Not that anyone would notice, but there is a disturbing and quite frankly depressing reality taking place in eastern Ukraine. While it is true the conflict that rages has been largely downplayed now and shoved off the media spotlight in the West,... ..., the protests and indignation and opposition was voiced primarily under the context of expecting that violence to come from Russian military forces invading into the country. It was the assumption that the only way authorities in Kyiv would take to arms ...
... countries that discovered soon enough that identifying the problems was far easier than actually solving them. In that I suspect Ukraine will be no different, no matter how many elections, reforms, or ‘repositions’ the country goes through. But ... ... great distance just hoping an autocratic regime would fall one way or another. In the Maidan revolution this was not the case: Russia was very much interested in the long-term geostrategic consequences of regime change, and it was the blind laziness of ...
... why ‘no one should believe Putin when he says he is not going to invade Eastern Ukraine’). And this is what prompts my rather presumptuous opinion as to what... ... to regain the upper hand. Thus, it really isn’t about how horrible it was for Russia to ‘annex’ Crimea (with Crimean consent) and do it basically without... ... horrible to these rather dull thinkers still stuck in and/or pining for the return of a Cold War environment full of purpose and dire circumstances is that they won’t...
Starting to heat up the internet (well, at least in Russia and Eastern Ukraine, while likely not even to be acknowledged in Western Europe) is a hacked telephone call last week between the former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Nestor Shufrich and the former Prime Minister, recently-freed-from-prison,...
... peace and stability is the one that guarantees all sides being at least somewhat disappointed. Allow me to elaborate:
Why Ukraine should be disappointed: Crimea is done. As the famous Southern saying in America goes, ‘closing the barn door after ... ... peace with this defeat. And let’s be honest: it IS a defeat. A relevant piece of territory is now going to be part of the Russian Federation and no longer part of Ukraine. But Russia has the superior military force in Crimea and the Crimean people ...
... the results will actually be the ultimate arbiter on the territorial decisions made about Crimea. The outside players, namely Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the European Union, are simply too big and too influential to let this small peninsula play an ... ... conscientious lot, simply pursuing an interesting story and often putting themselves in harm’s way in order to get it, the Cold War residue that remains between the United States and Russia has a tendency to put a grimy film over more than just political ...
I have some bad news for the United States. Russia doesn’t listen to America. Unfortunately, I have worse news: contrary to ... ... transatlantic community may think, it is not because Russia is trying to rekindle the Cold War or desperately grasping at whatever remnants of old Soviet power it used to... ... ‘there will be costs’ if it acts inappropriately in Crimea and onward with greater Ukraine. One might forgive Russia if it reacts to such warnings with a giant foreign...
... ‘imperialism’ factors prominently: Russia’s motivations in each case were not based on its own national security interests, but were instead founded on its inevitable need to regain its old Soviet ‘imperialistic’ nature. This Cold War residue even made the categorization and scope of the conflicts themselves a source of political discord: Chechnya became ‘Southern Russia,’ South Ossetia became ‘Georgia,’ and Crimea has now become ‘Ukraine.’ In other words, time and again Russia preferred keeping situations more case-specific and minimalized, while the United States (in Russia’s opinion at least) effectively re-characterized the situations so that they seemed more far-reaching ...
