also not to forget that your numbers on sizes are of course BS.
Lol
What makes the writer so sure that the Eurozone will still be around by this summer?
And what makes him think that the European Union will be still around in 5 years’ time?
The reality is that many Ukrainians are delusional about the EU. They think it is some sort of permanent fixture. That it will pour funds into building motorways and so on. But it is not and it will not.
And what will they think when the southern block of the EU is spun off? Do you think the northern block – Germany, Netherlands, Austria and the Nordic countries would welcome Ukraine?
Face it guys! The UK is leaving the EU willy nilly. Northern Ireland is going to end up with the Republic – whether the English Elite want it to be so or not. Scotland is leaving the UK but will not be welcome in the northern block – it is too backward. Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal already have a foot in the Exit. Belgium will split in two.
Karlin has missed out one point: the millions of Ukrainians who have quit the country post 2014. One assumes they were mostly pro Russia/neutral in the poll before 2014, so if you consider only the remainder, you’ll probably find that more remaining Ukrainians have turned pro Russia in the past five years than the numbers may suggest.
Either way, Georgia and Ukraine are enemy countries as far as Russia is concerned and will remain so. Russian strategic calculations have to assume that in an imminent war with NATO, Russia will have to immediately invade and occupy the entirety of these two countries before they can openly join the other side.
Scotland had its chance in 2013 and muffed it. Even if another independence referendum were to be held now, it is highly doubtful that it would win either.
Northern Ireland will never be allowed to reunite with the Republic as long as Britain exists as a country. If necessary the Brutish colonial government will reoccupy it militarily.
Brexit, in any case, is not going to happen, not if you define it as “leaving the EU”. If Britain was leaving the EU it would have gone for a no deal Brexit. Any kind of deal will leave it less than fully extricated and therefore will not count as a Brexit. As a matter of fact I do not believe any longer that Brexit will ever happen, and nor does my (Leaver) English girlfriend.
Mr Karlin seems to have a fixation with the Ukrainian economy. I agree with him that Ukraine (rump Ukraine) is not a failing state, but I would contend that it is a failed state. Failed states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Sudan, or Moldova don’t just disappear, they go on, in a manner of speaking. As Karlin himself admits Ukraine is the second poorest country in Europe. Bond rating agencies class Ukrainian bonds as basically non-investment grade – i.e., ‘junk bonds’ the country continues to bleed people, up to a hundred thousand a month, and is facing an acute demographic crisis, similar to the Baltics. Ukraine has 50% of the per capita income of Angola; it is also in hoc to the IMF with no prospect of paying the principal.
There will be no ‘recovery’ just an ongoing stagnation characteristic of an oligarch underdeveloped regime. The country is simply sinking further into the mire, both politically and economically.
As you probably know, in 1440’s the territory of Volhynia was under the rule of the Lithuanians. Hence, Muscovy was another state and there is no real ethnic or cultural reference in what you have given.
Ukrainians , living proof that white nations can have a low IQ .
Ukraina is down to 2,500 euros per capita year income , and going down . Lower than Senegal .
They were told that if they treasoned themselves , they would be rich as the germans , rich as the yankees , overnight . poor morons ( and dishonest euroyankees )
Good article by Karlin. Following and registering trend is the most important action in politics and history Charts are the best because they are self explanatory.
Falling apart the Soviet block was a good thing and falling apart EU will be good thing also.
Government of each country should be responsible for its people. Free trade all over Eurasia is a good thing, Also free movement of people is a good thing.I cannot decide on common currency now.
If the Rus in Lithuania considered the Rus in Moscow as fellow Rus they would not have referred to themselves as “All the Rus” and the Muscovites as something different. They would have written about Lithuanian Rus vs. Muscovite Rus or something. Also older Chronicles did categorize Rus of Moscow together with Rus of Lithuania. The changes placing Muscovites together with Moldovans and Bulgarians as Orthodox, but not Rus, occurred in the 1400s. So the shift likely did not represent political borders (otherwise it would have come sooner) but perceptions of them as being a different people.
