Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Yanukovich failed to appear in public last Friday, sending an open letter to the Ukrainians instead calling for regional referenda. Some time between his first and second press-conferences in exile, there were reports of his death, then speculation that his…
Victor Yanukovich is expected to speak in Rostov-on-Don today. It could be yet another asinine press conference but the alarmist in me feels otherwise. What if Yanukovich asks – “as the legitimate president, I hereby request” – Putin to “restore the…
The feisty, libertarian-leaning Ekho Moskvy commentator Yulia Latynina draws attention, once again, to Putin’s March 18 speech; to the Duma and the Senate. Putin explained how in his eyes, Nikita Khruschev’s transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine was “unconstitutional” –…
Hearing Putin mention “national-traitors”, natsional-predateli, in his Crimea acceptance speech, I thought the word was a calque from some German term. Nationalverräter perhaps? I’ve checked with the text and translation at archive.org and, not surprisingly, Hitler uses Nationalverräter in Mein…
My feeling, based on the pro-Russian provocations in Donetsk and Lugansk, is that Russia is about to invade these regions of Ukraine, and possibly the whole of Southern and Southeastern Ukraine. Much as Edward Luttwak hypothesized in the TNR and…
Lucien Kim writes in Slate: Crimea’s actual conflict isn’t ethnic; it’s the split between the suspicious, fearful sovok, or Soviet, mentality and a new generation of free minds. It’s little surprise that tearing down statues of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the…
A picture of – apparently – Crimea ballots with pre-printed “Yes” for succession. Like an old card sharpie who has already made a fortune with his tricks but cannot help cheating any time he touches a deck.
Today’s rally against Russian military intervention in Ukraine was a march across central Moscow, from the Pushkin Square to the Sakharov Avenue (prospect), where the crowd was to stop and listen to the speakers. Here is the approximate route on…
Two picture galleries from Russian media: Two Armies of the Same Peninsula in the Russian Forbes. The unglamorous, amaterish- and/or provincial-looking guys with not so great physique, some still wearing Soviet-style regulation fur hats, are Ukrainian soldiers. The balaclava-wearing commandos…
There’s a rumor in Kyiv and Moscow that the full-scale Russian invasion of Crimea will begin within hours. The Russian Channel 1 has canceled a live broadcast of the Oscar ceremony citing the need to update viewers on Ukraine Apparently…
Consider the following: Sergei Aksyonov (Aksenov), a shady guy with a criminal background and the leader of a party with 4% of the vote in the latest regional election, was appointed “prime minister” of Crimea on Feb. 27. That day, a…
I understand the US has the military capacity to promptly pulverize the Russian Black Sea fleet but Russia is still a nuclear power. However there is a way to either change Putin’s mind or provoke a coup d’état in Moscow.…