Why Constitutional Talks in the Ukraine Should Start Now

The US, Kiev, their EU allies and their media echo chamber are up to their invariable game of rewriting last week’s Geneva Statement to mean not what it says but what they want it to say.

To repeat the Geneva Statement contains NO time line (see my previous post where I discussed what the Geneva Statement actually says). It does NOT require buildings and public places in the east to be evacuated before buildings and public places in the west. It does not require people in the east to disarm before people disarm in the west. Above all it does NOT require the vacation of buildings and public places in the east and the disarmament of the people there before the start of negotiations on constitutional change or make the vacation of buildings and public places in the east or the disarmament of the people there a pre condition for the start of the negotiations on constitutional change.

I make this point because that is how Kiev and its present supporters are currently trying to misrepresent the Geneva Statement. Needless to say if the buildings and public spaces in the east were vacated and the people there disarmed he pressure there currently is to start serious negotiations on constitutional change would abate with the strong probability that negotiations would then never take place at all. In reality there is nothing in the Geneva Statement that says that negotiations cannot start right away whilst the buildings and public places in the east remain occupied and the people there remain armed with the buildings and public places in the east (and the west) and the people in the east (and the west) disarming as part of an overall settlement achieved as a result of the negotiations. Given the history of broken agreements on the part of Kiev and its western sponsors (eg. the 21st February 2014 agreement) the continuing mobilisation of the people of the east whilst the negotiations are underway and until an agreement is reached and secured would seem to be a basic precaution.

I would remind everybody that the people who currently form the regime consistently refused to vacate Maidan whilst they were negotiating with Yanukovitch and he (wrongly in my opinion) never insisted that they do so.

I make this point because so far there is no sign from Kiev of any attempt to begin negotiations at all. We have not even had the announcement of a negotiating team or discussions about the venue for talks. Instead Kiev and the US administration are hiding behind the continuing occupation of the buildings and public spaces in the east and the presence of armed men there as a pretext for not starting talks. It needs to be said clearly and unequivocally that this is a false pretext and that there is no reason or excuse to delay the start of talks on constitutional change which is the overriding priority at the moment if this crisis is to be brought to a peaceful and satisfactory end.

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. Repasting, with additions, here where it better belongs:

    Interesting poll results (taken April 10-15) that match my earlier speculations here (although Kharkiv and Odessa are flipped, in comparison to what I had guessed):

    http://zn.ua/UKRAINE/mneniya-i-vzglyady-zhiteley-yugo-vostoka-ukrainy-aprel-2014-143598_.html

    Poll measures attitudes in the 8 southern and eastern oblasts.

    Some responses:

    Do you consider Yatseniuk’s government to be the legal authority?

    Dnipropetrovsk: 24.8% strongly yes, 22.8% weakly yes, 13.1% neutral/unsure, 15.1% weakly no, 19.6% strongly no
    Odessa: 21.5% strongly yes, 19.3% weakly yes, 16% neutral/unsure, 21% weakly no, 18.5% strongly no
    Kharkiv: 18.8% strongly yes, 14.6% weakly yes, 11.6% neutral/unsure, 19.3% weakly no, 31.4% strongly no
    Donetsk: 5.7% strongly yes, 10.9% weakly yes, 9.4% neutral/unsure, 18.6% weakly no, 53.5% strongly no

    No region considers Yanukovich to be the legal authority.

    Do you consider the events on Maidan to have been a popular uprising against corruption and the Yanukovich dictatorship, or a revolt organized by the opposition with Western help?

    Dnipropetrovsk: Popular uprising 54.5%, revolt with Western help 31.2%, unsure 11.1%
    Odessa:Popular uprising 50.1%, revolt with Western help 37%, unsure 9.4%
    Kharkiv: Popular uprising 47.5%, revolt with Western help 42.6%, unsure 7.7%
    Donetsk: Popular uprising 20%, revolt with Western help 70.5%, unsure 8.2%

    Do you believe that Russia is illegally interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs?

    Dnipropetrovsk: 72% Yes, 21% no, 6% unsure
    Odessa: 61% Yes, 23.2% no, 14.6% unsure
    Kharkiv: 51% Yes, 41.6% no, 6.9% unsure
    Donetsk:17.3% Yes, 59.9% no, 22.3% unsure

    Do you want your oblast to leave Ukraine and join Russia?

    Dnipropetrovsk: 3.7% strongly yes, 3.2% weakly yes, 6.9% unsure, 13.1% weakly no, 71% strongly no
    Odessa: 3.2% strongly yes, 4% weakly yes, 11.9% unsure, 19.3% weakly no, 59.5% strongly no
    Kharkiv: 9.2% strongly yes, 6.9% weakly yes, 17.3% unsure, 16.1% weakly no, 49.5% strongly no
    Donetsk: 11.9% strongly yes, 15.6% weakly yes, 17.3% unsure, 17.3% weakly no, 34.9% strongly no

    EU vs. Customs Union:

    Dnipropetrovsk: 38.1% EU, 29.2% CU
    Odessa: 25.4% EU, 36.4% CU
    Kharkiv: 26.5% EU, 46.5% CU
    Donetsk: 9.4% EU, 72.5% CU

    (Mikolayiv on the Black Sea coast was even more strongly pro-EU than Dnipropetrovsk)

    Should Ukraine be a unified state as it is now (status quo), a unified state with some decentralization (what Yatseniuk’s government is proposing), or a federalized entity:

    Dnipropetrovsk: 19.6% status quo, 51% unified with decentralization, 11.4% federated
    Odessa: 29.1% status quo, 41.2% unified with decentralization, 17.5% federated
    Kharkiv: 23.3% status quo, 39.1% unified with decentralization, 32.2% federated
    Donetsk: 10.6% status quo, 41.1% unified with decentralization, 38.4% federated

    ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    I think it is time, if one wants to be realistic, to stop lumping all of these territories together as “New Russia” when describing them politically.

    :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    It looks like the geographic and cultural region of Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) are a strong outlier. Should all of Ukraine alter its laws simply to cater to those two oblasts? Trying to ram regional hero Bandera down the country’s entire throat was bad, but Bandera was just a symbol. Russians seem to want to impose some Donbas voters’ wishes concerning the country’s entire political system upon all of Ukraine.

    Moreover, focusing on the last poll question I listed, it looks like federalization is a minority view everywhere – though one with a dangerously high level of support in one region, the Donbas. Thus there is no equivalence between Maidan – which enjoyed majority support in half the country – and the demands of the protesters/occupiers in those towns in the Donbas. It is planned for this question to be on the ballot in May 25th.

    • Upon some reflection, it looks like these poll results may reflect a change in political questions as much as they do a shift in allegiances.

      Prior to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and support for disruptive activities in Eastern Ukraine, the question was: should Ukraine be ruled by Eastern/Southern political bosses/oligarchs with a political/economic machine, or by politicians and parties from the country’s West? Under such terms the country was about evenly divided, with a slight edge for the West.

      Russia has changed the conversation – now it is, should Ukraine continue to exist as unified state, or should it be federalized or even divided (and everyone knows that federalization as Russia wants it would make Ukraine simply a Russian pawn)? In such circumstances, the division is no longer across the middle of the country, but rather with the West, Center and South on one side and the far East – 2 Donbas oblasts plus Kharkiv as a “swing region” – on the other. Political forces that had once enjoyed the support of half the country have now been tainted by their association with Russia and its actions. This means that the pro-Eastern forces have no chance of winning any sort of country-wide elections or referendums. No wonder that Russia and its proxies in Ukraine are now so desperate to disrupt the vote in May 25th. An invasion prior to May 25th, should it happen, would only be comparable to Germany’s invasion of Austria in 1938 before a scheduled referendum in that country about unification with Germany.

      • “Prior to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and support for disruptive activities in Eastern Ukraine…”

        Most of the people of Crimea wanted to be with Russia. The United States has supported disruptive activities in Western Ukraine and in Kiev. Nuland’s $5 billion, billions more from American NGOs. I’d call the February coup disruptive. It most likely wouldn’t have happened without US support.

        “…should Ukraine be ruled by Eastern/Southern political bosses/oligarchs with a political/economic machine…”

        Like there are no pro-Kiev political bosses/oligarchs. On whose side do we see the pig Kolomoysky? Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are oligarchs on their own right.

        “An invasion prior to May 25th, should it happen…”

        I’m sure you’d call Russia’s actions in the Crimea an invasion. Well, by that standard any future (and likely) stationing of NATO troops in the western half of Ukraine, however bloodless, will also be an invasion. If some RF coordination of the revolt in the Donbass has occurred (and I don’t even know if it has), how would that be different from the CIA and Greystone involvement on the Kiev side? Because the Kiev government has invited the CIA? Well, I’m sure that the insurgents in the Donbass want Russian help too.

