War in Ukraine

EDIT-

Awkward pagetopper.

I wish emuran would come on here with updates. This whole arguement is a retread from earlier in the thread.

edited 31st Dec '15 2:31:04 PM by FFShinra

I have never understood what seems to be a Russian obsession with blaming everything on the "boogyman" of the west, THE COLD WAR ENDED DECADES AGO RUSSIA! GROW UP!

The US and Europe didn't get the memo either.

In the context of Ukraine I think it's simply the natural reaction much of the world has to anything seen as pro-American, the CIA has staged so many coups (well allowed them, they're not actually competent enough to create a revolution) and created for itself such a reputation that it gets blamed for everything, much the same way the KGB get blamed for all sorts of shit by Poland and the Baltics.

I find it funny that people (or at least those in the thread) are now supporting Federalism when months ago it was rejected it at first glance.

Who rejected it? I'm merely saying it's the best way forward, not that it will or can happen with the current set up in Kiev. Partition is the only other real solution, and currently remains the more likely of the two.

@Fry - Says the troper who is acting like Russia is the boogeyman.

edited 31st Dec '15 5:08:29 PM by FFShinra

It's been some time and I really don't want to go through 360 pages of text to find it but if I do recall correctly Federalization came up around the spring/summer of 14 and was given a whole hearted beat down.

One complaint I remember is that it would just increase local corruption and strengthen the oligarchs.

Ah yeah. That was emuran's argument, not mine. Generally speaking thats still the refrain from Kiev on the subject.

To be fair, federalism was rejected initally by most people in this thread since there were still, at the time, other possibilities and options available.

Federalism is now, very likely, the only best option around. Due to a combination of several factors, factors which we've witnessed over the course of this year that has passed.

edited 31st Dec '15 7:27:24 PM by Quag15

Found this gem of page 358, just couldn't not answer that. Beholderess is right. Ukraine is historically part of Russia, I know people like to deny things like that when it's convenient to them, but please - don't. She compared it to "America's Britain"; I'd personally chose something like "Britain's Wales" or, you know, "America's Texas". Because Russians in general don't even treat Ukrainians as foreigners, much less enemies; "cousin" is indeed the right word.

But for some reason, Ukrainians themselves (mostly western) treat Moskali (that means russians) as some kind of mortal enemy who's guity in literally any thing that goes wrong around them. This goes up to pre-soviet times and probably even further. Hell, the greatest example would be those recent Maidan troubles. A bunch of people gather together, shout out loud "Moskalyaku na gilyaku" (that would roughly be translated as "hang the russian"), and really thinking that doing this somehow improves their lives. Can someone imagine people in Russia gathering on a street the same way and shouting "beat those Khokhols, save our country!"? No, because it's just plain stupid. We don't hate them. We just have no reason for it.

This whole situation escalated this way, because for Russia it was similar to aforementioned Wales or Texas taking ISIS as its official leadership, or, I don't know, agreeing to host North Korean military bases. While I do understand the reasons behind actions of both West and Russia (even if not really approve both), it was hard to expect something else. USA tries to reach its grasp all over the world as a global Microsoft, Putin begins to provide competition by pushing them back little by little. All of that is understandable. It's politics stuff.

What I do not understand, is Ukrainians themselves, who - from both sides - often supported this escalation. Now they have no country to live in and basically going to become another Czechoslovakia or Korea. Why would they actually push their homeland to this madness, is just beyond me.

There is a slavic saying, sounding roughly as "I don't care that my barn is burning as long as neighbor's cow dies as well!"

Only the barn is really big, and I'm not really sure that any kind of dead cow would've been worth it.

p.s. Do we really need to engage in that politics crap even on TV Tropes?

edited 1st Jan '16 9:04:21 AM by sidestep

We don't need to no, that's why posting in OTC is optional. Some of us however enjoy it and find it educational.

