UPDATE 3-Ukraine moves special forces to Odessa, helicopter downed in east

ODESSA/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine, May 5 (Reuters) - Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter in fierce fighting near the eastern town of Slaviansk on Monday, and Kiev drafted police special forces to the southwestern port city of Odessa to halt a feared westward spread of rebellion.

Ukraine said the Odessa force, based on "civil activists", would replace local police who had failed to tackle rebel actions at the weekend. Its dispatch was a clear signal from Kiev that, while tackling rebellion in the east, it would vigorously resist any sign of a slide to a broader civil war.

The old government in Kiev was overthrown. Among other things, this was because the old government was pro-Russian and refused to sign a EU cooperation pact. Many speculate that the EU, our NGO’s & $5B foreign aid dollars and other opportunists supported ultranationalists to make the protests and Kiev take over happen. Anyway, the people in the other end of the country (the east), were always autonomous in the past. They can’t stand the new ultranational Kiev leadership which wants their autonomy forever gone. They see it as an illegal coup in a city in a faraway corner of the country. They also fear repression from the west. The ultranationalists have a hatred of the ethnic Russians in the east and vice versa.
Russia wants to protect the ethnic Russians from oppression and also wants to protect its borders, ports and influence that they had under the old Ukrainian government. The EU and the Ukrainians in the east fear that the Russians want to expand and take over the whole Ukraine and become a threat to Europe again.
It is essentially a federalist/nationalist crisis. Eastern wants to remain an autonomous part of Ukraine if possible. If not, they want to secede and join the Russian Federation. The US, EU and Ukrainians in the east want the whole country. A strong pro-EU national Ukrainian government regardless of what Ukrainians in the east want.

Most of the energy, natural resources and industry are in the east too. The west has little, is bankrupt and would be a burden to whoever has it. I doubt Russia even wants it. The EU doesn’t want the burden of it unless the east comes along too.

Excellent summary, FreeInWV. Brussels and Washington are trying to resurrect Cold War tensions to drum up support for a distant civil war that is none of our business. Ukraine is a basket case as a single entity, and will likely split between east and west at the Dnieper River. West Ukraine will naturally align with Poland, and East Ukraine with Russia. That looks like the most stable arrangement.

Here is a little history on the OUN-B, predecessor of the current ultranational movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

The following is from a really good writeup by the BBC at
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26415508

“When the president fled Kiev, the opposition moved in to fill the power vacuum. But earlier that week, in a bid to calm the crisis, both sides had agreed a deal to restore the 2004 constitution and reduce the president’s powers. That deal was signed by Mr Yanukovych and opposition leaders as well as by three EU foreign ministers ...

Moscow has regularly complained that the protests in Kiev’s Independence Square were hijacked by the far right, who have since gone on to take power in a new government that includes “undisguised Nazis”. Two groups, Right Sector and Svoboda (Freedom), are frequently mentioned and there are regular references to wartime nationalist Stepan Bandera, seen as a hero to some but accused by others of being a Nazi collaborator linked to massacres of Jews and Poles...

The far right was a minority element in the protests that attracted a wide cross-section of support from Kiev and other cities. They were, however, often involved in the most violent confrontations and nationalist symbols were frequently visible in the square...

The nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party has four posts in the government. Oleksandr Sych is deputy prime minister and Oleh Makhnitsky becomes acting chief prosecutor. It also runs the agriculture and ecology portfolios but its leader, who has been accused of anti-Semitism, is not in the government...

Protest leader Andriy Parubiy has become chairman of the National Security Council (NSC). A co-founder of Svoboda and labelled an extremist by the ousted president, one of Mr Parubiy’s deputies at the NSC is Dmytro Yarosh, the head of far-right paramilitary group Right Sector.”

Its a mess for sure. Everyone’s hands are dirty and a lot of bad blood to go around.

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