Zina Rohan - Blog

Appologies: This is long. You might want to skip it.

Nobody is behaving well here:

· (Ex)-President Yanukovich – the use of the ex depends on who you are – was so corrupt his people couldn’t stand it any longer. And anyway he had changed the constitution 8 months after he was last elected in February 2010, to reinstate presidential powers that in 2004 had been curbed in favour of the parliament.
· Nonetheless he was all set to sign an association agreement with the EU – no guarantee of membership, but a signal that he was not about to sign the Customs Union with Russia and Kazakhstan that Putin had wanted. But at the last minute he changed his mind. The EU had not offered sufficient inducements and Russia was offering more.
· People who wanted to be closer to Europe came out onto the streets crying foul. Some of them were thugs, a few of them were extreme right-wingers, but most were just people, a majority young, or young-ish.
· A lot of them were shot dead by snipers – it’s not absolutely certain whose.
· The crowds were incensed and increased. Yanukovich panicked and caved in: he agreed to hold elections in December 2014, a few months ahead of time; and he agreed to revert to the earlier, 2004 constitutional arrangements.
· But it didn’t work. The crowds stayed put, and on the same day Yanukovich disappeared, only to show up in Russia, saying he feared for his life. Again, we have no way of knowing if that is true, nor who exactly he feared.
· A new government was quickly formed with, it seems, US help. Not a clever move by the USA.
· Russia declared the new interim government (elections due in May) was illegal: this was a coup, it said, run by the US, facilitating a Fascist administration. Not a clever use of language.
· Since then the Russian media and government spokespeople generally, have attached the word Fascist to everything Ukrainian.
· (Digression: Calling the Ukrainians Fascists is like the Hutus calling Tutsis cockroaches in Rwanda, or Nazis referring to Jews a vermin or Serbs referring to Bosnians as Turks: in each case it is hate speech that winds up the willing and usually ignorant crowds. For the Russians using ‘Fascist’ as a button to press is convenient for them as there were indeed Nazi sympathisers among the Ukrainians during WWII. To begin with, at any rate. In 1941 anyone who could get rid of the Soviet occupier was welcome to the Ukrainians who had suffered the Holodomor at Stalin’s hands only a few years earlier. The trouble is there were Ukrainians who were also enthusiastic among the Nazi camp guards. But other Ukrainians, in large numbers, also formed a major part of the Red Army that fought with the Allies against Germany. So nothing is simple Digression ends.).
· Once that new (illegal) and pro-Western government swore itself in in Kiev/ Kyiv Putin decided to move in on Crimea.
· This was Russia’s holiday camp since Catherine the Great expanded into it in the 18th century, much loved by Russians every summer holidays. It had been a largely Tatar region before but Russians colonised it. The entire Tatar population was deported by Stalin at the end of WWII, as he claimed they had been Nazi sympathisers. They had not, and subsequently they were rehabilitated and apologised to. This did not mean getting their lands back, though. Once the USSR imploded the Tatars began making their way back from Uzbekistan where they had been sent…to find Russians living in their houses. Ominously there are now graffiti on walls saying things like, All Tatars Out!
· Oddly, Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. I have no idea why. He may have been drunk, but thereafter, in law, the peninsula was Ukrainian. But it was also the site of Russia’s only warm water port, and consequently the home of its Black Sea Fleet. (Tartus in Syria is another warm water facility that Russia has used for a long time.)
· Tit for tat. You (the West) muscle in on Kiev. I (Putin) will take Crimea, using soldiers I will call local defence forces even if they themselves acknowledge that they are Russians.
· Here comes a problem.
· In 1994 the US, UK, Russia and Ukraine all signed the Budapest Memorandum, presumably in Budapest, which guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial and economic integrity in return for Kiev’s agreeing to give up the huge nuclear arsenal that remained on Ukrainian soil - a leftover of the Soviet nuclear weapons industry. How valid or binding is that agreement? Here is a view on that.
· Now we have Secretary of State John Kerry self-righteous and pompous: “You just dont in the 21st century behave in the 19th century fashion by invading another country on a compeltely trumped-up pretext." Hoots of derision all round - and not only in Russia. Astonishingly the US administration seems unaware of the irony.
· Economic sanctions are announced, that nobody actually wants enforced. For the Balts and Poland, they are not enough. For Italy and Britain too much (you can almost hear Cameron pleading with Obama: Please leave our high-spending Oligarchs out of it.)

Nobody is mentioning the Budapest Memorandum.

· Putin is now talking about how he feels duty-bound to help his compatriots, or at least co-linguists, if they feel their human rights are under threat.
Example: In Estonia and Latvia (possibly in Lithuania too, although the Russian minority there is smaller than in the other two) Russians have been told they must learn the local language in order to be allowed to take citizenship and/or work in public institutions. They think this is a cheek and are boycotting the requirement, then compaining that they are being treated as second class citizens. The language requirement is waived for the over 65s, although I think that is setting the bar a tad high: it's hard learning a new language after the age of about 30...unless you are hard-wired for languages. On the other hand these Russians have lived for decades in Estonia etc, and you might have thought they would have learned the lingo by now...a bit.

· Why is this scary: Because it reminds me of something. In April 1987 a group of people who had been used to being in charge but now found they no longer were complained to their leader that they had been under attack. He came storming down and promsied them that no one in future would be allowed to beat them again. His name was Slobodan Milosevic. The place was Kosovo. The ethnic cleansing began the following January.

· On the other hand, you might just read this instead. I never thought I would agree with Kissinger!
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