That happens sometimes, when you try to escape your country’s harsh political bondage, despite the clamps and chains Putin’s police state has forced on dissidents, reformers and lesbians…
(Hat tip: Moe Lane, who doesn’t seem to have realized the glorious keyword trolling possibilities…)
A truce has been declared between Euromaiden and Yanukovych’s forces. This is good news, as it means there’s fierce probably internal resistance in the armed forces to carry out the traditional “slaughter everyone with reach of a machine gun” method of putting down dissent. It may also mean that Putin isn’t quite willing to cross the Rubicon by intervening militarily to prop up his puppet.
Also, Obama finally condemns the violence in Ukraine and threatens vague “consequences” if it gets worse. It’s a start.
I’ve done so much Ukraine reporting today that I think I’ll just put up this short blurb for tonight, unless all hell breaks lose again…
On the diplomatic front:
Some videos:
PC carrier tries unsuccessfully to breach Euromaidan lines in a hail of molotov cocktails:
Another view:
Scenes from the fighting:
An overview of the fighting:
More clashes:
Livestream again, though it looks like mostly video clips right now:
The good news from Ukraine: most of the totalitarian laws suppressing free speech have been repealed and prime minister Mykola Azarov has resigned.
The bad news: brutal thug and Putin toady Viktor Yanukovych is still President, and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is still imprisoned.
Says one writer in the Moscow Times:
The Yanukovych administration is marked by two main features. First, Yanukovych is essentially a small-time criminal, and such people have a unique profile. They are typically rather dull, always looking for an opportunity to steal and incapable of anticipating the long-term consequences of their actions.
Second, Ukraine is actually ruled by Yanukovych’s eldest son and his friends — all filthy rich. Since coming to power, Yanukovych has fired all of his original associates and alienated his initial sponsors, such as oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Dmytro Firtash.
Current map of the situation:
Updated map 18.00 of Ukrainian people protest, by Sergii Gorbachov. http://t.co/bLQUOVIdJU | #euromaidan #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/2LlCCe3bXJ
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) January 27, 2014
Other Ukraine/Euromaidan news
During the less than four years of its rule, Viktor Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever – by any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imagination of what human avarice is capable.
On a lighter note, all I could think of when viewing this pic was “Ukraine’s furry contingent has joined the fight for freedom!”
Amidst Thanksgiving weekend festivities (which for me included visiting with family, eating copious amounts of food, shopping for books, and watching the Rockets beat the Nets and Spurs), I kept seeing reports of unrest in Ukraine pop up on my Twitter feed.
Ukraine’s current president, Viktor Yanukovych, is a toady for Putin’s Moscow, and in that role he rejected a trade deal with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. Ukrainians, tired of centuries of Russian domination, were naturally pissed, and took to the streets to protest. Those protests continued to grow during the weekend, with the attendant clashes with police and volleys of tear gas, and even some members of the ruling coalition quitting in protest. Even John Kerry’s ineffectual State Department was forced to issue one of its toothless, pro-forma protests.
What it boils down to is the latest incarnation of a very old struggle of Ukrainians trying to throw off the yoke of Moscow’s rule. It looked like they had succeeded in the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005, but then Putin’s catspaws managed to slither their way back into power, all part of Russia’s attempt to assert control in its “Near Abroad” (i.e., the other states of the former Soviet Union). Then there’s that little issue of the Soviet Union killing between 4 million and 14 million people in the Holodomor.
Will Democracy succeed? Never underestimate the willingness of authoritarians (or totalitarians) to murder their own people when push comes to shove. But Yanukovych can only do so much. There’s no love lost between Ukraine’s armed forces and their Russian counterparts, so I sincerely doubt they would back Yanukovych in an actual revolution or civil war.
Would Russia intervene militarily in Ukraine? I never put anything past Vladamir Putin (remember, he’s almost certainly the guy who ordered the poisoning of Yanukovych’s rival Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin), but invading the Ukraine would probably be a bridge too far for even the squishy EU.
Recent reports have troops moving in toward the protestors.
Russia Today has regular updates on the situation. (Note that’s Russia Today, not Ukraine Today, and adjust for bias accordingly.)
Via Borepatch comes news of some super geniuses in Greenpeace who can’t understand why they’re sitting in a Russian jail. They illegally boarded a state-owned oilrig as part of a protest and were promptly arrested for piracy.
“They had never expected that they would face such consequences for their peaceful protest in a democratic state.”
There are two tiny little problems with that statement:
Now they’re sitting in jail awaiting trail, wonder why they haven’t received the slap on the wrist they regularly get from other countries.
Real activists should expect to do time in jail. Vaclav Havel spent plenty of time in jail, as did Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And they were pushing for real social change, not pie-in-the-sky trust fund environmentalism.
Actions have consequences. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time…