Ukraine Crisis

[Famous Mortimer]

Given what happened in Georgia, I'm surprised Russian troops haven't marched into Kiev yet...

What do you mean?

Russia did not intervene in Georgia when the pro-Russian president was overthrown in a revolution.

They only intervened when the Georgian military acted aggressively towards people who had not been under Georgian authority for more than a decade and didn't wish to be.

[Famous Mortimer]

Additionally, Putin has hedged his bets here.

Remember that Tymoshenko is in jail for giving Russia a sweetheart deal on gas.

Yanyukovych's hard turn back to Moscow is him trying to show his loyalty in the face of Russia's indifference.

[Famous Mortimer]

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, acting leader of the Tymoshenko Bloc, has been offered the position of Prime Minister.

Vitali Klitschko has been offered Deputy PM.

Really though, it should be the other way around, based on who's been leading the protests.

This is obviously Yanukovych trying to ferment a power struggle within the opposition. Smart move on his part.

I wonder if they will take the bait though.

[Famous Mortimer]

Prior to that offer, my prediction was thus:

Klitschko would get elected in the next election, whenever that ends up being.

Tymoshenko would be the main candidate against him when he runs for re-election, and she would have Russian backing.

I was fairly confident of that prediction too.

Everything will become very confused if Yatsenyuk becomes PM though.

[Famous Mortimer]

Countries don't have to compete for the sake of competing.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, Georgia f***ing started that war. Russia was not the aggressor.

If Russia invaded Ukraine, they would be the aggressor.

[Famous Mortimer]

1) That's not going to happen.

2) Even if it did, it would require Crimea to declare independence NOW. Totally different from South Ossetia which had been de facto independent for a decade before the war started.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, the PM resigned today.

I don't know who that would ever appease.

Maybe Yanyukovych is just trying to win international sympathy and look pitiful.

[Famous Mortimer]

Parliament passed a law giving the protesters amnesty on the condition they leave government buildings.

Yanyukovych is doing a good job of PR. She really looks like he's willing to bend and it's the protesters who are unreasonable.

Of course, he's also the guy who poisoned one of his rivals and put another in jail on trumped up charges...

[Famous Mortimer]

They will probably go with Klitschko, legal issues be damned. The government has shown they are very PR conscious. They are not going to ban candidates from running, especially famous ones sure to attract Western media. It would invite more protests.

[Famous Mortimer]

Russia cites tapes of ambassador as proof the US is meddling in Ukraine.

Oddly though, tapes seem to prove the US isn't with the protesters, they are genuinely trying to sail a middle course between Russia and the EU.

First, they tell the EU to  off, they say they don't want Klitchko (the more radical opposition leader) in office, and they want to prop up a possible BS "national unity" government that Yanukovych will appoint.

[Famous Mortimer]

Did we slap sanctions on Bahrain when they murdered protesters? Oh wait no, they're our ally so it's okay.

Well of course. It would be stupid to make foreign policy solely on humanitarian grounds. The goal is to gain influence and power, not to be nice and moral.

The reason I think the West should support the "rebels" in this case is almost solely to undermine Russia.

Again, why do you believe in hostility for the sake of being hostile? That's idiotic.

[Famous Mortimer]

Why?

If you aren't legitimately opposed to their ideology, why bother to undermine them?

[Famous Mortimer]

How many times has Ukraine gone back and fourth, chipping away power from the president only to give it back a few years later?

[Famous Mortimer]

1989 called. They want their approach to foreign policy back (duh-dum-ching).

It's not a Cold War thing. This is how it's always been done. It's like does anyone really think the UK went to war with Germany in 1914 because they were just "so concerned" about poor little Belgium. No, they went to war to stop Germany from becoming the dominant European power generally. Belgium was just a casus belli.

It's the same now as it ever was. The United States has global interests and they will be upheld, although sometimes a humanitarian mask is necessary (ala Libya 2011).

When someone says your ideas are stupid, it's not a winning idea to come back and say "hey, my ideas led to World War 1!"