It’s very logical. Rus separated into warring principalities around 1150 (IIRC Iziaslav was the last unified ruler of Rus). By the 1440s, about 300 years seperated the Rus of Lithuania from those of Moscow. That’s about 60 years longer than the USA has been seperate from England. And then you add Polish-Lithuanuian influence vs. Mongol influence. And there was no mass media (Harry Potter etc.) linking the Ruses, they were more isolated.
The myth of unity began about 100 years later, in the 1500s, from the Russian side, in support of territorial pretensions upon Rus lands in Lithuania. The ideology was strengthened ironically by Ukrainians in the 1600s and 1700s who came to Russia and were resented by the natives as foreigners and intruders taking high positions from natives. But even though they spoke Polish they weren’t really foreigners, there was one Holy Rus all along so they had every right to their positions in Moscow and (later) St. Petersburg.
Falling apart of the USA would be a good thing as well, at least from the point of view of the non-parasite class, and probably from the point of view of the people of countries currently threatened by our monstrous military, dollar hegemony, and hideous foreign policies. It would probably make our Zionist masters’ job a bit more difficult, at least until they could capitalize on it as well, as they seem to manage to do consistently.
While I’m here, I must say that I’m finding the strong attitudes for and against the political entities being discussed here quite interesting, but for a dumb ‘Merkin goy such as myself, quite difficult to separate out. Anyway, I’ve recently been introduced to the fact that Stalin’s Ukrainian holocaust never happened, but like I say, I really don’t know either way, and probably won’t live long enough to find out either. Still, I’d be interested in what people here have to say about that and how it may or may not affect Russian-Ukrainian relations today.
Note: I do not have a strong opinion either way, and am asking merely to help educate myself.
Thanks.
That sounds like a good description of the USA; all one has to do is change “oligarch underdeveloped regime” to “formerly developed regime now drained nearly dry by the usual international oligarchs.”
It’s not 2014-2015 anymore. Incomes have been rising each year since then. In 2017 Ukraine’s position relative to Russia has actually improved (slightly) since 2013. In 2013 Ukraine had 33% of Russia’s GDP PPP per capita, in 2017 it was up to 34%. 2018 will have increased relative position as Ukraine’s economy grew faster than Russia’s that year.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=UA-RU
Nonsense.
GDP per capita PPP:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=UA-SN
GDP per capita nominal:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=UA-SN
May 15, 2017 Ukraine: US-Installed Fascist Rule in Europe’s Heartland
Will Donetsk Rejoin Russia? The nation shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with Russia. Stop NATO’s Rick Rozoff earlier explained Ukraine is “the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitaire, severing Russia from Europe” – a sinister plot perhaps intended as prelude to nuclear war.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-us-installed-fascist-rule-in-europes-heartland-will-donetsk-rejoin-russia/5590150
Sep 9, 2016 US funded Ukrainian army is terrorizing civilians, 2016
Russell Bentley is a former US marine, that now fights for the Donbass, Eastern Ukraine, against the US-funded Ukrainian army.
https://youtu.be/92KfmGY12yQ
25.12. 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia’s Destruction Since 1949
Baker told Gorbachev: “Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east.”
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/25/nato-seeking-russia-destruction-since-1949.html
Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With US
https://youtu.be/L6hIlfHWaGU
Russia won’t start a war with NATO. If NATO starts a war with Russia, that war would be over in a few hours. There will be no time for anyone to occupy anything. The survivors will envy the dead.
Svido stupidity:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/barry-trotz-dauphin-stanley-cup-parade-1.4795294
Excerpt –
Note the name Kirk Nyquist, for those suggesting that Russians are greatly influenced by Scandinavians unlike Ukrainians. BTW, plenty of pro-Russian Cossacks.
Barry Trotz, the coach of the Cup winning Capitals team has a son, who has spent time teaching in Russia. Said coach (who has since gone on to coach the Islanders) also spent time in Russia, with his best player, who happens to be Russian, along with several others on the Capitals.
With all due respect events in history are usually not invented. Only evaluations of level of occurrence and value influence are usually falsely evaluated.
Who believes the world bank data , at the service of Porkishenko ?
Ukraruina is a complete ruin , a brainless country , it is a cancer for all Europe east and west , it is a very ugly yankee attempt to organize a massive war all over Europe .
Yugoslavia and Ukraina have proved that the yankees are no friends od Europe . The europeans are taking note .
