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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe New Great Game: Why Ukraine Matters to So Many Other Nations
Ukraine is also a breadbasket, a natural gas chokepoint, and a nation of 45 million people in a pivotal spot north of the Black Sea. Ukraine mattersto Russia, Europe, the U.S., and even China. President Obama denied on Feb. 19 that its a piece on some Cold War chessboard. But the best hope for Ukraine is that it will get special treatment precisely because it is a valued pawn in a new version of the Great Game, the 19th century struggle for influence between Russia and Britain.
Russia, which straddles Europe and Asia, has sought a role in the rest of Europe since the reign of Peter the Great in the early 18th century. An alliance with Ukraine preserves that. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire, the American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1998. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to join his Eurasian Union trade bloc, not the European Union. Russias Black Sea naval fleet is headquartered in Sevastopol, a formerly Russian city that now belongs to Ukraine. Last year Russias state-controlled Gazprom (OGZPY) sold about 160 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europea quarter of European demandand half of that traveled through a maze of Ukrainian pipelines. Those pipelines also supply Ukrainian factories that produce steel, petrochemicals, and other industrial goods for sale to Mother Russia. Ukraine is probably more integrated than any other former Soviet republic with the Russian economy, says Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Koch brothers are probably in there somewhere
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/the-new-great-game-why-ukraine-matters-to-so-many-other-nations
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)It is interesting about the Kochs
Wet Willie
(52 posts)The new UBL?
reformist2
(9,841 posts)By now we all know it's BS, we need to say so from the start and not cut Obama any slack just because he's "our guy."