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm guessing Serhiy Tihipko will be the pro-Russian presidential candidate in the snap election.

Former head of the Bank of Ukraine. Former head of Labor Ukraine and Strong Ukraine, two explicitly left-wing pro-Russian political parties. Third place candidate (about 10%) after Yanukovych and Tymoshenko in the last election, joined POR shortly after.

Natalia Korolevska of Forward Ukraine is another possibility, although she's less explicitly pro-Russian and she lost a lot of clout when her party just barely failed to make it into parliament. She had been a member of the Tymoshenko bloc, first as part of Tymoshenko's Fatherland party, then as leader of a new Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. She pulled the Social Democrats out of the bloc so she could support the government. She's still a minor minister I think. She's also an oligarch herself.

[Famous Mortimer]

"Correction (Feb. 22, 4:20 P.M.): An earlier version of this report incorrectly described Rabbi Azman as the chief rabbi of Ukraine. Azman is not the country's chief rabbi, but one of two rabbis challenging the official chief rabbi, Yaakov Bleich, in Kiev, and like most Chabad rabbis, is aligned with the Kremlin."

[Famous Mortimer]

Will PoR survive? It's somewhat personalist.

Actually the Party of Regions was extremely well organized when you compare it to the various parties of power under Kuchma and Yushchenko.

[Famous Mortimer]

Why didn't UDAR join the government?

[Famous Mortimer]

The interim authorities need to come out with a statement saying they respect all of Ukraine's treaty obligations and expect friendly relations with all of their neighbors. It might have no effect or it might just solve everything.

[Famous Mortimer]

Reading about Crimean politics on Wikipedia and it's crazy.

So apparently the Crimean Prime Minister that got overthrown was a member of the Party of Regions who used to be a cop who shot protesters.

He was overthrown for being too moderate...

So now the Prime Minister is this guy from a party called Russian Unity, which only won 4% of the vote in the last election.

[Famous Mortimer]

I suppose all this stuff with Russia just proves Sarah Palin right.

You mean Romney, when he said Russia and not China was the US's number one foe. Then he got hammered on and ridiculed.

Russia still isn't our foe. They aren't threatening the United States at all.

[Famous Mortimer]

I suppose all this stuff with Russia just proves Sarah Palin right.

You mean Romney, when he said Russia and not China was the US's number one foe. Then he got hammered on and ridiculed.

Russia still isn't our foe. They aren't threatening the United States at all.

Russia still can quite effectively block American moves in foreign policy, as we saw in 2013.

Are you talking about Syria? Basically everyone agrees Russia did us a favor in that regard.

[Famous Mortimer]

The new Ukrainian government is basically a coalition of Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna party and the nationalist Svoboda along with a couple of former Maidan activists. Vitali Klitschko's UDAR refused to join the government.

Meanwhile, some ex-Party of Regions MPs have formed a new group in the Ukrainian Parliament called "Economic Development". ED is led by Anatoliy Kinakh, a former prime minister under Leonid Kuchma back in 2001/02.

Current seat distribution in the Rada is apparently as follows (in brackets the change since beginning of this year):

Party of Regions 127 (-77)
Batkivshchyna 88 (-2)
UDAR 42 (+-0)
Svoboda 36 (+-0)
Economic Development 33 (+33)
Communist Party 32 (+-0)
Independents 91 (+53)
[Vacancies 1 (-7)]

Independent MPs have also come together to form a faction called Sovereign European Ukraine. They have 36 seats.

Both Economic Development and Sovereign European Ukraine support the interim government, which has a majority of 250 out of 449 seats.

[Famous Mortimer]

And even then (as we saw in Georgia), NATO membership is not a guarantee of immunity.      

What does NATO have to do with Georgia?

In the crazy 90s every republic from the ex USSR without the support of Moscow wanted to be part of NATO and they had some deal here, some deal there, etc.

Caucasus is a mess, but a very attractive region for energetic purposes.

Partnership for Peace.