Georgians , a superiority complex over Russians ??? what are you saying ? where have you travelled ? .
Georgia is only 3,5 million people , is a nation of caucasic thiefs . In the USSR times 40% of the budget of Georgia was payed by Moscow . And since independence bands of thiefs from Georgia ( and Rumania and other eastern countries ) sack the EU robbing everything they can to resell it their countries . Nobody in the EU likes rumanian , georgian , bulgarian , baltic … thiefs .
What’s setting you off today Mickey? Some Canukes rightfully showing off some local Ukie ethnic pride, and not giving some of the credit to the Boris & Natashas of the world?
https://i.cbc.ca/1.4795475.1534975538!/fileImage/httpImage/image.JPG_gen/derivatives/original_780/barry-trotz.JPG
Our people do wonderful things around the world, wherever they find themselves!
Apocryphal theory about the origins of the name “Canada”. Spanish travelers used to write on their maps on its future territory “Aca – nada” (“here – nothing”). Just saying.
Beutiful photo , Mr Fack , now I know why there are so many blond alexithymic morons in Canada with russian family names , they are of ucranian descent !!!!!
Look at yourself. First you ’emigrated’ to London, then back to Bohemia. Why not return to your homeland in Mykolaiv and teach the locals about their gallant blackshirted past? You really need to go see a shrink and have your own unresolved Ukie identity problems sorted out. How many years have you been on a Ukrainaphobic rant rave now? You must be in your 30’s by now – it’s time to get a life and move on…still doing that ropa dope thing too, I presume? 🙁
Thanks, but I get that. I’m not the one denying that the Holodomor happened. Anyway, would you, or anyone else care to elaborate a bit? And does that event bear significantly on Ukraine-Russian relations today, or what?
The UK is leaving the EU willy nilly. Northern Ireland is going to end up with the Republic – whether the English Elite want it to be so or not.
The “English Elite” have wanted rid of it for 50 years. They can’t figure out a way of offloading unto the Republic without starting a civil war. Unionists flaunting their Leaver sympathies will only make them more disliked by England’s elite but the latter are engaged in wishful thinking if they believe they’ll be able to dump N Ireland anytime soon.
Northern Ireland will never be allowed to reunite with the Republic as long as Britain exists as a country. If necessary the Brutish colonial government will reoccupy it militarily.
lol
Scotland had its chance in 2013 and muffed it. Even if another independence referendum were to be held now, it is highly doubtful that it would win either.
OK, this is likely true. ScotsNats are not only incompetent and parochial but they just can’t hide their own nastiness from the voters. The Brexit referendum could’ve potentially given them another chance but they seem to have blown it again.
Putin’s friend Alex Ovechkin
Bolsheviks did not keep records how many people died so we do not know how many people died.
But in my opinion the numbers are grossly exaggerated as in holocaust. After all people had a chance to resort to last source as hunting gathering. And fishing. And people usually help each other.
Collectivization was disaster and all Ukraine did hate it, But some crops even under collective management still were produced and the fruit trees were not collectivized. Also each house did have a significant garden that produced enough potatoes and other crop to survive the winter.
Mr Fack , wrong guess , wrong guess . I do not have slavic blood , hehehhehehe , I do not have any roots in Nikolayev ( not Mylolaiv , payalsta ) , hehehehehe , I am not in my 30`s …. Your crystal ball is not very accurate , hehehehhehehe , but it is fun . Thank you very much to Unz for this web .
By the way , why did you dislike my phrase “so many blond alexythimic morons ? , are you blond ?
But humorous and provocative considerations aside , I would say that people from north european origin have a bit of alexythymia , alexythimia means a bit of difficulty in processing emotions , anglogermanics tend to be emotionally constipated ( while south europeans and other peoples tend to be a bit emotionally diarrheic ) . What do you think tovarish ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia
Meanwhile, tomorrow Ukraine stages a farce: “presidential elections”. Porky has already elected himself, but he will go through the motions with ballots and all. Just in case someone dares to challenge his falsifications, the streets of Ukrainian cities are heavily patrolled by armed people. Democracy, Ukraine-style.
