Russia Backs Off Ukraine Union After Lenin Statue Falls

[Purveyor]

Russia cast doubt that Ukraine may soon join its customs bloc, a plan that has sparked the ex-Soviet republic’s biggest protests in almost a decade and fueled calls for President Viktor Yanukovych to resign.

Riot police and stick-wielding protesters squared off in central Kiev a day after a group of youths tore down a statue of Vladimir Lenin in the biggest rallies since the 2004 Orange Revolution yesterday. Angry over Yanukovych’s snub of an EU pact in favor of bolstering Russian ties, activists have vowed to stay until the government quits, while Russia said that joining its rival customs union could take years.

“The situation in Ukraine is too explosive right now and the president understands that,” Sergei Markov, a political adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s staff and vice rector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, said by phone from Moscow. “Putin believes that time is on his side and Russia will benefit in the end.”

Ukraine, which is searching for $10 billion to avoid possible default, has become a point of contention for Russia and the European Union. Yanukovych met Putin last week after rejecting EU association and free-trade accords, incensing pro-European opposition forces in Kiev, whose tent camps and barricades in Independence Square are now into a third week.

The yield on Ukrainian dollar-denominated bonds due 2023 rose for a second day to 10.502 percent earlier today, its highest since Dec. 4, before falling to 10.46 as of 3:30 p.m. in Kiev, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The hryvnia strengthened to 8.1710 per dollar from 8.2150 Dec. 6. The Kiev interbank overnight rate was fixed at 20 percent, its highest since January and a jump from 12 percent on Dec. 6.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-09/russia-backs-off-ukraine-union-after-lenin-statue-falls.html

[Recursion]

1. Kiev still had a statue of Lenin?

Huh...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. Lenin's economic theories about capitalism are

sadly becoming true.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Russians are the largest ethnic group in the Ukraine.

.

[Recursion]

6. Yeah, and Russia lost a lot of its statues of Lenin a while ago... (nt)

[Jenoch]

7. Russians are the argest ethnic

minority in Ukraine. The Communist Party has remained strong in Ukraine. Especially the older people long flr the days of the USSR, cheap bread and vodka.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Yes

minority group. Thanks for the correction.

[pampango]

10. BBC: Five Lenin statues in unexpected places

Seattle, US

The bohemian Seattle suburb of Fremont acquired a Lenin statue in the early 1990s, with the help of an English teacher, Lewis Carpenter, who mortgaged his home to rescue it from Poprad in Slovakia. It stands outside a number of fast food shops, and is decorated on special occasions, with festive lights, occasionally drag, or just fancy dress.



Islington, London, UK

London's Finsbury Council commissioned a bust of Lenin during World War Two, to celebrate the alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Cast by the Russian emigre architect Berthold Lubetkin, who worked with the council on housing projects before and after the war, it stood for a while in Holford Square, near one of Lenin's former London homes. It was often vandalised, and eventually removed. It can now be seen in Islington Museum.



Tarhankut, Ukraine

Not far from Kiev, but less easy for anti-Soviet protesters to get at, is this bust of Lenin in the "underwater museum" at Tarhankut, Crimea. A number of former Soviet rulers are commemorated in the Alley of the Leaders, their statues and busts standing or lying on underwater shelves of rock.



Cavriago, Italy

One of the few Western European towns with a bust of Lenin in a public square is Cavriago, near Bologna. The town council website explains (in Italian) that fierce debates raged in 1918 between moderates and "maximalists" within the local Socialist Party. The maximalists came out on top, and in 1920 Lenin was named "honorary first citizen". Later the town came under attack from fascists and the administration resigned. The bust is intended to bear testimony, in a non-judgmental way, to the "strong civil and political passions of those years".



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25299153

There is also one in Antarctica. Left by Soviet scientists in the 1950's.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Re. the London one

Marx's tomb is just up the road apiece in Highgate Cemetery too.

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

2. The future of Ukraine is with the EU,

not as a province in Putinstan.

[dipsydoodle]

4. "searching for $10 billion to avoid possible default"

Well the IMF did offer to lend then some dough provided they increase the price of gas to their consumers - a condition they won't currently agree to.

Part of the reason Yanukovych wouldn't go with the EU deal was that the EU only offered a billion euros in support to help tide them over - Yanukovych wanted considerably more than that. Prices are high anyway - that's a reflection of the prices which Yulia Tymoshenko agreed to in 2009 for which she is now serving a prison sentence.

At least all this malarky helps keep them well away from any chance of becoming an EU member nation - they'd never meet the conditions implicit in joining the Euro.

[pampango]

9. Ukrainians Keep Up Protests As Special Troops Sent In

Pro-EU Ukrainian demonstrators on Monday kept up their protest against President Viktor Yanukovych as the authorities sent internal troops and riot police into central Kiev in an increasingly tense showdown.

Upping the stakes after more than a fortnight of protests over the government’s rejection of a pact with the European Union, the protesters the day earlier symbolically toppled the statue of the Soviet Union’s founder Vladimir Lenin in Kiev.

Meanwhile, thousands braved sub-freezing temperatures to maintain the open-ended demonstration on Independence Square in Kiev while others guarded barricades thrown up the day earlier around key government buildings.

Raising fears of a possible looming showdown with protesters, dozens of interior ministry troops and anti-riot police were sent into central Kiev and could be seen moving in columns through the streets.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/ukrainians-keep-up-protests-as-special-troops-sent-in/

Sure can't call them 'fair-weather' protesters as the weather is anything but fair. Passions must really be high to maintain massive demonstrations in the face of this weather.

[Jenoch]

12. The mayor of Lviv in west Ukraine

has told the President, “if you  send troops to stop the people, my police will don civilian clothes and fight back."