Crisis in Oekraïne #119 De bevrijding van Oost-Oekraine

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Op donderdag 21 augustus 2014 22:54 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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De verdeeldheid van Oekraine is een grotendeels een mythe. Wat men daarover zegt, geldt voor vrijwel ieder Europees land. Ik denk eerder dat Oekraine vrij homogeen is, daar de grote verschillen bestaan de varianten van vrijwel dezelfde taal en religie.

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Op donderdag 21 augustus 2014 23:32 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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Ik denk dat je een bevolking gemakkelijk daarin kan sturen. Je neemt dit soort verschillen (in Nederland vroeger bijvoorbeeld het verschil tussen katholieken en protestanten), en dan zet je deze bevolkingsgroepen tegen elkaar op (mbv de media, kerk etc). Dit is volgens mij het spel dat Rusland hier heeft gespeeld. Wat je ook terug ziet in het gevecht om de TV kanalen. Iets wat je zelf kan vaststellen; het maakt alles uit maar welke media je luistert, de pro-russische of pro-Oekrainse.

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Why Sanctions Against Russia Might Backfire

Kimberly Marten; International security expert, Russia and Eurasia watcher; Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University;

Will Western sanctions against Russia work? It's not clear what that question means, since it isn't obvious what Russia has to do to end them. It doesn't seem very likely that Russia is going to withdraw from Crimea or end its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.

But even more important is the question of how the sanctions are affecting Russia's domestic political scene. I suggested in early March, when sanctions had been threatened but not yet announced, that they might interfere with Russian President Vladimir Putin's ability to keep his domestic political networks in balance. Those with an internationalist bent would want Russian policy to change. Leading economists like former finance minister Alexei Kudrin have indeed sounded the alarm about Russia's current direction.

But I could not have predicted the specific direction that many of the sanctions took: singling out Putin's key political allies and their businesses for targeting, regardless of whether they are directly involved in Ukrainian events or have any substantial relationship with the West. The thinking seems to be that if the West names and shames Putin's cronies and puts some limited pressure on their business interests, this will convince Putin to change course. But it's not clear how this is supposed to work.

Is the hope that his friends will threaten to boot him out of office if he doesn't shape up? One analyst recently claimed that Putin could be ousted easily, arguing that his replacement might be someone like Kudrin. But this neglects an important element of what holds Putin's networks together: the pact of KGB loyalty. Many of the targeted individuals have past employment in, or suspected connections with, the KGB or its follow-on organization, the FSB (Federal Security Service). Putin, a career KGB officer and former head of the FSB, has repeatedly shown he can use FSB methods and tradecraft to harass his opponents, for example by releasing compromising materials (kompromat) that lead to their prosecution and imprisonment. He would certainly use those skills and connections to punish anyone who defects from his own team. Since many of his associates are reputed billionaires, they can afford to lose quite a bit of money before taking the enormous personal risk of betraying Putin and his KGB friends.

And the sanctions seem almost designed to enrage Putin personally, since they hit his personal networks so closely. The hope can't have been that this would put him in a compromising mood. Is it instead that they will provoke him toward more aggression, leading him to miscalculate and increase his ultimate losses? Russia has already backed off some of its Western food-import counter-sanctions, because Putin's original policy underestimated Russian dependence on specialty items like lactose-free milk, seed stock and salmon produced in Europe.

But it's always dangerous to poke an angry bear. In recent months Putin has begun to encourage a conspiracy-mongering form of anti-Western nationalism. It's impossible to know whether he and his cronies actually believe this neo-Eurasianist ideology. But neo-Eurasian arguments fill state-sponsored Russian media, and variations of it are seeping into the writings of even mainstream diplomatic analysts in Moscow. The West is blamed for denigrating Russia throughout history as backwards and wrong-headed, denying Russia its rightful place simply because its culture is different from Europe's. In the 1990s, the story goes, the West tried to transform Russia in its own image, denying Russia's separate identity and stealing its resources. Neo-Eurasianism rejects Western values of democracy, liberal tolerance, and individual rights. It argues instead for the superiority of a uniquely Russian communal and statist culture.