As for your comparison, I'd say it's more Ireland then Wales, with Crimea being Northern Ireland. Thing is Ireland has stuck to its neutrality pretty firmly, Ukraine however wants to shift towards the EU.

I always thought that Federalism would have been the best solution; its probably the best structure of government for any country that isn't very homogeneous.

edited 1st Jan '16 3:17:04 PM by Rationalinsanity

Lets be a little more specific- "Federalism" covers a lot of ground. Technically, the US is federalist, yet the government in DC is legally and de facto more powerful than any state. By "Federalist" the Donbass provinces want a degree of autonomy that Kiev feels it cant grant them- if every province got the same deal, the country would no longer have enough unity to survive.

You also have to bear in mind that to the rest of Ukraine, the rebels are the aggressors- because it they believe it was the anti-Maidan protests that turned violent first, and they were the first ones to brandish weapons. Russian supplied weapons, so they see Russia as the aggressors as well. AFAIK, all Kiev did to trigger a succession was make Ukrainian the legal language of Ukraine.

I am aware that the other side tells a very different story- that they had armed themselves only in self-defense and they turned violent only when the police tried to jail them or disarm them. Hence, I would imagine that on the Ukrainian side, the position is that the separatists should obey Ukrainian law, and submit their grievances to the Ukrainian legal system, while other side believes that the Ukrainian legal and political process is too corrupt to trust.

Whichever side you find more persuasive, the take-away is that there is so much anger and distrust on both sides that a compromise political solution is very difficult. Some sort of de-facto partition, where Ukraine can continue to claim the provinces as part of their territory while the pro-Russian protesters can declare their independence, while the actual territory is administered by some neutral party, is practically the only outcome left other than a permanent state of low-level war. Sadly, I've been predicting since page 225 that this may end up like North vs. South Korea.

A ceasefire is in the best interest of both sides. Progress toward stabilization of the area are proceeding very slowly, but they are proceeding. We can hope that they continue to progress.

Time and economic development can heal these wounds. Frankly, I think the best possible outcome is that, ten years from now, after Kiev has managed their corruption problem and economic ties between them have been strengthened, it might make sense to talk about re-integrating Donbass into Ukraine. Until then, continued fighting really isn't in anyone's interest.

edited 1st Jan '16 8:16:40 PM by DeMarquis

First, not all federalism is US federalism. Plenty of other examples to choose from where the center isn't as powerful.

And it isn't "the rest of Ukraine" it's West Ukraine. Not the same thing. And the removed Russian, which isn't the same as making Ukrainian legal. It was already legal. They removed a language half the country was comfortable with.

And why should Ukraine get to claim them if the East doesn't want to be claimed by them? If they can't be trusted enough to enact federalism, what makes you think confederalism (which is what that is, in practice) would work?

The ceasefire isn't holding, however....

No point reintegrating Donbass into Ukraine until something is done about Kiev vis a vis the EU and Russia.

So don't give every province the same deal, look at the UK, compare the powers Scotland has to the nonexistent powers England (minus London) has. Hell it works for the US: compare DC, Guam, American Samoa and a normal state. The powers, control and rights vary greatly.

Also I don't belive the language laws were ever passed, however if they had been it would have been a big deal. Language laws are commonly used to try and destroy an entire cultural identity and assimilate it's people by force. Look at the Turks actions against the Kurds and historically the attempt by the English to destroy the Welsh language.

edited 1st Jan '16 9:43:04 PM by Silasw

The language law was indeed voted down.

What did I miss here?

Do you people want a big write-up update on the situation?

As for federalization - my main argument is that, in the situation the country is now - it wouldn't really change anything, either politically or economically. Oligarchs dominate the local governments, so the money would be stolen there, and not at the governement level (like now).

The whole system needs a rehaul first. At this point it would be like trying to create a tactics plan for a soccer team without players.

"Do you people want a big write-up update on the situation?"