        If the Kiev government thought that it could win any referendums in the east, it would have probably conducted them itself by now. Think how demoralizing a loss at the polls with international observers present would be for the pro-Russian side. If Kiev did a referendum all over continental Ukraine on the day of the Crimean referendum and won everywhere without obvious fraud, it would have been a major PR coup for it. They don’t want to do it, most likely because they think they’ll lose some oblasts.

        • I’m just providing poll results and commenting on them.

          Whether most of Crimea’s population wanted to be part of Russia (most likely ) or not doesn’t change the fact that it was an invasion. And Western involvement in Ukraine did not rise to the level of actually annexing Ukrainian territory.

          ““…should Ukraine be ruled by Eastern/Southern political bosses/oligarchs with a political/economic machine…”

          Like there are no pro-Kiev political bosses/oligarchs. On whose side do we see the pig Kolomoysky? Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are oligarchs on their own right.

          Sure there are western (or rather, central) oligarchs , but there is less machine politics in the west and center than in the east, which has been more monolithic.

          ” If some RF coordination of the revolt in the Donbass has occurred (and I don’t even know if it has), how would that be different from the CIA and Greystone involvement on the Kiev side? Because the Kiev government has invited the CIA? Well, I’m sure that the insurgents in the Donbass want Russian help too.

          I’ll just point out that the Kiev government enjoys more support across the country than do Donbas insurgents. An equivalent to Russian activity, if it is occurring, in Donbas would be Western support for a Svoboda revolt in some Galician cities.

          “If the Kiev government thought that it could win any referendums in the east, it would have probably conducted them itself by now.”

          Actually it’s putting it on the ballot for the May 25th elections. The ones Russia and its proxies want to disrupt.

          • “Actually it’s putting it on the ballot for the May 25th elections.”

            Correction: government politicians have discussed placing this on the May 25th ballot but it is not official yet.

        • Rostislav says

          Firstly, these polls under Neo NAZI occupation should be taken with a grain of salt, especially since Russia has not declared an intent to immediately create NovoRossiya. Who would be honestly answering these questions in the climate of today’s Ukraine? Would anyone have spoken out against NAZI occupation in 1942? Secondly, it is academic that most Russophone regions would want unity with Russia, because the standard of living is 2 – 3 higher in Russia, energy costs are less in Russia, pay and pensions are twice as much in Russia, forced “ukrainoznavstvo” and religious persecution are not issues in Russia, while society for Russophone and Russophrone Ukrainians is freer and connected to an ethnic/historical continuum in unity with Russia, as opposed to being an oligarch, stateless machination dominated by Third Reich propaganda and race theories. On these reasons alone, not even factoring in the violence of the Banderists, this poll is garbage. Lastly, once the EU/IMF/USA austerity conditions set in, the numbers for the customs union will improve all the way to the borders of Galicia.

          Let’s talk about the reality on the ground. Donetsk and Lugansk would welcome the Russian army TODAY with Crimean style numbers (WHICH INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS COULD VERIFY AS DEMOCRATIC!). Kharkov, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk are under violent regimes of repression and occupation (Not to mention Nikolaev and Zaporozhe): in a word, if these regions were so “with” the Banderists, WHY ARE THEY BUSING IN RIGHT SECTOR AND C14 GALICIAN NEO FASCISTS AS WELL GREYSTONE MERCENARIES TO HOLD THESE REGIONS?

          I don’t buy any poll conducted in a country where its Central and Western regions have disenfranchised the East and South and not only deprived these regions of democratic representation, but have commissioned Neo NAZI thugs to murder Eastern and Southern Ukrainians as “separatists” and “terrorists” for democratically engaging to establish their political will. Does anyone really believe a poll conducted about a regime which received not one popular vote engaged in military and paramilitary violence to suppress the political will of its own people to be seen as legitimate?! Believing any numbers which support such a blue and yellow fantasy is the same as believing Bagdad Bob’s declarations on the eve of the fall of Bagdad.

          The Ukrainian regime is going to fall, and it is going to fall soon. Not soon enough for the Ukrainian people. If anything, these Kolomoisky concocted numbers will be pinned to his chest when he is led to the gallows, because we know who is circulating these lies.

          I will end this by saying that I was hesitant at first, hoping for one last chance at diplomacy to diffuse the Ukrainian crisis. The actions of the US and its recent duplicity and outright fascist violent policies with the junta in Kiev leave me convinced that the sooner Russia moves and occupies the South and East, the sooner these people can get on with their lives with democracy and freedom. At this point, I not only support the East and South as NovoRossija, I look to Russia to create Central and Western Ukrainian hromadas by the end of the year for total regime change throughout the West and Center. ALL THE WAY TO LVOV! The Ukrainian people can only benefit through Russian intervention. Russia should move into Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe, Kherson and Odessa immediately to prevent ethnic cleansing and a humanitarian crisis from occurring.

          Russia wants to disrupt elections now with its proxies? That’s news. Mr. AP, which elections did your Neo NAZI Kiev junta disrupt when it seized power? THE DEMOCRATIC ONES?! Do you even know why the free people of the Ukraine don’t want to vote in the May “elections”? BECAUSE IT ISN’T SAFE! BECAUSE THE CLIMATE IS DOMINATED BY BANDERIST GUNMEN ENGAGED IN VIOLENCE, BLOODLETTING AND ETHNICALLY BASED REPRESSION. It is because of this the East and South initially spoke out with simple conditions: 1). Russian as a second state language equal to Ukrainian 2). Federalization to get these Galician NAZIs out of their territories and to prevent Kiev from selling more of their industries and land to foreign exploiter landlords. 3). Freedom and amnesty for political prisoners to allow A FREE POLITICAL CONVERSATION TO OCCUR! (But by your bizarre, Kolomoisky channeling terms, Amnesty International wants to disrupt your may elections as well). 4). Constitutional reform and regional referendums for people to decide what path they democratically choose to follow. So, you, Mr. AP, with your Kolomoisky contrived fake polls of intimidated peoples, have no room to lecture anyone on “disrupting elections”: firstly, you represent the interests of people MURDERING UKRAINIANS so that they won’t hold democratic referendums. You support the people who overthrew the democratically elected government of the Ukraine, who want to hold show “elections” within a climate of political oppression where presidential candidates are publicly beaten and charged by the authorities for inciting the violence, political voices not in sync with the NAZI regime languish in prison, and Ukrainization is enforced with AKMs. Only a cynical enemy of the Ukraine would support such “elections.” Besides, the West agreed with Yanukovich as a condition of power sharing to hold elections at the end of the year to “allow a national conversation to transpire to support a democratic choice.” All of that has been upended by people OF YOUR ILK, the people who disrupted the democratic process and democratic elections in the UKRAINE. DON’T YOU DARE PASS OFF YOUR CRIMES TO YOUR VICTIMS, BROWN SHIRT!!! At this point, the only sure way to have democratic elections are through regime change, deNazification and allowing the process of national divorce to end the specter of Neo NAZI ethnic repression to allow people to freely express and vote their conscience. It is profane, pornographic, that you even lend credence to a regime whose primary political affirmation is that the “defeat of NAZI Germany was a disaster for the Ukrainian people.” Such a regime ipso facto is a rogue regime and not a regime whose electoral process could be construed as legitimate. Such advocacy for brown shirt politics is beyond repugnant: it is outright evil. You disgust the civilized people of the world who reject Adolph Hitler and NAZI-ism! NEVER AGAIN, BROWN SHIRT! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN!!!

          The time for Ukrainian elections passed away when Kiev formed “death squads” of Galician Neo NAZIs to murder people in the South and East. The time today is to talk about a national divorce and the eventual liberation of the Central Ukraine from Neo NAZI Banderists. This is a revolutionary time which has no faith and confidence in blue and yellow. Wake up to reality.

          • So..abusive troll or sincere deluded fanatic?

            • Rostislav says

              The fact you resort to ad hominem shouts your concession. When you don’t have anything further to say and your position is utterly compromised, try personal attacks. Thank you for admitting your defeat. Now go back to Kolomoisky and tell him his reign of terror in the Ukraine is coming to an end.

              Witless brown shirts…

              • Your post was simply personal attacks. So this one could be your confession.

                Anatoly, please remove Rostislav’s abusive claims about me.

              • Rostislav says

                Of course, you missed the FACTS I PUT FORWARD AND REFUSED TO ANSWER THEM! Only a FASCIST SEEKS TO HAVE OTHER POINTS OF VIEW CENSORED! Pathetic brown shirt.

                YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE AND YOUR DALLIANCE WITH FASCISM WILL BE CONDEMNED BY THE WORLD!

                You were the one who offered “only personal attacks” once your Kolomoisky FUNDED defeatist nonsense was challenged and upended!

                Tell Kolomoisky revolutionary justice awaits.

              • I generally don’t bark back.

                If you really want your points addressed, present them in a non-abusive manner. I suspect you do not.

                Otherwise, I am done with you.

              • In other words, you don’t like fire being put to your fascist propaganda. My points stand on their own merit. I hold to them with indignation and stridency. I DO NOT BOW TO FASCISM! I BLOODY ITS NOSE!

