General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWar in Ukraine: who's to blame?
I'm curious as to how many folks know how the Ukraine catastrophe started?
| 4 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited | |
| Putin's fault. | |
2 (50%) |
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| Obama's fault. | |
0 (0%) |
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| Bankers/Oligarchs: Obama and Putin are just doing their bidding. | |
0 (0%) |
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| Ethnic beefs stretching over eons. | |
0 (0%) |
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| Other. | |
2 (50%) |
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| 0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided. | |
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NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Obama unfortunately thought at least one of them was fit to serve in the State Department. She is PNAC Robert Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland. She bankrolled the coup against their elected President buy enticing the Eu banking elites with promises austerity.
Obama is doing their bidding, mostly because he is kind of clueless on foreign policy and just goes along with Washington Consensus.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)They've been planning to undermine Western democracies for years, and now they have access to Chernobyl. We have evidence of the pro-Russian splinter groups working with Iranian intelligence to extract nuclear material from the buildings, seemingly to use in their nuclear program.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)What an asshole.
BainsBane
(53,032 posts)They invaded the country. It's their mess.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Way back, about 300 years ago, one of the tsars decided it'd be a jolly idea to colonise the Ukraine with ethnic Russians. This map tells you everything you need to know about that:
Luhansk and Donetsk are the two separatist regions in the east, where the percentage of native Ukrainian-language speakers is under 50%.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)The Ukraine was a part of greater Russia from medieval times, longer than the US has existed.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Did you have a point?
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)what do you propose be done. Most Americans don't belong here. Most Israelis don't belong in Israel, which is the prime concern of most anti-putin Hawks! Do you propose ethnic cleansing, after generations and generations?
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)that the Tsarist and then Soviet policy of Russification in Ukraine plays any part at all in the historical background of what's happening in Ukraine today?
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)but without funding from NED and the Eu, it wouldn't have gotten off the ground. They revived the old battle to punish Putin. It would be like funding an insurgency of American Indians against the majority here.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Ethnic Russians are not a majority in Ukraine. And it's Putin who's backing the separatists, not the EU. In context, his actions are more like France giving material support to Quebecois separatists, or Mexico funding organised separatists in the US Southwest bent on reconquista.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Yanukovych was removed from office by a vote in the Ukrainian Parliament. As he should have been long before, considering that he was fantastically corrupt: http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/25-tales-of-corruption-and-control-from-documents-found-at-t
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-dubious-businees-of-ukraine-president-yanukovych-and-his-clan-a-833127.html
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)seated, as they were in hiding from the street violence.
The Magistrate
(95,247 posts)Do try and keep up....
Igel
(35,303 posts)Moscow wasn't even around when Kiev was at its height. At the time, the Golyad' and other Baltic tribes still had a bit of importance in the area.
Northern Russia wasn't colonized yet.
There's a bit of mystery over exactly when the central part of Russia *was* colonized. One idea has it that there was a second group of Slavs that went in. Another has it that a lot of refugees from Kiev went north. Still, the cities up in that area were outliers and ruled from Kiev.
It was the Horde that eventually made Moscow important. Both politically as well as in terms of culture and attitude. The South missed a lot of that. And it's too bad that Novgorod didn't remain an important city since it had been outside of the Horde and was much more progressive than Moscow. Ivan the Terrible used one of the Horde's lessons, though, and destroyed its culture and politics, spreading its people across the north.
Ukraine was spared a lot of the problems that Moscow created by being in the Lithuanian-Polish kingdom. But still, the southern area was a problem and was captured from the Tatars (and others) by Ukrainians and by Russians. In the end, it was the Russians that conquered the area.
The area was mostly settled by Ukrainians and Russians, with more than a few Serbs. Catherine brought in Low Germans. Most of the big industries in the Donbas were started by Germans, with some English and even French investors setting up plants. This attracted Ukrainian and Russian workers.
But the colonialists moved where they wanted, and they were the Russians. Most Russian-speakers are ethnic Ukrainians. It's just that the education system was in Russian. The legal system was in Russian. The governmental language was Russian. All the things that the Russians accuse the Ukrainians of wanting ... They did to the Ukrainians. (And the Russians claim "historical justice" for keeping it that way. Sort of like white Southerners claiming "historical justice" as a reason to take back their property and re-enslave black folk.)
In the end it was Stalin that made the place truly vehemently Russian, and it's one reason that the Donbas folk still often look up to him. He disposed of the nasty Germans. Renamed many towns. Told them they were great and glorious as proletarian Russians moved in and the cities were built. Much of Ukraine was off as part of other countries at the time so they didn't participate.
Stalin disposed of the Tatars. He also decreed that the new Soviets, the Western Ukrainians, had a black mark against them. They had lived outside the USSR and were untrustworthy, esp. since they fought the Red Army. For some, at times, that meant fighting with Hitler's army. So again, it was good to be Russian and bad to be Ukrainian.
And it's the bad oppressor that seems to have the hardest time dealing with the former oppressed. Mostly because they can't admit that anything bad was done because the Russians have a mission. Whether 3rd Rome, the 3rd International, or making the world safe from fascism for Russians. In some ways, this is one of the last places to be de-Sovietized.
There a lot of reminders about Soviet times in Moscow. But if you look at street and place names in the Donbas, it's like the USSR never vanished. "Red Partisan" is one town. Lenin district--every town has one. Dzerhzinsk is where fighting is happening--named after Dzherzinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the forerunner of the NKVD and KGB (not a good guy). Some street names are insane: Fiftieth Anniversary of the October Revolution Street.
They still have all the same institutional structures, for all the changes in the constitution. Town soviets with constituent representatives to make sure the right groups are there. Oblast executive committees. Etc. etc. It's crazy. It's like a flashback to reading '70s Izvestiya.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,790 posts)Maybe he'd be happy with Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia -- but he wants to put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)A pox on all their houses.