Do bears pee in the woods? Yes!

edited 3rd Jan '16 9:04:54 AM by DeMarquis

Military updates - it's been pretty calm. DPR took Kominternove in no-man's land for a while, then retreated. For the last week, they've been probing the defenses in the direction of Mariupol.

DPR is facing an energy crisis, as a critical failure in the gas supply left Makiyivka and a good chunk of the region without heating. Electricity is down, too.

Crimea is again without electricity, as Ukrainian/Crimean Tatar militia blew up a couple of power pylons just before the New Year.

Poroshenko's (and Yatsenyuk's) ratings have hit an all-time law, as in-government squabbles, the long-lasting conflict between Yatsenyuk and Saakashvili, the lack of meaningful reforms, and regional corruption hit his popularity very hard.

Yarosh has left the Right Sector to create a new political party, huh.

The new budget has been approved, with controversy already brewing. Apparently, and very mysteriously, as the text of the budget proposal from the government was apparently changed on its way to the Rada approval vote, delaying the introduction of the electronic annual income declarations for state employees until 2017, thus sabotaging the visa-free regime process with the EU (this was one of the requirements). The Ministry of Justice has already said that it will search for the culprits, and the changes will apparently be reverted the next time the Rada convenes (the M Ps are on vacations, now, eh, guess they're tired from all the boxing matches they had last year).

The Saakashvili-Avakov-Yatsenyuk rift isn't really that serious by itself, as much as it's the fact that they're in real danger of overstepping the boundaries and collapsing the whole fragile political system, which will send Ukraine into a chaos that I'm not sure it would recover from. Here's hoping they get their shit together.

Also, movies with actors that are "a threat to national security" have been banned in Ukraine, and there's a pending proposal to ban all radio stations that don't play Ukrainian songs. I guess that Idiot Ball, and playing a populist game without looking out for the consequences, isn't going anywhere just yet.

Do you have a link to the list of movies that are (or will be) targeted, by any chance?

edited 4th Jan '16 10:54:48 AM by Quag15

Any movies featuring Depardieu. Also, any movies by Fedor Bondarchuk, Vladimir Bortko or Karen Shakhnazarov.

There's 83 people (in Ukrainian) on that list. My favorite's probably Fred Durst (who apparently wants to live in Crimea now, heh).

edited 4th Jan '16 2:23:14 PM by Emuran

So how is Saakashvilli in Odessa proper? We know about his dealings with the central government and the rivalries that has sparked, but how about his relations in the province?

From what I've been hearing from the region - practically nothing. One reason for that is his limited powers - a lot of the decisions affecting the region are made by the Kyiv government or the city administration, and he hasn't got any influence over either. Another one would be the very big lobby against him, which is interested in discrediting him and getting him to fail as much as possible (this includes the Yatsenyuk bloc, the local mafia and corruption dons, and the Party of Regions - practically everybody's afraid of anti-corruption measures, as this will cut them off from the money flow, whatever their political allegiance). The third reason would be the fact that the team Saakashvili's working with is just not as good as his Georgian one, exposing his weaknesses as politician. He's a very good team manager, but the team itself must be very good at what it does.

I would also add that the expectations and the hype around Saakashvili are also contributing to the discontent. People tend to expect everything will improve and living standards will skyrocket immediately, because - hey, Georgia did it! And so on.

Forgetting of course, the issues Georgia had that only became apparant later. Cult of personality at work I see.

Thanks for the info, emuran. Good to know he hasn't actually been able to sink his teeth into the province...having a local power base would make him more dangerous.

That's the problem with post-Soviet politics as a whole - people are very selective about what they perceive. It's all about either the ABSOLUTELY NEGATIVE or ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE things, which is never really the case, eh. People only remember the good side of Saakashvili's policies.

That aside, the foreign specialists - Abromavičius, Jaresko - have been the best performers of the current government, IMHO. We need more Scandinavians, Balts and Americans to help out here!

edited 6th Jan '16 11:29:02 AM by Emuran