“Free” Western MSM would not tell you that, but you can find info in English:
https://24-my.info/special-forces-of-the-sbu-took-to-the-streets-of-ukrainian-cities/
even though “neutral” Google hid it on page 7 of the search.
Do you have the same negative opinion of Russian elections?
https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-russia-election-day-protests/29480412.html
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is Russia’s name for the police department said 140,000 policemen and 13,000 troops across the country patrolled the streets on Election Day “keeping the situation completely under control.”
Or French elections:
https://www.rferl.org/a/france-election-president-macron-pen-eu/28446308.html
High Security Presence As French Vote In Presidential Election
France is deploying some 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers on election day to protect voters across the country, where a state of emergency remains in place in the wake of a series of attacks that have killed more than 230 people since 2015.
::::::::::
But when Ukraine does the same thing as Russia or France it is a dictatorship in your mind 🙂
BTW didn’t you insist that Poroshenko was going to cancel the elections?
It’s rope-a-dope.
The level of falsifications Porky needs to “win” is unprecedented. Nobody (except maybe some African honchos) ever needed this much. Not to mention that considering the difference in population, deployment of 130,000 police in Russia and Ukraine yields about 6-fold difference in guns/votes ratio. Enjoy your democracy. As the Russian saying goes, what you fought for has befallen you (it rhymes in Russian: за что боролись, на то и напоролись).
So says someone who knows nothing about Ukraine. He is polling in 2nd place. I’ve been hearing a lot of anti-Zelensky and pro-Poroshenko stuff from people in central and western Ukraine so those polls do not seem crazy, he actually does have significant support (in contrast, I heard nothing positive about Yushchenko in 2010).
I’d give him a solid 40% chance of winning. I don’t think he’ll win because the people are really fed up with corruption, but will not be surprised at all if he does.
Russian media seems to have a fake narrative that Poroshenko has 5% support or something like Yushchenko did, and zero chance of winning. Therefore if he wins this will mean he cheated. Russia media will tell Russians this and they will believe it.
Russia deployed 140,000 police plus 13,000 troops.
Ukraine has about 1/4, not 1/6 of Russia’s population.
Unlike Russia, Ukraine has a civil war going on, so there is naturally a need for greater security.
Ukrainian polls put Porky support at 20%, with respondents saying that they would not vote for Porky under any circumstances at ~50%. But who cares how bydło votes, Porky designated himself a winner.
In the first round, with dozens of candidates, that is probably be enough for second place (Tymoshenko seems to have faded but it would be funny if she comes in second).
And if enough don’t vote the Zelensky either, than this won’t matter.
The 3 million voters in Russia are not allowed to vote. Porky will use their ballots to vote for himself. Simple really.
I hope the Italians refuse to recognise the result.
Italian MP asks Rome not to recognize Ukraine election
Elections illegally exclude millions with Ukraine citizenship but who speak Russian
https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/03/italian-mp-asks-rome-not-to-recognize-ukraine-election/
Maybe (although a Russian-oriented Ukraine probably wouldn’t be as openly hostile and neglectful of the west as the Maidanist Ukraine has been toward the east, if only for the practical reason that ethnic Russians are greatly outnumbered in Ukraine, and a minority can less afford to alienate a majority than vice versa).
But Ukraine’s overall growth rate would very likely be higher, for several reasons, including the fact that a Russian orientation offers union with Russia’s far larger and wealthier economy, in which there would be a natural trend toward convergence of Ukrainian and Russian per capita GDP (whereas western orientation does not offer economic union with Europe). Also, the West doesn’t care about Ukraine at at all except as a tool to use against Russia, and might even prefer Ukraine to remain relatively impoverished. Whereas, Russia would have strong incentives- both practical, and out of a sense of historic ethnic/cultural affinity- to help a Russian-oriented Ukraine succeed economically, with greater subsidies, investment, and pressure to reform its oligarchic system than it has received from the West.
Well, Fort Russ reader, let’s see if there are 3 million pro-Poroshenko votes coming from Russia.
In 2013 ethnic Russians were about 20% of Ukraine’s population, but there were also ethnic Ukrainians in places like Crimea or Donbas for whom Ukrainian meant a type of Russian. These Sovietized, deracinated Ukrainians were probably another 15% to 20% of the population. This was Yanukovich’s main electorate the under his bringing Ukraine into Russia the state would serve these people, not the actual Ukrainians.