                Your pathetic attempts at defeatism fall under strident challenge: thank you for your further concessions.

                Would be stormtroopers are nothing but bullies. Challenge them but briskly and they cower.

                No matter – your Neo NAZI Banderist regime in Kiev is about to fall. South, East, West – All of the Ukraine is rising against it. The Carpatho Russians today. Crimean Tartars pledging to die side by side with the defenders of liberty in the East, voices of freedom and democracy brown shirts like you dare to call “terrorists.” A new day is dawning. The revolution will free all of the regions of the Ukraine.

                You fall in infamy, fascist. Your Neo NAZIs in Kiev seized power by putting down a democratically elected government. In the East, South and West, LIBERTY IS RISING seizing power by calls for democratic referendums. No lies you can spin can undo that Truth. You murder people to suppress their democratic aspirations and sovereignty.

                As such, fascist sympathizers like you will have your very own Iranian and Vietnamese moments of rejection and infamy.

                Tell Kolomoisky there is a bounty on his head: he is the new Bin Laden.

              • All too telling is the “threshold” you use to brand people “separatists,” “terrorists,” “thugs,” etc. – you traffic in political repression by your very own language, denouncing as “trolls” people like Amnesty International, which has stood on the wall and condemned the authoritarian suppression of liberty and democracy, the illegal arrests and imprisonments, the suppression of democracy you advocate. When a person by their ugly, Neo NAZI propaganda begins calling liberty “terrorism,” reviling the platform of organizations like Amnesty International with insipid scribbling of hate, ie”Putin’s thuggery,” we know what we are dealing with.

                I never thought I would see the day when all of the ersatz voices of the West and its “civilizational values” would voluntarily fall under the condemnation of organizations like Amnesty International for repression of political freedom.

              • Rotislav,

                Your comment on the article “Deconstructing the result of the four party talks” (April 21, 2014 at 5:35 am) was an extremely insightful analysis. Well thought out indeed.

                Now that the miners are grumbling, it looks like the manure may soon hit the fan. If one thinks that Ukraine is divide now, imagine what will happen when IMF conditions sink in. If miners are now on strike over a rise in their taxes, wait until they start losing their jobs. Bye bye Ukrainian economy, the biggest export will soon be cheap labour.

                What does Kyiv fear about a referendum? Why are they using such asymmetrical force against a bunch of protesters if they are so sure Ukrainians in the east still want the status quo? Perhaps they know something that AP’s “stats” don’t.

                So much for civic unity. So much for a united Ukraine.

              • Rostislav says

                Donetsk and Lugansk do not want any part of the Ukraine at this point. They would go the route of the Crimea in a heartbeat. (Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe, Kherson, Odessa, Nikolaev wait in the wings for liberation: Russia simply has to cross the border, and, hopefully, she soon will.). Just today, Carpatho Rus’ spoke up with a list of demands for autonomy and an end to “Galician Right Sector occupation.” Throughout the Central and even Western Ukraine, growing unease with oligarch dictatorship enforced by the fascist violence of Svoboda, Right Sector, C14, foreign mercenaries given Russophobic marching orders by the US government is creating malaise: the people understand that the USA will not support them and that it is using them as cannon fodder without any concern for the aftermath of their regions.

                Meanwhile, factions with the governments of France, Belgium, Finland and Hungary are taking proRussian positions which are Eurosceptic. M. LaPenne of France has stated that she will “pull France out of NATO,” that “she supports a France which recognizes Russia’s rights in the Ukraine and encourages Europe to follow suit,” while stating she “will opposed the accession of the Ukraine to the EU as it is a nation of fascists, punks, prostitutes and drug addicts which can only bring disorder and instability to Europe,” that its “inclusion into the EU is an insult to European civilization.”

                The pendulum is swinging against Obama as well. 53% of Americans opposed American intervention abroad today, and the numbers against involvement in the Ukraine are much higher. Increasingly, the American public believes that the situation in the Ukraine is a “dispute between Russians” or “destabilized by a fascist regime the West brought to power to politically destabilize Russia.” The Ukraine is a bust for the EU/USA/NATO. The resurrection of fascism in Europe is energizing an anti-fascist resistance in the West, which unites Left and Right and Center and is sparking a movement of political rebuttals to NeoCon/NeoLiberal social engineering. The world is a changing, and not in the way Obama and his minions had hoped.

              • Philip Owen says

                The USA (which includes NATO as the US pays 73% of the budget) is a different entity from the EU. Confusing them is a mistake. The US is using the Ukranian crisis to separate Russia from the EU. It has been phenomenally successful. the EU28 is already the world’s biggest economy. if Russia was to join either as a country or the EEU Customs Union (which uses the EU treaties as its fundation documents) then neither the US nor China would be the leading economy for the next 50 years. The US also wins if Russia sets up NovoRossiya. Russia will be politically and economically isolated from the EU and Iran/Turkey (the pivot South option). China may support reabsorption of former Imperial Territories but Turkey and Iran are full of minorities. “The West” did not bring the facists to power. At the most extreme, the USA did but as Nuland’s big idea, in the intercepted phone call, for influencing events was to bring John Kerry over to make a speech, this seems unlikely A rival oligarch trying to block Pinchuk or Poroshenko seems a lot more likely. Do you have any thoughts on potential candidates?

    • Yegor Holmogorov has dismissed that poll as Kievan propaganda:

      http://holmogor.livejournal.com/6320606.html

      He calls the organization that conducted it “a purely propagandist structure.” He’s on Russia’s side in all of this of course.

      I’ve never heard of the Kiev International Institute before I saw that poll, so I can’t offer an opinion on it. In general as passions rise, the number of unbiased sources of information approaches zero.

      • It is a well established polling organization:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_International_Institute_of_Sociology

        The poll does show widespread support for Russia within Donetsk, something that Kiev wouldn’t want to be shown.

        Holmogorov doesn’t seem very credible:

        http://www.avesta.tj/eng/russia/1633-holmogorov-offers-to-collect-information-and-dossier-about-russian-genocide-in-tajikistan.html

      • KIIS work has been cited in numerous scholarly works:

        https://www.google.com/search?q=Kyiv+International+Institute+of+Sociology&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1

        Here’s a bio of KIIS president:

        Valeriy Khmelko holds graduate degrees in physics (1961) and philosophy (1971) and a postgraduate degree (candidate of sciences, 1974) from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. 1975 to 1990, he was a researcher at the Institute of Party History of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He is a doctor of philosophical sciences (dissertation on the methodological and procedural issues of sociological research of the influence of the scientific technological revolution on personality directedness of an industrial worker; defended in Kyiv in 1987).

        From 1990 to 1992, Prof. Khmelko was in charge of the Kyiv Republican Sociological Center for Academic and Applied Research of the Sociological Association of Ukraine. In 1992, on the basis of this Center, he co-founded, together with Volodymyr Paniotto and Michael Swafford, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and became its President. He is also a founder of the Sociology Department of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which he chaired 1992 to 2000 and 2008 to 2010. He also founded the School for Social Sciences and Social Technologies at the same university, for which he served as a dean from 2000 to 2002. Dr. Khmelko was a visiting professor in 1993 and a visiting scholar in 1992, 2000 and 2001 at the Sociology Department of Johns Hopkins University (USA). In 1971, he joined the Soviet Sociological Association and served as its presidium member 1987 to 1991. In 1990, he joined the Sociological Association of Ukraine and served as its vice-president 1990 to 1992, as its directing board member 1998 to 2004, and as a member for its Professional Ethics Committee from 2002 to 2007. Since 1998, he has been a member of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and currently serves on the editorial board of the ISA journal “The International Journal of Sociology”.

        Prof. Khmeko specializes in the fields of macrosociology and sociology of personality (sociological approach to social psychology). In the field of macrosociology, he forecasted that information production would become the dominant production type [1], suggested that socio-genesis is complete when there appear beings capable of creating symbolic systems [2], developed a theory of historical changes of a macrostructure dominant of society reproduction processes [3-6], analyzed Russian-Ukrainian linguistic and ethnic as well as bi-ethnic heterogeneity of ethno-national structures of Ukrainian regions [9, 16, 19]. In the field of sociological perspectives on social psychology (sociology of personality), Valeriy Khmelko suggested conceptualizing personality as a system of internal regulation of human social activity and personality directedness as its dispositional structure; he also developed procedures for measuring and analyzing interrelations of cognitive and emotive components of social dispositions [7, 8].

        As stated by Prof. Volodymyr Paniotto, Valeriy Khmelko’s close colleague, in one of his early articles, Dr. Khmelko suggested a theory of dominant production types that foreran the key idea of the well-known Alvin Toffler’s work “Third Wave”.[1]

        ::::::::::::::::::::::::::

        He seems to be legit, and certainly more so than Yegor Holmogorov.

