Posted on 01/14/2015 7:32:49 AM PST by McGruff
There were times in Ukraine’s recent history when even the country’s military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable.
But that was then—a previous regime.
On the surface, today’s Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian political landscape last year. Its political culture looks modern, attractive, refined and European. For example, at the end of last year a new law was passed that allowed former citizens of other countries to participate in Ukrainian politics and even the government, in case they denounce their former citizenships. The reason given was the fight with notorious Ukrainian corruption. Apparently, in a country of more than 40 million people, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (called “Rabbit” by his citizens) couldn’t find a dozen or so native-born yet not corrupt professionals for his government.
Now three former foreigners—ex-American Natalia Yaresko (Minister for Finance), ex-Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius (Minister For Economy and Trade) and ex-Georgian Alexander Kvitashvili (Minister for Public Health)—are firmly established in their new cabinets. They are just the beginning. They gave up their U.S. and European passports with only two benefits in return: a $200-a-month salary and the chance to build a prosperous new Ukraine.
In a strange twist of fate, the Ukrainian ministers during their meetings now have to speak hated Russian—former foreigners do not speak Ukrainian well enough and locals do not speak English at the level necessary for complicated discussions on how to save a Ukraine economy that is disappearing before their eyes.
The problems they are facing are overwhelming. The new minister for economy, Mr. Abromavičius, knows that the country is in fact bankrupt. “To expect that we are going to produce real as opposed to declarative incentive programs is unrealistic,” he declared. In other words, the new Ukrainian budget is nothing but a piece of paper. But without this piece of paper there will be no new money from the European Bank and the IMF.
The first steps he has taken so far are controversial.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! That ain’t sexpots. That’s smallpox!
Funny, that the Russians had to build a wall to keep the Georgians, Latvians, and Lithuanians in.
lol
.....and Methodists.
Brilliant.
You won that round.
I wondered when you’d show up. ;)
Wouldn’t the Cossack Hetmanate in the 1500s be considered a direct ancestor of today’s Ukraine?
and that is different from Russia, how??
When did Ukraine invade Russia??
That is my question.
You find it amazing that they would dislike their invaders and occupiers??
Let's talk about the Russian nationalism that sees all neighboring countries as stolen Russian land and makes anti-Americanism a key to nationalism.
Wait, how did the U.S. Congress find enough time to plunder err I mean run both countries?
She is protesting for the release of Nadiya Sevchenko, a Ukrainian pilot who was driving her own car away from the battlefield into Russia (which was pretending to be neutral).
Today is day 33/34 of Nadiya's hunger strike.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting their own country, or to be free (though I’m dubious about folks blithely assuming that kow-towing to Brussels it a route to freedom), I just want the record correct. The horrors inflicted on the Ukraine during the Soviet era were inflicted by a regime alien to the Russian nation and were largely also inflicted on Russia by the same regime.
Back in the ‘80’s when the YAF chapters at Penn and Swarthmore mounted a protest against the Soviet ambassador giving a speech at Swarthmore College, among other banners we unfurled a list of captive countries. Russia was at the top of the list, followed by Ukraine and the rest of the “union republics” of the Soviet Union, then the satellites in Eastern Europe, followed by the rest of the Communist countries.
If only relatively small part of today’s Ukraine. More recent ancestors are Soviet Ukrainian Republic and several regions of Russian Empire.
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