Ukraine
Oh gods the Ukraine.
Things there are on the knife edge of doom. I am not trying to be alarmist here but more of a realist. Protests are one thing, Even huge protests. But when major cities, (Lvov) begin to declare their "autonomy" from the central government and send police detachments to support the protests in the capital.... Well that is another thing all together.
Then President Victor Yanukovych, flees the capital to his home province, and denounces Coups in the capital. Well that ratchets up the pucker factor a lot. The odds of full scale civil war are somewhat beyond even right now and they hang on two groups. The Ukrainian military and the Russians. If the military decides to back Yanukovych then the odds actually go down a bit I think. there will be a lot of chaos and killing but probably not Civil war. Now if part of the Military backs him and part doesn't, well that is a formula for war. The elephant in the room is Russia. If the Russians intervene to support Yanukovych then war (and the potential partition of the country) is HUGE. I would say the EU/US could have an influence but really they don't. There is no chance that they will intervene militarily. Even if (or perhaps especially if) the Russians do. I do not see Europe being willing to militarily challenge the Russians over the Ukraine.
It is really all in Putin's hand right now. And that is not a pretty secure place to have things. Since I currently have a nephew serving a LDS mission in the eastern Ukraine (the Russian part) this worries me more than a little bit.
As an aside, I asked him what people there thought of the protests a month or so ago. He said many people there are expecting a civil war to happen eventually. Not a good place to be.
Things there are on the knife edge of doom. I am not trying to be alarmist here but more of a realist. Protests are one thing, Even huge protests. But when major cities, (Lvov) begin to declare their "autonomy" from the central government and send police detachments to support the protests in the capital.... Well that is another thing all together.
Then President Victor Yanukovych, flees the capital to his home province, and denounces Coups in the capital. Well that ratchets up the pucker factor a lot. The odds of full scale civil war are somewhat beyond even right now and they hang on two groups. The Ukrainian military and the Russians. If the military decides to back Yanukovych then the odds actually go down a bit I think. there will be a lot of chaos and killing but probably not Civil war. Now if part of the Military backs him and part doesn't, well that is a formula for war. The elephant in the room is Russia. If the Russians intervene to support Yanukovych then war (and the potential partition of the country) is HUGE. I would say the EU/US could have an influence but really they don't. There is no chance that they will intervene militarily. Even if (or perhaps especially if) the Russians do. I do not see Europe being willing to militarily challenge the Russians over the Ukraine.
It is really all in Putin's hand right now. And that is not a pretty secure place to have things. Since I currently have a nephew serving a LDS mission in the eastern Ukraine (the Russian part) this worries me more than a little bit.
As an aside, I asked him what people there thought of the protests a month or so ago. He said many people there are expecting a civil war to happen eventually. Not a good place to be.
posted by exMI | 12:32
1 Comments:
Good to see you are still blogging. . .sort of. This is Sept. and what I read was February.
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