        • Rostislav says

          Well established polling organization polling people who supposedly don’t see presidential candidates publicly beaten, political opposition voices arrested and held without trial and the political disenfranchisement and ethnic repression of entire regions of the Ukraine?! Established by whom? Goebbels and Himmler & Assocs. This is as legitimate a poll as Mengele’s studies are medical research. No self respecting polling firm could honestly poll a country undergoing such political repression, firstly. Secondly, the fact that anyone would means that these are prostituted results commissioned by the US State Dept. and Igor Kolomoisky. No one believes this nonsense. The forces you are siding with are using Neo NAZI death squads to prevent democratic referendums from being held. They had so much faith in the democratic process, they overthrew the democratically elected government of the Ukraine and assumed power, purging and replacing members of parliament who wouldn’t bow to intimidation without votes being cast. Mr. AP, in a democratic country, AT VERY LEAST, votes of confidence would be called for to insure a democratic transfer of power. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS DON’T IMPRISON THE POLITICAL OPPOSITION AND BEAT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES WHILE WEARING SWASTIKA EMBOSSED ARMBANDS! TAKE YOUR KOLOMOISKY FUNDED LIES TO PEOPLE WHO WILL BELIEVE THEM and send him our message: the noose will be tight.

  2. Freiherr von Stein says

    Regarding the results one has to keep in mind the role of propaganda. The regions which are most opposed against Russia have no Russian TV, they are mostly fed Kiews view on the situation. I think the results could be modified somewhat, if Russian tv-channels are allowed again, and I think this is the reason why Kiew suppressed them. But I dont know whether the change could be significant.

    Also the government has obviously a legitimacy problem. It could change the mood in the country, if starts attacking civilians with support by the US and EU.

    Anyway the mood will definitely start to change, if the country starts receiving “help” by the IWF under the EU label.

  3. This comment from Itar Tass reproducing statements by the Russian Foreign Ministry and by Lavrov should be read in conjunction with my previous comment about the result of the Four Party Talks and my post above.

    http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/729287

  4. The whole thing is really a clash between Russia and the neocons. Ukraine is just a battlefield. And it suffers because of it. If West Ukrainians didn’t take neocon support, if they chose a Swiss-type role (non-involvement in global power struggles) in this, would these global powers have let them be, would the neocons have chosen another battleground on which to fight Russia? Maybe. I think most people recognize now that in 2008 Georgia lost by letting itself be a tool in this global fight. If at the end of this crisis everyone concludes that West Ukrainians made a mistake by allying with the US, then maybe neocons will have fewer willing allies in the future. I think that would be good for the world.

  5. I can see now why Kyiv is sending in the APCs as this poll site indicates (over 177,000 voted):

    http://modsite.by/

    Only one vote allowed and you can only vote for the region your IP is located in.

    The figures are fascinating, especially for the main “swing” cities, of Kharkiv, Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk:

    Kharkiv (18418)

    Remain part of Ukraine:
    31.4% (Votes: 5786)
    Being a part of the Russian Federation:
    47% (Votes: 8655)
    Independent republic:
    4.9% (Votes: 902)
    As part of Ukraine as a subject of the federation:
    16.7% (Votes: 3075)

    Odessa region (9795)

    Remain part of Ukraine:
    29.7% (Votes: 2912)
    Being a part of the Russian Federation:
    48.6% (Votes: 4760)
    Independent republic:
    5.8% (Votes: 572)
    As part of Ukraine as a subject of the federation:
    15.8% (Votes: 1551)

    Dnipropetrovsk region (8860)

    Remain part of Ukraine:
    31.2% (Votes: 2767)
    Being a part of the Russian Federation:
    46.8% (Votes: 4144)
    Independent republic:
    3.8% (Votes: 336)
    As part of Ukraine as a subject of the federation:
    18.2% (Votes: 1613)

    Donetsk and Luhansk are deep in a separatist mindset as unification with Russia is polling at 60.5% and 64.4% respectively.

    If such is the case, one could assume there is a silent majority who clearly do not want anything to do with Ukraine’s current political structure. This also explains my previous comment on Kyiv’s use of asymmetrical force against protesters in the east.

    Turchinov and Yatsenyuk know that if unrest spreads, those who are silent won’t stay this way for long.

    • The same poll, by some unknown organization based in Russia, claims that the separatist leader Tsarov, and Olga Bohomoletz, are the most popular presidential candidates in all Ukraine. It is based in Russia and most of its traffic is in Russia:

      http://www.statscrop.com/www/modsite.by

      So, either it is a hoax or the poll is popular on the pro-Russian internets and those are the people who are mostly answering (i.e., not a random sample of Ukraine or of eastern Ukraine).

      Meanwhile, interesting data from Kharkiv, about vkontakte likes (pro-Maidan vs. anti-Maidan):

      http://pollotenchegg.livejournal.com/184593.html

      About evenly matched. The differences between universities are interesting.

      • K-H-A-R-K-O-V, K-I-E-V, L-U-G-A-N-S-K… All too telling is the role of brown shirts like AP who “represent the real views of Ukrainians” so much that they even deny them PROPER SPELLING. No native uses phoneticized, semiliterate MOVA nonsense in these regions, INCLUDING IN KIEV! People know their history and they aren’t ashamed of it. They know their spelling without Galicianophone stupidities aped by fascist sympathizers like AP.

        To clarify the disinformation of fascist parrots like AP, Tsaryov calls for democratic referendums and respects the voice of all peoples of the Ukraine. There isn’t any real surprise that he could be viewed as popular (albeit reviled by the Neo NAZI junta and its Western sturmfuhrers): for the SIMPLE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT THE ELECTORAL MAJORITY WHICH ELECTED YANUKOVICH AND THE PARTY OF REGIONS 1). still exists & 2). essentially endorsed AND ENDORSES Tsaryov’s program in casting their DEMOCRATIC VOTES and this is why 3). Neo NAZI BANDERISTS (and their enablers like AP) OVERTHREW THEIR GOVERNMENT, set up a Neo fascist JUNTA – FASCIST DICTATORSHIP, WHICH AP SUPPORTS USING ALL MEANS NECESSARY INCLUDING GENOCIDE – complete with swastikas and denunciations of the “defeat of NAZI Germany as a tragedy for the Ukraine,” Neo NAZIs who have armed Banderist cadres and sent them East and South to murder people for asking for democratic representation and referendums, which AP denounces as “terrorism.”

        Even Carpatho Rus’ has risen up to resist AP’s Galician, Neo NAZI friends.

        Beware any fascist brown shirt like AP who is trying to spin you into believing that the Eastern and Southern (and Central) Ukraine welcome a Neo NAZI junta which has intimidated, murdered and/or displaced their DEMOCRATICALLY elected representatives in the Rada, beats presidential candidates in public, goes armed with Kalashnikovs live on air to threaten television stations with Molotov cocktails, seeks to use its own citizens who will not accede to their NEO NAZI ukrainoznavstvo as an experiment in “Ukrainian ethnogenesis” (ie systemic, brown shirt ethnic cleansing), and openly imprisons, beats and murders voices of political dissent. The peoples of the Ukraine see the kangaroo Shuster shows where 12 to 1 participants are invited to shout down people like Tsaryov, for him only to emerge looking justified. They understand the difference between political (FASCIST) repression (what AP and his EU/USA/NATO sleaze merchants) are peddling versus democratic dialogue, free elections and a democratic vote. THEY PREFER THE LATTER, which Russia is offering them.

        AND THE PEOPLES OF THE UKRAINE ALSO REALIZE THAT UNITY WITH RUSSIA MEANS AN INCREASE IN THEIR LIVING STANDARD, HIGHER SALARIES AND PENSIONS, A DEVELOPED AND FUNDED SOCIAL WELFARE SYSTEM, AN END TO UKRAINIZATION AND ITS ACCOMPANYING ASSAULTS AGAINST THE RELIGIOUS, HISTORICAL, CULTURAL FABRIC OF WHERE THEY LIVE. Donetsk and Lugansk not only seek independence, they seek a Crimean arrangement with the Russian Federation, for they REALIZE THAT THE SCHEMES OF UKRAINIANIZATION AND OLIGARCH EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION ARE THE WORK OF HOSTILE FOREIGNERS, people with AP’s mindset! Putin is not hated in the East and South: people like Kolomoisky and his lackeys like AP are.

        Kharkov, Odessa, Nikolaev, Zaporozhe, Dnepropetrovsk, Kherson will likewise back the idea of NovoRossija once Russia crosses the border. The fascist junta knows this. AP knows this. His boss Kolomoisky knows this. So these fascists engage in disinformation to try and seed doubt and defeatism. But, Mssrs, THE GALLOWS FOR YOU ARE PREPARED! KOLOMOISKY HAS A PRICE ON HIS HEAD! HE IS THE NEW BIN LADEN! I would not envy anyone who would be so stupid as to be in his proximity or in his employ or be deranged enough to spout his fascist lies. Those bad ole days of his theft of BILLIONS FROM THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLES are over. The oligarch murder of the Ukraine is an accomplished fact. The revolution is upon you, and the peoples of the Ukraine are not going o be singing “UNCLE SAM uber alles.” The prospect for a Ukrainian McEurope is over. At this point, territorial reassignment is the hot topic, regime change a foregone conclusion, deNazification already written out, and asset forfeiture and trial of oligarchs and their poodles like this brownshirt AP a matter of the very near future.

