Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Great Strategic Analysis of Ukraine

From stratfor.com

Key Paragraph:

What is odd is that it is not clear that the European Union or Russia want Ukraine. The European Union is not about to take on another weakling. It has enough already. And Russia doesn’t want the burden of governing Ukraine. It just doesn’t want anyone controlling Ukraine to threaten Russia. Ukrainian sovereignty doesn’t threaten anyone, so long as the borderland remains neutral.

The Russian Question

Russian perception and support for Ukraine’s Protests: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/putins-growing-threat-next-door/282103/

Of course, the Atlantic isn’t completely biased. They’re going to support the US government and portray the Putin regime as illegitimate. I agree the Putin regime is a kleptocracy, but they do enjoy majority support among Russians.

***

”
The dangerous fantasy is the Russian idea that Ukraine is not really a different country, but rather a kind of slavic younger brother. This is a legacy of the late Soviet Union and the russification policies of the 1970s. It has no actual historical basis: east slavic statehood arose in what is now Ukraine and was copied in Moscow, and the early Russian Empire was itself highly dependent upon educated inhabitants of Ukraine.

The politics of memory of course have little to do with the facts of history. Putin unsurprisingly finds it convenient to ignore Russia’s actual regional rival, China, and play upon a Russian sense of superiority in eastern Europe by linking Kiev to Moscow. . . . If Ukraine can be a democracy, then why can’t Russia? If Ukraine can have mass protests, then why can’t Russia? If Ukraine can be European, then why can’t Russia?

. . . .

Russian television is informing those who still watch it that the Ukrainian protests are the work of operators paid by Sweden, Poland, and Lithuania. The worrying thing about this sort of claim is that it establishes a pretext for “further” intervention. If the West is already “present,” then there’s every reason for Russia to be as well. If Yanukovych decides to declare martial law he will almost certainly fail to control the country. The riot police of Berkut can be counted on to beat protesters a few more times, but the behavior of the regular police, and the Ukrainian army, is far less predictable. Some reports have already indicated that policemen have supported the protesters, at least in the western part of the country. If Yanukovych tries force and fails, then Putin might claim that Russian military intervention is needed to restore order.

This would be the worst of all possible outcomes—for Ukraine of course, but perhaps above all for Russia. The absorption of Ukrainian lands by the USSR involved almost unbelievable levels of violence over the course of decades. Another Russian armed adventure in Ukraine now would likely fail, for all kinds of reasons. Russian soldiers cannot have much stomach for invading a land whose people speak their mother tongue and who, they are told, are brother slavs. Ukraine, for all of its visible political divisions, is a single country with a big army whose people generally believe in sovereignty.”

More: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/dec/05/ukraine-protests-way-out/

KIEV ALERT : LOTS OF MILITARY NOW. URGENT.

“Dec. 9, 1:02 p.m. A top government source confirmed to the Kyiv Post that a decision was taken to use force against protesters. The attack seems imminent, but no details are available at the moment.” –Katya Gorchinskaya

“Dec. 9, 12:58 p.m. Government workers have been evacuted from the Kyiv city center as police in riot gear move in a set up barricades on Khreschatyk Street, according to a source in the European Union delegation to Ukraine who asked that he remain anonymous because he was not allowed to speak publicly.” — Christopher J. Miller

***

My friend who returned to Lviv for a couple and is now back on Maidan had told me that Monday was going to be the dangerous day. Especially Monday night. Fewer people.

He said the protesters had multiple levels of barricades and had even engineered sheets of ice as a security barrier. Organized groups of Afghanistan war veterans were providing some more formal security. There is free food and free winter clothes for protesters.

Of course, they cannot muster of level of violence that the state has, but I keep reminding myself that their goal isn’t military victory, it’s spectacle and sympathy.

***

If the state unleashes deadly force against the protesters (which I still consider unlikely), western Ukraine will secede, and that will be a good thing.

Protests Growing, Analysis of Oligarch Position

Enormous rallies in Kyiv: http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/euromaidan-rallies-in-ukraine-live-updates-332341

***

Good analysis from the point of view of the oligarchs. The Family (capital F) is getting out of control and the oligarchs want to restore exactly the types of property rights they so readily tread upon when they themselves feel powerful.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/news-analysis-a-television-news-breakthrough-333200.html

Why doesn’t the EU just eliminate import duties for Ukraine?

From my old Econ Professor, Patrick Barron:

Re: EU seeks “time for reflection” after Vilnius summit failure

I found this statement by EU Commission President Manuel Barroso to be particularly insightful:

“This Agreement would save Ukrainian business some €500 million a year just in import duties,” Barroso underlined after the summit…

By this statement Barroso admits that the EU is a closed shop; i.e., a supposedly free trade zone inside the EU but with high tariffs to imports from outside the EU. If Barroso and the EU really wanted to help the citizens of Ukraine and provide another source of goods for citizens of the EU, then the elimination of trade barriers would be an easy and important first step. But then Barroso and the EU would have no leverage on keeping current EU members. Why belong to a high regulatory, high tax, socialistic transfer union when one can trade freely with its members anyway? This demonstrates that the EU really provides no additonal value whatsoever that a country cannot achieve simply by unilaterally declaring itself to be a free trade state.

On Post-Soviet Decay in Ukraine

A friend’s observation:

“An awful lot of Ukraine is like mexico. Its tragic. All of this horrible post soviet decaying brick, concrete, and sheet metal.

No people were ever so poor with such nobility and grace. I love them.

Especially the old guys with bug russian hats. .

The middle of america is hollowing out. But the relative decline is being filled with the third world.

We do not decay as gracefully.”

Tax protest of western Ukrainian government(?)

POSSIBLE TAX PROTESTS IN WESTERN UKRAINE

Apparently, many Western Ukrainian mayors and university rectors have officially supported the protests. This gives them skin the game. If the revolution fails, they’ll all end up in prison.

Prime minister Azarov has said that because of this, Western Ukraine won’t get its share of funding. (In Ukraine, finances are centralized.) There have been retorts of western officials telling Azarov to go to hell. They say they’ll stop paying taxes.

If this revolution does lead to secession, Western Ukraine will become a shining beacon of civilization for the east, and the people of the east will eventually want to throw off their oppressors as establish a system of property rights which will have formed in the West.

Right now in the west, including in the Carpathians, there is a plague of small businesses getting raided and taken over by gangsters from the Donbass basin.

Edit: The protestors have two weapons —

1) creating an international outcry to isolate the government.
2) tax protests / general strikes

The establishment has one major weapon —

1) violence