Ukraine matters, from this point of view, because Kiev was the medieval birthplace of Russia's unique civilization, and now Ukraine's eastern regions form a cultural buffer against the encroaching and degenerate West. Of course the West wants to stop Putin--his actions are rolling back Western influence. The sanctions bolster Eurasianist claims that the West has always persecuted Russia. They can be portrayed as another feeble attempt to demonstrate Western superiority.

Rather than pushing Putin toward accommodation, his cronies might push him toward nationalist extremism, to ensure their own continuing relevance in this new environment that Putin himself unleashed. The tilt toward extremism is already underway. Some versions of Eurasianism recognize that Russia is a multi-ethnic state, and argue that values-based nationalism is compatible with many religious traditions. But state-sponsored analysts increasingly claim that the culture of the Russian state should be based on the values of its majority Russian ethnic population. This theme was included in the draft version of a Kremlin document published by the Russian press in April, which proposed the establishment of an official state culture based on ethnic Russian values. (The document pointed out that ethnic Russians form 80% of the population of the Russian Federation.) This followed Putin's speech to the Russian parliament in March, where ethnic Russian phrasing dominated his analysis and he declared Crimea a "primordial" part of Russian territory. It's a short step from calls for Russian ethnic cultural dominance to the anti-Semitic lecture reportedly given at the state-sponsored Seliger youth camp a few weeks ago by a professor from Moscow's State Institute of International Relations. Russia is headed in a dangerous direction.

The lesson from the past decade around the world is that the United States and its allies cannot control the internal politics of foreign countries. When they try, they often end up with a worse situation than they faced originally. If ugly ethnic nationalism becomes the ideology of the day in Russia, the West might find itself longing for the stability of the Cold War era. Meanwhile, Western sanctions against Putin's cronies might be cementing a new bond between powerful FSB representatives, and anti-Western ethnic nationalists.

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Op woensdag 20 augustus 2014 15:32 schreef DSVM het volgende:

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Het geeft wel weer aan dat men niet vecht tegen wat ''burger milities''. Als er drones boven je hoofd vliegen, je beschoten word vanuit rusland en niet terug mag schieten', burger milities met artillery,tanks,etc,etc. Rusland steunt de separatisten met elke ''stiekeme'' methode die er is.
Iets wat we al langer wisten, maar het nogmaals bevestigd word.

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Op donderdag 21 augustus 2014 23:50 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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De Maidan was een klassenstrijd van de bevolking tegen de elite (de oligarchen), niet een strijd tussen oost en west. De bevolking liep niet warm voor aansluiting bij Rusland of voor lidmaatschap van de EU. Het was de politieke elite die bezig was om Oekraine te positioneren in de internationale politieke verhoudingen, en die daarmee het oost-west probleem heeft ingebracht.

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Op donderdag 21 augustus 2014 23:59 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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Regionale verschillen heb je in ieder land. Een soort tweedeling ook. Er is het welvarende deel en het armoedige deel. Er is vaak een verschil in religie en soms in taal.

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Op vrijdag 22 augustus 2014 00:05 schreef Igen het volgende:

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Je kan veel grenzen trekken.

In dit geval (en bij de verkiezingen van 2010) loopt de grens op dezelfde plek als de landsgrens van het Pools-Litouwse Gemenebest op z'n hoogtepunt, in de 17e eeuw.

Bij de verkiezingen in 1994 lag de grens anders:

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Je ziet iets vergelijkbaars trouwens ook in Polen terug. Er zijn daar sterke regionale verschillen tussen de gebieden die voor 1914 bij Duitsland hoorden, en de rest van Polen:

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Maar met zulke tegenstellingen kun je ook volwassen omgaan. Je hoeft ze niet op de spits te drijven en van het land een failed state te maken.

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RANDCorporation twitterde op donderdag 21-08-2014 om 23:55:09 No Russian cooperation means no peace in Ukraine. The border is too long and porous to block people, arms, and funds: http://t.co/CEkj7OE1Ep reageer retweet

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Make Russia an Offer on Ukraine It Can't Refuse

Ukraine is burning. Ongoing fighting between government forces and insurgents in eastern Ukraine have left more than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians dead and some 300,000 displaced, according to AP. Meanwhile, in large swathes of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, those who remain lack food, running water, and electricity. If the West is serious about preventing things deteriorating further it needs to find a new approach — and one that makes Russia part of the solution.