        Dimitar, simply consider one thing which shows AP to be nothing but a lying brown shirt mouthpiece and dissembler. TODAY in the very Ukrainophone (actually Surzhikophone) city of Cherkassy, an experiment was attempted. Russophone elements of the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic donned the garb of “little green men.” Instead of meeting any resistance, the Central Ukrainian populace of Cherkassy welcomed these faux, “little green men” with aplumb. That is the degree of the lies and disinformation AP engages in. The Ukraine is done as an artificial nation state. Galician “ukrainoznavstvo” is dead. It is only a matter for Russia to walk in and mop up and restore order. No appreciable resistance will be encountered until the Russian army reaches the Western Ukraine, and then Galician bravado will end in a tragic farse of Galicians denouncing their own to survive. The people are ready to end the tyranny of Ukrainian nationalist, Banderist, oligarch tyranny. That is the situation on the ground in the Ukraine.

        Brown shirts like AP won’t realize that the Ukrainian peoples, as much as any other people, don’t welcome an unelected, fascist junta empowering armed, Banderist punks to stop police men for papers and abuse them for “buying ice cream.” The people of Kiev have an issue with the fact that the West has turned the main square of their capitol into a Neo NAZI open sewer, that the billions they will be empoverished to pay the West for their “financial aid and democratization” have already been paid BY THEM and stolen FROM THEM by the Western empowered oligarchs who are the only ones who have benefited by the putschists in Kiev. The Ukrainian peoples are rife with rebellion. All Russia has to do is show them she is serious in liberating them. The Kiev Neo NAZI junta is about to fall. And Firtash,Poroshenko, Kolomoisky, Taruta, Timoshenko are going to face the peoples’ revolutionary tribunal. It goes without saying that people like Turchinov, Yatsenyuk, Parubiy, Tyagnibok, Yarosh, Klitschko, et al. await the noose. If I were AP, I wouldn’t want to be in the Ukraine when that happened: the Nuremberg Process didn’t spare brown shirt toadies of his miserable ilk historically.

        Anyone who denies a people the fundamental right to their proper spelling is already a person who neither has respect for these people nor in any way represents a voice for their welfare. Such a person discussing the people already is lying to you by the simple fact he refuses to grant them the dignity of their own names. He speaks for Galicia and for its brown shirt oppression of the Ukrainian peoples. Galicia is a foreign and hostile phenomenon increasingly HATED by all peoples and regions of the Ukraine.

        Dimitar, your numbers are on the mark. The Neo NAZI regime is about to fall, and Mr. AP will be “looking for WMDs” to find his Easterners and Southerners who support the territorial integrity and unity of the Ukraine. He is a brown shirt liar and a poor one at that.

        • AP,

          Your sources only have a sample size numbering in the hundreds(maybe less) in specific regions. Along with this, the polls you’ve used have been painted to make Ukraine look like a Utopia – this is most certainly not the case. I would not be surprised if your “unbiased” polls were handpicked EU flag waving “migrants” from Lviv. Don’t pretend that the people of the east and south harbour friendly sentiments for Galicia.

          Here’s what you wrote earlier http://darussophile.com/2014/04/russian-federation-sitrep-3-april-2014/

          April 4, 2014 at 6:06 am

          “[…]

          Using Crimea’s 80% as a baseline and the ratio of other regions to Crimea as predictor, we can guess that if referenda were held in other Ukrainian regions the results would be*:

          Donetsk: 65% in favor of joining Russia
          Lugansk: 47%
          Odessa: 47%
          Dnipropetrovsk: 27%
          Kharkiv: 29%
          Zaporizhia: 33%
          Vynnytsia: 5%
          Kyiv (city): 10%
          Poltava: 8.4%
          Lviv: 0% ”

          If we can draw anything from the polls, it is that people are sick of Ukraine’s deadlocked political system. No amount of spin (yours in particular) can change that. Also, the Europhile sentiment is nowhere near a plurality within the south and east, and this is coming from your own “sources”.

          If a country has to maintain order by imposing far right groups on the population, then there is something particularly disturbing about it. Welcome to Kyiv’s police state, crocodile tears are most welcome.

          • “Your sources only have a sample size numbering in the hundreds(maybe less) in specific regions.

            Upper hundreds. That is normal in polls.

            “Along with this, the polls you’ve used have been painted to make Ukraine look like a Utopia – this is most certainly not the case. I would not be surprised if your “unbiased” polls were handpicked EU flag waving “migrants” from Lviv.

            No, the polls are random samples. But you are free to believe whatever you want. Your side (and I don’t mean you personally, necessarily) used to claim that Galicia could be cut off and the rest of Ukraine would happily and peacefully join Russia. It seems that it’s finally sunk in, that Kiev doesn’t want Russia either. Now your side is claiming that all the oblasts who had voted for Yanukovich want to join Russia or become independent. But the polls suggest otherwise.

            Indeed, what is interesting is that the numbers I posted almost a month ago roughly correspond to the the level of anti-Ukrainian activity more recently (Odessa is an exception – perhaps because it’s far from the Russian border). If you had been correct there would have been mass disturbances stretching from Odessa across Kherson, in Dnipropetrovsk, through Donbas and Kharkiv and the Kiev government would have been helpless to stop all of it. Instead, the unrest is basically just limited to the two Donbas oblasts. As noted in the numbers I posted.

            • An agreement with the IMF has been reached. One of the measures is to increase gas prices by 50% to house consumption. Ukraine will likely see more turmoil in other regions.

              • From what I understand – and I may be mistaken here – there’s nothing against offering vouchers to low income people.

            • Rostislav says

              Kolomoisky poodle, AKA AP, a statistical sample of less than 1500, assuming normal demographic conditions, would still be subject to the criticism of the sample groups and would have to be tested with focus groups in a NORMAL situation in order to refine its results. Samples as high as 3000 during the 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 elections in the USA were off because of over and undersampling, not to mention push polling. You have a state sponsored/oligarch funded Neo NAZI terror going on and actively politically repressing the majority of the electorate of the regions of the Ukraine. Your numbers are as much a lie as you are a fascist dissembler.

              Extrapolating results with a Crimean baseline is again problematic. Lugansk, for instance, has collected the most petitions for a referendum of independence and absorption into the Russian Federation, even more than Donetsk. The fact of the matter is the responses garnered in AP’s Kolomoisky poll were from people who would respond to his polls, in other words Right Sector/C 14/Batkivschina/UDAR/Svoboda/Organized crime and professional provocateurs (ASTRO TURF) funded by Kolomoisky operatives throwing off all results. Kharkov is an extremely Russophrone region. Besides, the state has disenfranchised all of these regions and is acting in open disenfranchisement and terror operations against the populations of these regions.

              The rest of the regions from Zaporozhe to Nikolaev to Kherson to Odessa to Dnepropetrovsk are so “solidly opposed to unification with the Russian Federation” as the Kolomoisky poodle AP would have you believe that the Kievan junta has imported Right Sector terrorists to encircle the major cities in these regions with checkpoints, engage in terror brigades to “put down separatist sentiment” and to generally enforce AP’s “Ukranian utopia” (with the accompanying bogus fascist numbers) on this politically and ethnically repressed populace, enforcing Euromaidan with brown shirt fists and automatic rifles. This is how the brown shirt AP gets his fake numbers.

              AP, wants you to believe that these people like being called by Galician Neo NAZIs “monsters, Finno-Ugric colonists, mutants, animals, Russian imperialist zoological experiments.” Don’t be stupid enough to believe his fascist lies.

              Let me ask you, Mssrs., if you lived in a state whose government treated you this way, even persecuting you for proper spelling and beating you or your friends and family for being true to your ethnic identity and history while depriving you of a role in the political process, would any of you see your liberty best served by continuing in such a Neo NAZI hell or would you prefer liberation, a higher standard of living, freedom to spell, to vote, to voice your aspirations, to not have to live in EU/USA/NATO enforced poverty “austerity regimes’? This is academic. Even Carpatho Rus’ is tired of AP’s Kolomoisky fascism and Galician thuggery.

              As soon as Russia declares support for NovoRossiya or Kievan Rus’ or whatever successor state(s) it intends for this failed Galician blue and yellow nonsense – QUACKERY! – of the Ukraine, and that will come soon, it will all fall down like a house of cards. AP’s boss Kolomoisky will have to run for the hills (to no avail: he will meet the same fate as Bandera), the Maidanuty Banderists will meet with awful ends and life will fundamentally change for the better for all of the Ukrainian regions. There will be democracy, liberty, prosperity and brighter futures for all peoples of the regions of the Ukraine once Russia ends this blue and yellow stupidity.

