No fraud, no fun
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.
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category Ukraine
Pictures from the anti-invasion rally
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…
Crimea-related links, with pictures
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…
Red Dawn?
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…
Postmodernism, of a kind, in Crimea
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…
Ukraine, then and now
Nine years ago, I thought it was great that Ukraine still had public politics while Russia had almost none but I had little enthusiasm for any of the particular players in the Ukrainian scene. Apart from the brothers Klichko, I…
Notes at an exhibition
The NYT writes in an art review (registration required) devoted to an exhibition of “Ukrainian modernists”: Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Alexander Archipenko and Alexandra Exter were actually born, or identified themselves as, Ukrainian. According to a new exhibition…
The reasoning behind a great famine
That is, Golodomor or Holdomor in (the) Ukraine (let’s add Kazakhstan, the West and South Siberia, the South Urals, the Upper and Lower Volga, the North Caucasus). I’m trying to understand the logic that may have led Moscow to act…
Well done
Neeka’s Backlog has been voted Best CIS Weblog at AFOE… … and is eligible for a pair of Satin Pajamas. Congratulations, and thanks to the voters who made the right choice.
Sick transit
I have come across a story explaining in some detail how Russia and Ukraine depend on each other in gas transit and distribution. Jerome Guillet, an energy banker based in Paris, has posted extensively at EuroTribune but I would single…
“Ukraine Between East and West”
I may not ever get to read this book by Prof. Sevcenko but the brief foreword by Frank E. Sysyn is a better guide to understanding Ukrainian identity than most that I have seen since the outbreak of the Kyiv…
Comment on comment: Cossacks, Peter, Ukraine, etc.
Sometimes I don’t follow up on readers’ comments at once but wait until I am ready to give a reasoned reply. Today, let me get back to this comment. I think an interesting difference between Ukraine and Russia is that…