Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Exclusive: U.S. Won’t Share Invasion Intel With Ukraine

If the US was indeed providing intel, it’s easy to imagine them lying about it. Nevertheless:

Turner added that Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Olexander Motsyk, told him last week that Ukraine still needed massive assistance from the United States. To date, the only military assistance the U.S. has agreed to send Ukraine has been the delivery of 300,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) for Ukrainian forces in the field.

Turner said Motsyk made it clear from his conversation that Ukraine also wanted the detailed intelligence on Russian troop positions. Motsyk declined to respond to an email requesting comment.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/08/exclusive-u-s-won-t-share-invasion-intel-with-ukraine.html

Math / Physics Phd injured in Kharkiv

See this earlier post for the video.

This is Melnyk Serhiy, PhD in math and physics. He is currently working as a teaching assistant at Kharkiv Institute for Radiophysics and Electronics. In his hands is his book “Random Finite-valued Dynamical Systems”. Neither he, nor his friends, that got injured in April 6, are Ukrainian fascists or nationalists.

PHD-Injured-in-Kharkiv

Ukraine approves tougher anti-separatism law amid eastern unrest

The Ukrainian parliament approved a bill against separatism on Tuesday in a bid to end violent pro-Russian rallies in the country’s east regions.

http://english.cntv.cn/2014/04/08/ARTI1396964142829309.shtml

I have mixed feeling about this legislation.

I am for secession as a principle.

But right now with the Russian military massed on the border, and Pro-Ukrainian activists being murdered by Russian “tourists,” I think it’s better to wait.

Right now, Ukrainians are relying on the Ukrainian gov’t to defend them, and the government needs a legal means to do so.

If it were up to me:

step 1 – arm the population
step 2 – wait. let the situation stabilize.
step 3 – provide local autonomy to cities and provinces.
step 4 – invite international observers and allow regions to have referendums.

I’d rather Ukraine be a bunch of people who want to be Ukrainian than a bunch of people held together at gun point.

Of course, such ideas are poison to radical nationalists who can’t distinguish between the state and the culture. To them I would point to thriving Ukrainian communities in Canada, the US, Argentina.

Perhaps the considerations are only a little bit different here, where Russia will resort to every and any treachery to increase their leverage over Ukraine.

Contrary to most libertarian doctrine, defense does seem to have been a communal activity.

Ukrainians in Russia feel chill after Russia’s annexation of Crimea

All the talk of Russians feeling pressure in Ukraine is blatant hypocrisy.

The lives of two million Ukrainians in Russia have become more difficult after Russia’s seizure of Crimea and a new government in Kyiv that the Kremlin does not recognize as legitimate, after the EuroMaidan Revolution toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22.

But some Ukrainians in Russia say that life was never easy for them. Ukrainians constitute some 2 million – or roughly 2 percent – of the Russian Federation’s 143 million people.

While everyday life and communication with friends and relatives has not changed much, some Ukrainians say they face negative attitudes toward Ukraine as a sovereign nation. The animosity is fueled by unrelenting Kremlin propaganda that is anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian and reflected in Russia’s state-controlled or state-censored news media.

Nowadays in Russia, Ukrainians have neither national schools nor any Ukrainian press.

“While we are the largest diaspora in Russia, the attitude towards us has always been the worst,” says Victor Hirzhov, an executive secretary of the Ukrainian Congress in Russia, co-chairman of the regional public organization Ukrainians of Moscow.

Hirzhov explains that, in 2010, Moscow police confiscated 50 Ukrainian fiction books from the only Ukrainian library. Officers justified the seizure by saying the books contain signs of ethnic radicalism, which is against the law.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukrainians-in-russia-feel-chill-after-russias-annexation-of-crimea-342568.html