              Just consider how much of a Kolomoisky poodle and fascist dissembler AP is. Here he writes that “low income vouchers” will be provided for poor people to afford energy. But he fails to note that the EU/IMF austerity conditions on state subsidized energy assistance, aid to the poor, and pensions are ordered to be slashed by 50% by these malefactors. And he blatently lies to simply try to float the idea that somehow, someway in an alternate Galician universe where the Third Reich won WWII (a place where Kolomoisky and his poodle AP will not live, BTW) that people support this blue and yellow illegal, terror regime and want it instead of better alternatives. This line of propaganda is precisely why the West is about to see a massive correction in the Ukraine, a total bust. To top it off, the successor governments to the Ukraine will default on all foreign debt and opt out of the Euro and the dollar. Total bust for the Orange Reich. The cost of Russophobia.

              Don’t believe toxic, fascist poodles like AP.

              Again, the Galicianophone spellings are insulting and illiterate. Why not spell Kharkov “H-a-r’-k-y-w-q-z-t-y”: it is just as illiterate and ignorant as “Kharkiv.” This is not how people in the Ukraine spell the places where they live. These Galician stupidities are not historical spellings. They are the equivalent of Russian Ebonics. Enough.

              • Dimitar says

                Rotislav,

                I’ve started to take AP’s polls with a grain of salt.

                Also, your view is commonly held among southern and eastern Ukraine. Unfortunately with the advent of Right Sector “peackepeers” who ‘patrol’ the streets, it is difficult to call for change without the risk of being abducted at night.

                Ukrainians do not the Europhile-bloc mentality as I’d previously believed. For example, with almost half a million Ukrainians in Crimea, I would have expected active protests to be staged or even calls for secession. Nothing of this kind has happened, leading me to suspect that the Crimean Ukrainians are happy with their status quo.

                Furthermore, the Galician mentality is seen as an import by those outside of the region and is deeply, deeply detested. Almost two decades of enforcing Ukrainianisation (a Galician construct) on the various minorities, including Rusyns and Russians, is now biting the state in the backside. Rather than build on civic unity, this ethnic nationalism has now meant everybody wants out. Russia’s intervention has shown just that.

                I’m expecting a Soviet style collapse and new nation states if Ukraine does not reform. Self determination for all, not just for Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg.

              • Rostislav says

                I personally favor a union of Central, Eastern and Southern Ukraine *(along with possibly Chernovtsy and Carpatho Rus’) in a restored nation known as “Kievan Rus’,” deOligarched, deNazified, independent from Russia but with a strong federalized, AKA German style federation, government, adopting a Chinese economic model and developing and revamping the post Soviet economy into a modern one. This state can become an energy producing state. I also favor its default on Western debt and total remonetization in BRICS.

                Whereas, as far as the Western Ukraine is concerned, these regions are in very fact a “Ukraine” (and should retain the name which was not normative of their regions), and I believe they should be administered from Kiev as a protectorate with a multi-national Eurasian peacekeeping force and with a governor appointed from Kiev.

                Something like this is a very good possible future for the regions of the Ukraine.

                I have roots in Russia and in the Ukraine, roots which go back centuries. I am Russian. I am in constant contact with “boots on the ground” and informed firsthand of events. I speak Russian. I know what is happening in the Ukraine and in Donbass. Besides, I have a background in Russian history, in political science and economics.

    • Dimitar says

      The economic consequences are indeed worrying for Russia. However, this will only mean Russia will now pivot to Asia – which is brimming with more reliable trading partners. Also, Russia is not looking at the Ukrainian crisis through an economic prism, rather a geopolitical (even existential one). Economic pains are worth it in order to maintain sovereignty for future generations of Russians. For this reason alone, I don’t think Moscow is worried in the least about the economy

      • Philip Owen says

        “which is brimming with more reliable trading partners” Really. Why such a long wait to make money? So far as I can see, Russian shops are already as full of Chinese goods as anywhere in the world. Building a 5000 km pipeline to China has been under consdieration for more than 10 years. It will not be a pivot to the East. I give advice on exporting to and investing in Russia. The enquiries I get from Vietnam are from bakers of cakes and canners of tin foods. They don’t have the money or the language skills to organize exports and the transport costs are huge. Most Russian firms do not have the products or management skills to benefit from global sourcing. Gloria Jeans and Kira Plastina are probably closest but both trade on the idea that they have their production in the FSU. I have enquiries from Iran too. Dates and raisins anyone? Russia needs to deal with leading edge management and technical competition to raise its game. Japan and South Korea are Russia’s economic options in the East. Japan is even less engaged with Russia than the USA. South Korea is already heavily engaged with Russia. SK firms are taking over the remains of Russia’s shipbuilding industry. LG and Samsung have a long history of raiding Russian Research Institutes for people rather than paying patent royalties. Most of what the FSU had to offer was extracted by offering three year contracts to Russians to live in South Korea. “more reliable trading partners”. Really. The biggest foreign investor in Russia through the 1990’s was the UK, followed by Germany. Putin needed a useful enemeny for the 2004 general election. He choose Britain. And then a whole bundle of real issues arrived. From BP to Lugovoy. Britain is now 5th and falling (although in 2012 it hit 1st again due to the way Rosneft took over TNK/BP. Chinese and Japanese investment in Russia is trivial. South Korea makes short term investment in Russians rather than Russia. Good luck pivoting East. Mongols pillage.

        • Rostislav says

          In your mind, the world ended in 2004, but since then China has because the world’s first economic power. India is emerging. Standards of Living are going up throughout Asia. To fuel all of this economic expansion, ENERGY is necessary. The West doesn’t have it, nor does it produce it, and it will become bereft of affordable Russian energy as a consequence of your Russophobic posturing and stupidities. Neither China nor India has had a stagnant Western, Keynesian debt laden economy for the last decade. When you wake up from your decade long sleep, then you might realize the reality confronting you, and it is one which has undertakers qued at your door to give you quotes.

          There is no point in going on about Britain’s attempts at destabilization within Russia. It is old news at this hour, and really a pathetic chronicle of Russophobic stupidities.

          But I would applaud you for your honestly racist affirmations and denigration of the peoples of Asia. It is because of this that Russia will have much more success with them than it will in trifling with a decadent, declining and morally incoherent West. Now we know where the Neo NAZI Banderists get their stupidities from. They ape your retrograde, racialist analyses. Bravo. Your new adaptation of the TRIUMPH OF THE WILL awaits an English score. Simon Cowell can be the judge in the competition.

          You needn’t worry yourself about Sino-Russian partnership, progress and growth, save in the respect of making funeral arrangements.

    • Rostislav says

      Is Saudi Arabia worried about fluctuations in global demand for its oil? Do Westerners ever ruminate on their craven dream of independence from Saudi oil by writing fatuous nonsense about the “collapse of the Saudi economy due to Western disengagement and its eventual energy independence”? No, almost never, because such lunatic ravings are a sign of economic illiteracy. There is not a finite demand for oil and energy, there is an increasing demand with the added imperative of oil equaling prosperity which secures the economic livelihoods of energy producing states. Russia makes money even if China sells you its oil surplus from Russia at a mark up. WAKE UP! Russia is second to Saudi Arabia in oil production. Simply by increasing production and building pipelines to China, assuming total shut off of the EU, Russia can recover from any economic instability AND GROW. India and China are more reliable trading partners, GROWING AND EMERGING MODERN ECONOMIES, and will more than “take up the slack of Western disruptions to the Russian economy.” China is the world’s first economy NOW: its industry is only limited by increasing energy costs, which Russo-Chinese economic cooperation ADDRESSES. China will become Russia’s main trading partner, and both will end up having trade surpluses with the West, MEANING TRANSFER OF WESTERN WEALTH TO RUSSIA AND CHINA. You will pay for the economic downturn you try to cause by imposing facile sanctions on Russia because it will neither sing “Uncle Sam uber alles” nor EVER ALLOW YOU FREE CONQUEST OF THE UKRAINE.

      Who should be worried about the sanctions? McEurope and the West. Cut off of Russian gas across the board will plunge the EU and the West into deep recession. Since its economies of the last 10 years have been floated on insipid schemes of Keynesian spending and deficit management, along with craven unfunded public mandates, shocks to production in energy costs, as well as to consumption due to energy increased costs equal STAGFLATION and DEPRESSION. In the end, Russia weathers the storm by building pipelines to China, India, Asia and revokes the $900B deal with US firms on arctic energy exploration and production. And the West is left eating crow, changing governments, The EU breaks apart, starting with France, ending with Germany with “New Europe” waving a stupid blue flag and NATO trying to fuel its vehicles with EXPENSIVE oil reserves from Texas, as states from Bulgaria to Norway begin question why they need to be cannon fodder for American empire and stupid Polish-Vaticano Neo Prometheanism.