Maybe slightly better, but Ukraine was pretty close to Russia after independence, and it was not an economic success. And again, this improvement would be to the benefit of the non-Ukrainian or deracinated Ukrainian East at the expense of the West. It might mean more welfare benefits or whatever to poor west Ukrainian villages in Transcarpathia but that’s not what the people there want, they are not American minorities.
The various pro-Russian despotisms in the former USSR, a club Yanukovich-Ukraine would join, are not models of good governance and economic well-being.
Exit polls in Ukraine suggest that clown Porky is loosing badly to clown Zelensky. But, who cares? In Ukraine they printed twice as many ballots as there are voters. So, the only question is whether Porky will “win” in the first round, or whether he will have some decency (and take extra risk) and “win” in the second round. Place your bets.
You’d think Ukrainians should remember how they lived under Western rule, be it Swedish, Polish, Austrian, or German. They flatly refuse to remember it. However, there is poetic justice: people who refuse to remember history are doomed to repeat it.
There is no chance he will win in the first round. He will most likely come in second, but there’s a small chance that Tymoshenko will do so (this would be funny for the Russians here who believe that Poroshenko is fixing the entire election).
I’d give Poroshenko a 40% chance of winning in the second round. He will have to use his media to find and pour massive amounts of dirt on Zelensky, and count on people who had supported other candidates to support him as the less risky choice. But people are so fed up with corruption that this will probably not be enough.
Under Austria, Galicia’s 1890 per capita product of $1,947 in 2010 dollars was higher than that of Portugal ($1,789), Bulgaria ($1,670), Greece ($1,550), Russia ($1,550), and Serbia ($1,295). Galicia was not as poor as eastern Hungary, whose per capita product was $1,824 and Croatia-Slavonia, whose per capita product in 2010 dollars was $1,897.
It was also wealthier under Poland than was Soviet Ukraine (plus, being part of Poland meant avoiding the mass famine of the 1930s). So yes, those people remember that being part of the West was better than being under Moscow.
I am not talking about those areas, I am talking about Ukrainians living there. In Poland Ukrainians and their language were oppressed. As Poles used to write on their cafes, “entry with dogs and Ukrainians strictly prohibited”
What’s more, in Polish-controlled Western Ukraine there also was mass famine in 1932-33. Smarter Ukies pretend that they don’t now about it, dumber Ukies blame Stalin even for that.
I don’t know about Russian elites, but ordinary Russians treat everything happening in Ukraine as circus. Just like in the late Soviet Union there were lots of jokes about Brezhnev, today in Russia there are plenty of jokes about Ukraine.
Here is one about the first round of Ukrainian presidential elections:
– Clown!
– Prostitute!
– Thief!
You listened to the debates of the three front-runners in presidential elections.
So far:
The clown: 31%
The chocolate thief: 17%
The gas princess: 14%
It would be quite hard for Porky to win the second round because most votes from the gas princess will likely go to the clown. Is his only chance to steal the second round?
Those areas had about the same social stratification as in Russia, and the number of peasants (both Polish and Ukrainian) outnumbered the number of nobles so the fact that per capita GDP was higher in Galicia than in Russia, Serbia, etc. indicates that Ukrainians were living better there than under Moscow. This is reinforced by the fact that full literacy of Galican kids was achieved in 1910, under Moscow it wasn’t even close at that time.
Yes, but not nearly as badly as under Soviets when 100,000s were shot or deported. I write this but my grandfather’s uncle was the man who flew to Moscow to personally ask Stalin to accept western Ukraine into the USSR:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9,_%D0%9A%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB_%D0%98%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
Evidence of this? Polish repression involved turning Ukrainian schools into Polish ones, looking the other way whenn Polish mobs beat Ukrainians (with perhaps 100 or so fatalities), and heavy-handed police tactics. In Volyn they burned down Orthodox churches. But A Ukrainian nationalist politician, Vasyl Mudry, was speaker of the Polish parliament, independent Ukrainain newspapers existed despite censorship, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was left alone. Ukrainian persecution by Soviets was incomparably worse.