The Ukrainian government argues that it is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine, but it is believed to have been using Grad rockets, an inaccurate weapon that makes this particularly difficult. The separatists have for their part also used heavy weapons indiscriminately, killing Ukrainian civilians and likely accidentally shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17....

The remainder of this commentary is available on cnn.com.

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In an effort to convince Russia to stop supplying the separatists with weapons and other kinds of support that have kept the conflict going, the European Union, the United States and their allies have imposed economic and travel sanctions on Russian citizens and companies in an effort to change President Vladimir Putins policies. Two weeks ago, Russia responded by banning food imports from most of the countries sanctioning it. Yet despite a running joke among some critics that Russia has become the latest country to sanction Russia, most Russians have maintained their long-running support of Putin.

Of course, the Russian government claims that it, too, wants peace in Ukraine. But neither Ukraine nor most European states believe it, a point underscored by the voicing of suspicion that Russias humanitarian aid convoy, dispatched last week, was in fact cover for a military incursion.

Why is Russia continuing to destabilize Ukraine even at the cost of what had been solid political and economic relationships with European Union countries? From Moscows point of view, Ukraine is only one part of a larger battle, one in which it is finally standing up to decades of U.S. hegemony and bullying. Never mind that it was Ukraines withdrawal from the EU Association Agreement that led to the Maidan protests and, ultimately, the end of the Yanukovych regime the vast majority of the Russian public believes the United States was behind it all, and that the United States is simply trying to weaken Russia. Russia, for its part, says it has vital interests in the countries that have emerged from the former Soviet Union, and suggests that the United States and EU should stop meddling in Russias regional sphere of influence and accept that Russia will always have a pre-eminent role in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, however ridiculous Russias reasoning may seem in the West, and however bellicose its approach, Ukraine will not enjoy peace without Russian acquiescence. The reality is that the Ukrainian-Russian border is too long and too porous to prevent people, arms, and funds from flowing across it. Without cooperation from Russia, Ukraine is in for a long period of violence.

Ending insurgencies actively supported by a neighboring power can be nigh impossible. Moreover, Ukraine needs normal economic relations with Russia if it is to emerge from its current recession Russia is Ukraines largest source of imported energy, electricity, oil and natural gas, and its second most important export market after the EU. Even if Western sanctions help forestall a direct military invasion by Russia into Ukraine, they are unlikely to induce Russia to take positive steps to resolve the conflict. Sanctions are a long game, and tend, at least initially, to result in publics rallying around the flag.

So what could work?

Russia has talked a good game on Ukraine, with calls for ceasefires and the afore-mentioned humanitarian aid mission. With that in mind, then, one way out of this mess could be to internationalize some of Russias proposals, and do so quickly.

For example, Russia has floated the idea of sending peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine. Why not create an international peacekeeping force under the auspices of the U.N. or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe? Such a force could include a support role for Russia, but most of it would need to be composed of troops from other European countries, possibly from Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, none of whom are members of NATO.

The Ukrainian government asked for a U.N. peacekeeping mission back in May. At the time, Russia opposed such a move. But in light of Russias current threatening posture, Moscow may find it difficult to both block an international mission and also advocate that it should carry out one on its own.

True, putting a force like this together would be a significant challenge other countries have struggled even to coordinate a sanctions-based response. But an international initiative that does not appear to emanate from NATO or the European Union could help bring Russia to the table, in part by accepting that Moscow, too, has a role. Importantly, an international peacekeeping force could open the way for a negotiated end to the conflict.

The alternative to being proactive in getting Moscow involved could be continuing hostility, something that would very likely doom Ukraine to a cycle of violence even if the country finds military success.

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Op vrijdag 22 augustus 2014 00:22 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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De breuk was het schieten op de Maidan. Een overheid die 100 mensen neerschiet is niet acceptabel.

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Op vrijdag 22 augustus 2014 00:06 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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Het Oekraïns leger: http://mediarnbo.org/?lang=en