      Russia is not worried, but Europe should tremble at Russia’s response to sanctions. 1). BRICS will shatter Western economies as the debt laden dollar and euro are dumped, and their debt burdens increase thereafter, both by an increase in payments in debt service and in interest rates. Your currencies will become toilet paper in your very Weimar economic stupidities. 2). Energy costs will skyrocket. 3). European governments will be greeted with economic instability due to economic contractions in the West and the crowding out of the Western banking system. 4). Russian will be supported not only by China, India, states within the CIS, but by emerging Asian, African, Pacific Rim, and American nations and will develop higher standards of living and develop economic, energy and military superiority. 5). Russia does not have the debt issues (and linking itself to the Chinese economy can easily allow it to default on Western debt and Moody’s ratings system) the West has. It does not have its American imperialist military dependence. It does not have the West’s dependence on energy. Such Russian independence means sovereignty, security and transparency and transcendence of the West and its eventual superiority by the end of the century.

      Don’t weep for Russia. Russia will be the one sending you flowers at the funerals of your governments, McEurope. Your Neo NAZI stunt in the Ukraine has not only lost you the Ukraine, it has unfurled the banners of revolution and social realignment in your own backyards, and you all are simply not awake enough to realize it. BUT THE EMERGING MASSES WILL WAKE YOU UP, and they will not applaud your “vilification of Vladimir Putin as foreign policy” obtuseness. They will reject you for it.

  6. Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America

    http://youtu.be/BNbUSBhOmys

    Haven’t watched it yet but it has been a theme of western pundits and even some Russian commentators including Putin or Russian fragmenting.

    • Rostislav says

      In other words, you don’t seem to have much recourse except to repeat your tired talking points when they are challenged and shown to be the work of semiliterate Russophobic stupidity.

      • Watched it about an hour ago that was a surprisingly good presentation with some major issues that pro-Russian bloggers and experts never address.

        I think he is overstating issues of Muslim militant threat and some of the issues of demographics but he does make good points on other issues like:

        – Academic and overall institutional corruption
        – Long term demographic challenges
        – Something I have talked about for years to fall on death ears with Russian bloggers is the Muslim threat supported from abroad although I would expand that to the whole of Eurasia not just Russia
        – Russians willing to actually leave Russia and those abroad with skills willing to come back
        – The real situation in Russia and Russia’s popularity
        – Putin’s personality cult and government
        – Russian geopolitical and domestic policies/situation among other things

        • Rostislav says

          I find it laughable that Westerners grasp at straws to find something, anything, to try and “euthanize the waking Russian bear.”

          Sir, the same analysis APPLIED TO YOUR OWN BRITAIN would show your nation at a crossroads quite catastrophic, a situation so dire it would seem as if the forces of Christendom lost the Battle of Tours. Your own London, “Londonistan,” is a more immediate quagmire engulfed in the demographic and institutional instabilities with which you try to smear Russia: from the ethnogenesis of a SHARIAT Londonistan coupled with a veritable Orwellian police state with a camera on every street corner to organized crime gangs having reached “accommodation” with British authorities to amoral, immoral and rampant atheism, your own analysis cross applied to Britain heralds your civilization’s certain collapse.

          Or you didn’t think that far ahead in your Russophobic ravings? Or somehow you think that Russians haven’t become acquainted with just what your culture and nation “doesn’t have to offer”?

          Sir, Russia has seen many a crisis in the last 150 years. England, however, has only dealt with externalities, but now the very internalities you are trying to construct a defeatist, RUSSOPHOBIC diatribe upon when used to analyze your own dire condition in “Jolly Old” leave your cold war propaganda stale and quite old, but not quite jolly. To wit, to accept your ravings as decent sovietology or “post – sovietology” one lowers such “post sovietology” to the science of phobias wistfully floated on semiliteracies and ignorance which really find their real meaning in the fact that the West has seen its own mortality and is trying to kill the future before it kills it.

          Perhaps, if you weren’t burning people to death on Russia’s borders for speaking Russian, for asking for democratic referendums, and if you villains weren’t involved in a terror state engaged in Mengele and Eichmann worthy human vivisection enterprises then someone might listen to you, but the West is precipitously abdicating all authority in the Ukraine and in Russia and rallying people to a common cause, uniting them like never before. When you as a civilization define barbarism and inhumanity as a moment, you unite Eurasia as a movement against you and justify Putin’s program as a generational and civilizational event. Thank you.

          Your dying civilization is leading itself to a ragnarok which will culminate in its being tried in Nuremberg Trials.

          • Britain’s problem’s are miniscule compared to the long and short term problems facing Russia that due to a myriad of factors not least bad government that it does not know how to deal with and cannot fix that’s why these major issues are never addressed.

            • Southerncross says

              Don’t they teach punctuation in English schools anymore?

              The dying English nation will not prolong her life or ease her suffering with your discredited drivel. Requiescas in pace, Anglia – you won’t be missed.

            • Rostislav says

              Miniscule? You have a police state architecture with a Shariat London emerging? That’s miniscule? Just nonsense.

  7. Rostislav says

    I want to call everyone’s attention to this link. Please look at it. It is a picture of a victim from the Kiev morgue which was found among the dismembered and semi-burnt body parts of infants, young women, the poor and political dissidents near the crematorium. This is Banderist, “non fascist” Tyagnibok capitalism at work. They are the victims of Western organ farms supplying far right Banderists and oligarch scum like Kolomoisky, AP’s friends, with funds.

    This is the Ukraine the fascist poodle, AP, with his Galicianophone Western press corps is trying to tell the world is not fascist and is supported by the Ukrainian people. This is the Euromaidan people like Angela Merkel and John Kerry maintain is committed to democratic revolution and European values.

    The only “European values” to be seen here are those of Himmler, Eichmann, and Mengele. Europe has defined itself through this type of work in the Ukraine. Barbarism in the twenty-first century! THIS WILL NOT STAND, EUROPE! THIS WILL NOT STAND, WASHINGTON! SHAME ON YOU, TEL AVIV!

    There is a civilizational event going on in the Ukraine, and the West will stand trial along with the NAZIs it has sponsored. There will be a reconvening of the Nuremberg Process. The Ukraine and blue and yellow is now dead for the ages. NAZI Germany 2.0, AKA EUROMAIDAN, is something children will learn in textbooks was the epitome of the debauchery and decline of the West.

    Look, look here, look well. This is the face of BANDERIST NAZI-ism brought to you by McEurope and Washington DC with approval from certain people in Tel Aviv.

    And brown shirts like AP will scream that fascists are not running the Ukraine even with concentration horrors like this screaming NAZI atrocities. Remember that. Remember the line the Western press has fed you from Galicia and wake up and reclaim your humanity, Europe, America, Israel!

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=280606082113112&set=a.146529375520784.1073741833.100004911664195&type=1&theater

  8. Dimitar says

    Odessa now seems to have caught the Russian Spring…

    http://rt.com/news/156424-odessa-ukraine-clash-autonomy/

    This is what happens when an unelected government sends APCs against civilians.

  9. donnyess says

    “There is a civilizational event going on in the Ukraine.”

    The birth of Dugin’s Eurasia movement…unless NATO starts a war…getting Israel and about 80 million Americans blasted into the next galaxy…European capitals too if Merkel goes “krazy kraut” and blows all the trade links. Looks to me like the Russian people want Putin to stand up and fight it out…they figure to die anyway…might as well die with honor…bring peace to the world…for those that manage to survive anyway.

    • Rostislav says

      NATO can’t win a war in the Ukraine. Nor could it hold on to the Baltics and Poland if it came down to it, but Russia’s interests are confined to its “near abroad.” And no one is going to use nukes for Neo NAZI Banderist trash in Kiev.

      • Philip Owen says

        Anyone wishing to win a war in the Ukraine needs their head examined. All parts of the Ukraine, except the Donbass, contain potential resistance movements. The IRA never had more than 300 members and 10,000 active supporters in a population of 1.5 million. It maintained a very expensive 30 years war. Reusing the tactics used against Chechnya, destroy a village of 500 to get 30 rebels, will meet much more political resistance if repeated in Ukraine. Real sanctions at least.

        • Rostislav says

          Nonsense. To believe such stupidity one has to believe that the Ukrainian population, either Russophone or Ruthenian believes in not only violent political repression and Burma-esque coercion and oppression but Neo NAZI BANDERIST burning of political opponents alive and engaging in Mengele – worthy human vivisection experiments. In orther words, one must believe the inhuman obscenity that outside of Galicia, there is much support for Neo NAZI Banderism. THERE ISN’T! The Ukrainian peoples aren’t subhuman orcs suspended in the awe of NAZI Banderist bloodletting and carnage, no matter what the West and Unia has made of Galicia.

          The Neo NAZI Banderist Junta with its stateless thieving oligarch sponsors is an unelected and unpopular government. The Maidan regime, outside of the brown shirts, is a Western Vichy government without the fine wine and dining. There would be NO NATIVE RESISTANCE TO ITS REMOVAL BY THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION. Only a fascist clown believes the nonsense that ‘there will be a popular uprising outside of Donbass to fight liberation of the Ukraine.” Russians and Ukrainians are ethnically one people.