It was in 1930-1931. You are referring to a limited problem with a few thousand victims and comparing it to what the Soviets did, causing 3 million or so deaths. It’s a ridiculous comparison.
Source for famine in western Ukraine in 1930s, also says that there was a famine in the USA in those years:
http://csef.ru/en/ekonomika-i-finansy/340/v-evrope-i-ssha-tozhe-svirepstvoval-golodomor-7689
Typical Sovok propaganda.
Gas princess has different numbers:
Clown – 28.1
Gas princess – 16.1%
Porky – 15.2%
But her observers don’t count dead voters, who all voted for Porky, from heaven and hell alike. Curious people found Zakharchenko and Tolstych (Givi), both murdered by Ukies, on the voter rolls. The farce is not over yet.
Every exit poll has her behind Poroshenko by 3% or so. Poroshenko does not control all of the exit polling companies so her numbers are probably just self-serving fake.
I would not be surprised. She most certainly is just as much a liar and a thief as Porky. No reason to believe one more than the other.
simples. the austrians and poles created ukrainian nationalist IDEOLOGY. the bolsheviks gave the ukraine territories (and further entrenched ukrainian nationalist ideology). there is no contradiction.
Some crazy Russians do all sorts of thing, as do crazy people in other countries. But in Ukraine this is the official narrative, so the entire Ukraine is crazy, then, or what?
No, my friend, this it is quite different. The Katyn situation has a large number of features inconsistent with the deed being done by NKVD. These inconsistencies, at the very least, need explaining, and it is perfectly legitimate to ask questions.
The crimes of UPA, on the other hand, are well documented, and there is no doubt that these acts were committed by UPA. Furthermore, it’s the manner of denial that’s important. The UPA fans don’t deny the facts; the just say it’s OK to act in this manner. Hence “Kill the Russians, pile up the bodies” as their favorite slogan.
No, there;s no contradiction. It’s all just a bunch of linear BS from start to finish. 🙂
If you say so buddy, if you say so
I do wonder whether you are comparing apples to oranges here. I mean, Yes, the Bolsheviks were astronomically worse than the Second Polish Republic, but the Bolsheviks never won power democratically in Russia. In other words, Bolshevism was a form of government that was imposed on the Russians at gunpoint.
Thus, maybe a better analogy would be to compare Ukraine’s fate under Russian Bolsheviks/Communists to the fate that Ukraine would have had if Polish Communists would have been in charge of it (and especially independent-minded Polish Communists as opposed to Russian-puppet Polish Communists). Russian Communists certainly weren’t the only very bad ones–just take a look at Bela Kun’s Hungary, Mao Zedong’s China, the Kims’ North Korea, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Perhaps one should look at the comments of Rostislav Ischenko @http://thesaker.is/the-new-master-of-ukraine/:
“Ukraine received a new master, irrespective of who will take the presidency. The master is named Igor Valeryevich Kolomoisky”.
“Is This Man the Most Powerful Jew in the World?” @https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-the-most-powerful-jew-in-the-world-1.5315512
The man wearing the “Zhidobandera” T-shirt.
Igor Valeryevich Kolomoisky has a Ukrainian/Israeli/US citizenship.
Kolomoisky has been the main financier of neo-Nazi in Ukraine. Not a peep from the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center. Not a word from the US emigration services. Their silence is deafening.
Of some interest (2014): https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/12/03/israel-secret-plan-for-second-israel-in-ukraine.html
The Times of Israel reporters quoted an unnamed aide to Netanyahu who revealed the plans for Israeli emigration to Ukraine: «We first thought that admitting we are really Khazars was one way to get around [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas’s insistence that no Jew can remain in a Palestinian state. … The Ukrainian invitation [?!] for the Jews to return was a godsend».
Welcome to Khazarstan!
You know probably that Kolomoisky built in Dnepropetrovsk the Menorah Center “the biggest multifunctional Jewish community center in Europe or in the world. The heart of the complex is the historic Golden Rose central synagogue, built in the 19th century”. And that there are proposals to rename Dnepropetrovsk ‘Jerusalem-on-the-Dnieper’.
In fact, Kolomoisky is not a US citizen. His third citizenship is Cyprus. The rest of your post is true, though.
You are right. I did not check the rumor.
LOL.
Name those Austrians and Poles.