U.S. Marines Leave Ukraine

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=beb99c0de93c9403&cat=c08dd24cec417021

June 11, 2006 -- Ukraine officials say some 200 U.S. Marine reservists today began leaving Ukraine after a stay marked by anti-NATO demonstrations.


The reservists arrived in Crimea by ship on May 27, with plans to repair a local training base.

But their presence provoked protests by communists and pro-Russian parties, who said NATO was trying to gain a foothold in Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry in Kyiv said on June 11 that the reservists were leaving because their contract had ended. Associated Press reports, however, that no repair work was done at the base.

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Nobody likes us !!!

[NorthernSun]

1. communists and pro-Russian parties?

The demonstrations were much broader than that.

[Igel]

2. Local politics, mostly.

But the communists and Russian 'patriots' have never liked us. We interfered with their either historically-determined or God-given empire. It used to be that the communists would just sneer and inferior old us. Then Gorbie came along and ... gasp ... the USSR *did* have plane crashes and a non-zero suicide rate. Then the system collapsed, and die-hard communists believed it was a conspiracy, and they were victimized.

The Russian patriots had a harder go of it; they didn't like the US, but they hated how "Ivans" were treated in the '60s and '70s, and even the '80s; think 'reverse discrimination', and you're there, with all those nasty non-Russian Slavs and non-Slavs given preferences. Then the USSR broke up, and a lot of Russians suddenly wound up in a kind of de facto diaspora; not good news, since the locals suddenly demanded rights, and Russians lost their hegemony; esp. in places like the Ukraine, which had been Russian for so long ... good old Little Russia. Then just when they should have been able to assert more control in Russia proper, Russia damn near disintegrated and had a heck of a time establishing control over Yakutia and other consituent autonomous republics, embarrassing Russian patriots in the diaspora yet again. It has not been an easy time for Zhirinovsky and his crew in the motherland, or even for the more rank and file Russian nationalists elsewhere.

In the case of the Krimea, it's even worse. It was part of the RSFSR, until it was given to the Ukrainian SSR in the '50s, a nominally independent country according to the UN (Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the USSR each had a seat and vote at the UN). As long as it was all defacto 'Russia', nationalists didn't care. With the breakup of the USSR in '91, they cared.

The local aspect is that the Ukrainian government--hated by communists and Russians because, well, they're not in charge of it--allowed them in. When in doubt, stir up xenophobia, visions of conquests past and imperialism thwarted, and, of course, victimization. Never fails.

Even if it means you're against having your own troops have decent showers.