          Kolomoisky will swing from the gallows in Kiev with the peoples of the Ukraine cheering! That is going to happen. THAT SCUM IS THE NEW BIN LADEN! A PROMISE!!!

          To wit, after WWII, Ukrainian NAZI collaborators were in much greater concentrations and had even more ordinance at their disposal but the Banderists only managed to kill dairy cows and rape Rusin peasant women into the 1950s before they were snuffed out.

          Within hours of the Russian army crossing the border, all of the Russophone and Russophrone Ukraine will rise and in no less than 3 weeks of “slow and methodical” deNazification/oligarch sanction, Kiev will not only capitulate, Chernovtsy and Carpatho Rus’ will serve as flanking fronts upon fascist Galicia.

          The Ukrainian army, even swelled with armed Right Sector/C14/Greystone/Svoboda/Maidanuty/organized Kolomoisky criminal fascist ersatz SS stormtroopers, is something an armed, equipped and organized army of the Donbass given Russian air support and supplies could suppress within 2 – 3 months. The Russian army could put these fascist einsatzgruppen down in days, and if Russia wanted, it could march into Berlin in 3 – 6 months to plant the flag atop the Reichstag again with the German Left opening the borders.

          If you don’t know anything about the Ukraine, its peoples, or Russia, please keep your quack Western, brown shirt thinking to yourself. The Ukraine is not a Russian Iraq or Vietnam. Nor is it even a Chechnya (Perhaps you have noticed whom the Chechnyan leadership is supporting in the Ukraine). It would be more like a soft Russian Liberation of Paris with Ukrainian citizens and ladies greeting Russian soldiers with wreaths and affection.

          The government of Britain never engaged the people of Northern Ireland in the same state sponsored NEO NAZI terror that the Kievan junta is engaged in. It never armed Orange militias and empowered them to brutalize, repress and murder Catholics with impunity, much the less burn them to death and fund themselves in an organ trade of human vivisections. Moreover, there are clear majorities opposed to the junta in Kiev THROUGHOUT THE REGIONS OF THE UKRAINE. IT IS AN ILLEGITIMATE, UNELECTED, FASCIST GOVERNMENT HATED BY THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLES! ALL OF ITS ACTIONS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND NULL AND VOID! ANY ELECTIONS IT HAS CALLED ARE ILLEGITIMATE! If this were not so, you Western barbarians wouldn’t be sending in armor to murder democratic protestors seeking self determination and referendums, nor would you be burning people alive for calling for an end to an illegitimate and violent fascist government suppressing their human rights and democratic freedoms, their right of franchise, their right to restoration of a legitimate government. These are not minority positions, no matter how much you hope to float the lie of popular acceptance of Neo NAZI-ism in the Ukraine. It is not so: the people of the Ukraine WANT FREEDOM, WANT A HISTORICAL CONTINUUM AND THEY DON’T WANT THE WEST WITH ITS SPONSORSHIP OF BANDERIST NAZI-ism!

          Realistically speaking, Donbass will never be reconciled with a Ukrainian state of any stripe at this point, Realistically, Odessa will never forget the Banderist Kristallnacht going on in its streets. Kharkov, Zaporozhe, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, Kherson, even Carpatho Rus’… these are all territories that do not want a part in a blue and yellow Banderist Ukraine. The real ethnic phenomenon in the Ukraine is that the majority of the people see themselves as “Soviets” in nationality, where they see a common national destiny with Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union involved in the development of the Eurasian Union. These people have seen 23 years of blue and yellow stupidity and “Ukrainianization” with its accompanying polonized QUACKERY, and they are DONE WITH oligarch theft of national resources and Banderist – Uniate destabilization, strife, violence and political insanity. They want out. Only Galicia, realistically speaking, will fight for a Ukraine (a Ukraine which it historically was never a part of), and Galicia does not stand a chance against anyone: the Don Cossack Host could put Galicia down using horse mounted cavalry. Its own people will denounce their Banderists to save their skins and they renounce Unia yet again, because Galicians have a national history of being cowards and traitors when confronted with superior force: they betray and murder their own to stay alive (that’s why their speech is almost a Polish dialect).

          Ultimately, the future lies in liberation, deNazification of, in oligarch sanction within the Ukraine and thereafter either a reformed Central, South, East state of RUSSO-RUTHENIAN identity, ie a “Kievan Rus’ or NovoRossiya or a Southeastern Donbass Peoples’ Republic used as bedrock for a New Rus’: whatever the outcome, RUSSKY MIR as a historical and political outlook and “RUS'” will be part of the ethnonym. Galicia may persist as a “Ukraine,” but it will undergo the same type of humiliation NAZI Germany did after WWII and be a DISGRACED Eurasian protectorate. Ukrainoznavstvo, blue and yellow, etc. as political movements are dead. It is only a matter of counting down the clock. Russians don’t pause unless it is in their best interest, but when they do pause, they prepare to pursue their best interests. The people of the Donbass and the Southeast are not at all reconciled with NAZI terror or even Ukrainian ethnic identity: the revolutionary struggle is a civil war which the NEO NAZI junta in Kiev will lose once the democratic peoples of the Southeast receive supplies, equipment, advisors, air and intelligence support.

          In other words, the NAZI Saigon the West has made of Kiev will be run over by the NVA of the Southeast. And all resistance will be mowed down in its wake to the same degree with total capitulation of fascist forces to the democratic, partisan army of the Southeast. That is the future of your NAZI sponsoring EU/USA/IMF/NATO in the Ukraine, and anyone thinking that they could wrest the Ukraine from Russia and use Neo NAZI violence to repress the electoral majority is a pathological psychopath who awaits a Nuremberg Trial for crimes against humanity.

          The West is not only going to lose in the Ukraine: this loss is going to be a civilizational event which redefines the balance of power of the world. Thank GOD the Babylon the West has become, pregnant of all the evils, the mass graves, the godlessness and immoralities of the twentieth century, is going to fall! BABYLON IS COMING DOWN, FASCIST!

  10. Rostislav says

    It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war

    The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all

    The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country’s east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a “pariah state”.

    That might be more explicable if what is going on in eastern Ukraine now were not the mirror image of what took place in Kiev a couple of months ago. Then, it was armed protesters in Maidan Square seizing government buildings and demanding a change of government and constitution. US and European leaders championed the “masked militants” and denounced the elected government for its crackdown, just as they now back the unelected government’s use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls in cities such as Slavyansk and Donetsk.

    “America is with you,” Senator John McCain told demonstrators then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the far-right Svoboda party as the US ambassador haggled with the state department over who would make up the new Ukrainian government.

    When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia’s most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.

    Putin bit back, taking a leaf out of the US street-protest playbook – even though, as in Kiev, the protests that spread from Crimea to eastern Ukraine evidently have mass support. But what had been a glorious cry for freedom in Kiev became infiltration and insatiable aggression in Sevastopol and Luhansk.

    After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

    So you don’t hear much about the Ukrainian government’s veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government’s ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

    The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.

    No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.

    But the dangers are also multiplying. Ukraine has shown itself to be barely a functioning state: the former government was unable to clear Maidan, and the western-backed regime is “helpless” against the protests in the Soviet-nostalgic industrial east. For all the talk about the paramilitary “green men” (who turn out to be overwhelmingly Ukrainian), the rebellion also has strong social and democratic demands: who would argue against a referendum on autonomy and elected governors?

    Meanwhile, the US and its European allies impose sanctions and dictate terms to Russia and its proteges in Kiev, encouraging the military crackdown on protesters after visits from Joe Biden and the CIA director, John Brennan. But by what right is the US involved at all, incorporating under its strategic umbrella a state that has never been a member of Nato, and whose last elected government came to power on a platform of explicit neutrality? It has none, of course – which is why the Ukraine crisis is seen in such a different light across most of the world. There may be few global takers for Putin’s oligarchic conservatism and nationalism, but Russia’s counterweight to US imperial expansion is welcomed, from China to Brazil.

    In fact, one outcome of the crisis is likely to be a closer alliance between China and Russia, as the US continues its anti-Chinese “pivot” to Asia. And despite growing violence, the cost in lives of Russia’s arms-length involvement in Ukraine has so far been minimal compared with any significant western intervention you care to think of for decades.

    The risk of civil war is nevertheless growing, and with it the chances of outside powers being drawn into the conflict. Barack Obama has already sent token forces to eastern Europe and is under pressure, both from Republicans and Nato hawks such as Poland, to send many more. Both US and British troops are due to take part in Nato military exercises in Ukraine this summer.

    The US and EU have already overplayed their hand in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the western powers may want to intervene directly, and the Ukrainian prime minister’s conjuring up of a third world war presumably isn’t authorised by his Washington sponsors. But a century after 1914, the risk of unintended consequences should be obvious enough – as the threat of a return of big-power conflict grows. …

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict