Posted on 05/02/2014 3:12:06 PM PDT by tcrlaf
Putin's agent Yanukovich looted Ukraine and weakened and degraded its military leaving it defenseless against Russia's invasion.
Fortunately the Ukrainian people have risen up en masse against the Putinista traitors whose loyalty is to the Neo-Soviet Chekist Kremlin.
Just a short reply; I didn’t use the word ethnicity in my post and that was deliberate. I am not certain that ethnicity is the major fault line in Ukraine - rather a more conscious choice of russiophilia or occidentophilia. Of course history, language, customs etc make up a large part of the reasons behind the choice, but one cannot put equaility between russian speakers and russophiles (eg Julia Tymoshenko).
As to your question, I’m certain that the government supporters are most in favour of quik election. An election would give the new president a democratic mandate, and given that Crimea is “out of bounds” a win for the pro-West candidates is all but assured.
Pro-Russian agitation and estrangement from Kyiv in the east is tied closely with economic hardship and fear about job prospects, according to Rakesh Sharma, director of research at IFES. “The underlying issue is economic in nature because in the east… people were asking why should they be closer to Europe and a lot of their anxiety about association with the European Union came down to a fear that as their local economy is so tied to Russia, they will be the ones to suffer,” he said. “There was definitely an economic rationale being given,” he added.
and
A majority of those polled in the east said they didn’t feel the Russian language was being discriminated against.
drop articles to sound even more realistic..
Poll Finds Ukrainians Doubt Effectiveness of Interim Government
Blaming Yatsenyuk and his ministers for ineffectively handling the crisis in east Ukraine, a growing chorus of analysts and pro-Kyiv activists in the east are arguing the government should stop its haphazard military campaign to combat separatists.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt added his voice to the chorus Tuesday saying at a press conference that he had advised Kyiv against the use of force to drive separatists out of more than 30 seized government buildings in nearly a dozen cities and towns in east Ukraine.
But unfortunately, by now the radicals are in power (on both sides) and the government in Kiev is threatened by even more radical forces on its home turf unless it quickly reasserts its power in the east.
Time to re-read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. (This is a conservative site, isn't it.)
Because the Ukraine was part, however unwilling, of the USSR. Then the USSR dissolved. Every former country that was part of it wound up with much of the arsenal that was within it's borders. It's not like Russia was the USSR and everything belonged to them (though Russia was obviously the dominant partner). All the republics were part of the USSR and when the whole rotten system collapsed the Ukraine inherited the weapons, both conventional and nuclear, that were within it's borders. Most of these former republics, even to this day, are armed with Soviet era tanks, APC's, etc, that were stored within their territories when the collapse occurred.
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