I find it difficult to understand the whole situation
Yanukovych may have been corrupt - but he wasn’t the first Ukrainian politician to be so. Also, the EU itself declared his election in 2010 to be relatively fair, open and legitimate.
So the protestors in Kiev have toppled it - but replaced with who and what? John Kerry calls them “pro democracy protestors.” Really? So who are they?
Also, a 1994 International Treaty allowed Russia access to the Crimea and permission to keep 25,000 troops there. So how can this be considered an “invasion” when they have been there 20 years already?
Finally, I think declaring Ukraine could enter NATO was ridiculous - and very provocative.
Again, Putin is not saint, but I am finding it hard to get worked up over what he is doing.
Georgia has been trying to get into NATO for many years and we have been helping them, but they are still waiting..
The Importance of Ukraine's Oligarchs
"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and other members of the interim government have reached out to figures including Akhmetov and Firtash, assuring them that their businesses will not be targeted. Kiev has even appointed key oligarchs such as Igor Kolomoisky, a banking and industrial magnate, and industrialist Sergei Taruta as governors in the eastern regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk, respectively."
I think the above is a fairly good view.
What is going on the Ukraine is much more complicated than a simple “If this, then this” type of statement.
Remember, the same Soros Cabal-financed Open Society NGO’s that destabilized Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt International Renaissance Foundation, using the same playbook that has worked before, have been active in Ukraine for about two years now.
Add in a bad, mismanaged economy full of local and national corruption, and you have the recipe for certain people to make wheelbarrows full of money playing the put spreads.
You summarized this very well.
Without defending Russia, the whole narrative the Western media has been pushing is highly misleading at best. Because of the internet, everyone in the world who is not too lazy to click some links and read a few articles from a diverse set of sources knows this.
Our leaders are still acting like no one has any other sources of information than their own pronouncements.
They screwed up by backing the coup. The deposed president already signed a deal to have early elections soon and to repeal laws against protesters. If the protests are in fact indicative of the mood of the majority Ukrainians, why would the US, who never shuts up about democracy, back this coup? Why not just say “Yanukovich is still the president until the new elections?”
People in non-Western countries are thinking the obvious...that the US/EU is concerned it may not actually have the votes. Remember, Yanukovych won last time. The protesters are not universally loved, many of the Kiev protesters were bused in and the large number of people in Kiev who voted for Yanukovych can’t be happy about them trashing the city. Even worse, an election now might bring to power Svoboda and the openly neo-fascist “Right Sector”, which dominated the hardcore protesters, with Yanukovych a close second, or vice versa. The strong possibility is that the West’s chosen leaders will come in a distant third to what are basically skinhead soccer hooligan types who never got more than tiny numbers of votes before and even to Russia’s stooges.
This kind of election free transition allows the right people to be put in charge and to have some control over the media and other state organs to shape the environment for a later election. It also essentially dissolves the party that one the last election. It not hard to see how doing this increases the likelihood of the “right peoples” winning if and when an election is held.
In non-Anglo and especially non-Western countries, the protests will be seen as a provocation. That concept has disappeared from our mainstream culture, but is still culturally salient elsewhere. What this means is that it is obvious to any neutral observer that some of the protesters deliberately attacked the police precisely to provoke a violent reaction, whether in self defense or in anger, that could then be used in anti-government propaganda(in the broad, value-neutral sense). The US is downplaying this aspect of the situation, but everywhere else, where things like this are more common, it will work to undermine the West’s position. Especially in the enormous number of countries where the man on the street does not like the CIA.
I think the natural good naturedness of most Americans and the lack of intrigue in our political history compared to most places make Americans uniquely susceptible to swallowing shallow “democracy” and “human rights” narratives that are presented a certain way by the media/politicians. We have to be aware that most non-Americans will be more suspicious of our leaders motives and less accepting of their attempts to make excuses when caught in a lie.