COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Hey Putin - The Ukraine is Not Going to be Your Bitch!

On 04-12-2013
Putin’s Ukrainian disaster

He wrestles polar bears, rides shirtless on Siberian stallions and bends frying pans with his bare hands.
But the Kremlin's man-of-steel, Vladimir Putin, is finding, much to his chagrin, that the demonstrators behind Ukraine's biggest protests since the Orange Revolution aren’t frying pans.
They are proving far less pliable, at any rate, than Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovich.
With Ukraine’s economy teetering, and a presidential election just 18 months off, Yanukovich pulled back from the brink of a landmark partnership deal with Europe after Putin, by all accounts, made an offer he couldn’t refuse (or a threat he couldn’t ignore).
Ukraine’s protesters - who are now in control of the Trade Unions building and Kiev’s City Hall - have thrown an unexpected spanner into Putin’s efforts to cobble together a semblance of old empire while making Russia a paramount player on the world stage.
Ukraine’s protesters threaten to scupper that enterprise. And that is forcing Putin into a now-familiar role as the West’s geopolitical bogeyman.
An icy Kremlin host
I recall a chilling moment during a Kremlin press conference last March with French President François Hollande. Hollande had been doing his utmost to appear relaxed and easy-going as his icy Russian host sat glumly beside him.
At one point, a journalist rose to his feet and, addressing Putin directly, noted the "lack of warmth" between the two presidents. Putin, not skipping a beat, shot back: "Step a little closer, and you'll feel the warmth."
Were Ukraine's pro-Europe opposition to step a little closer, they would also feel Putin’s warmth. Tent-pitching, slogan-chanting, rabble-rousing protest of the kind we’ve seen in central Kiev in recent days is a perilous undertaking in Putin’s Russia.
Just ask the leaders of Russia's demoralised opposition. They are on the cusp of a second straight winter of discontent after Moscow cops in full riot gear charged demonstrators in a May 2012 protest that coincided with Putin’s inauguration to a third presidential term.
Not a revolution, but a 'pogrom'
Putin's disdain for pro-democratic street protest is hard-wired into his DNA. His first reaction to Ukraine’s pro-EU rallies was predictably scathing: he likened them to "pogroms", a term laden with dark historical associations for Jews and other minorities.
Then he went further, asserting that the rallies, far from spontaneous expressions of popular will, were the stagecraft of “foreign actors” bent on subverting Russian interests in what Moscow considers its back yard.
I can only imagine how thrilled Putin must have been when, last Saturday, Kiev's police used brutal force to disperse the pro-EU protesters with stun grenades, truncheons and tear gas. It was an emphatic crackdown that bore all the hallmarks of a Putinian crisis response.
Putin was less thrilled with what happened next: the protesters – several hundred thousand of them – charged back the next day, filling Kiev’s central squares with redoubled fervour, indignation and outrage.
Ukraine’s interior minister, Vitaliy Zakharchenko, sounded almost contrite, saying he needed to bear responsibility for the forceful clearing of the square.
Ukraine’s prime minister was left playing the role of bad cop – Putin’s role – declaring that things had “spiralled out of control” and branding the protests “an attempted coup”. Meanwhile, the target of the protesters’ ire, President Viktor Yanukovich, struck a conciliatory note.
“I am convinced that a bad peace is better than a good war,” he said. Could you for one second imagine those words coming out of Putin’s mouth?
The answer, of course, is, “No”.
Claiming the post-Soviet space
That’s because for Putin, “losing” Ukraine to Europe would be akin to sacrificing a large chunk of post-Soviet space (pop. 46 million) to which Putin feels culturally, historically and strategically entitled.
Putin may insist till he’s hoarse that his interest in Ukraine is purely economic, that Ukraine and Russia are commercially bound to one another by dint of geography and gas deals.
But what we’re really seeing is the latest incarnation, of an age-old vision of a Great Slavic space, with Mother Russia at its core, stretching back over a millennium to ancient Kievan Rus.
Putin has never come to grips with Ukraine’s declaration of independence 23 years ago, nor with the fact that Ukraine’s allegiance may be shifting.
A poll back in October, on the eve of the protests, showed that only a quarter of Ukrainians would vote for Yanukovich in the second round of a presidential election in 2015. Thirty-eight percent said they would opt instead for opposition leader and boxer, Vitali Klitschko. Even in the mostly Russian-speaking East, where industry is closely tied to Russia, sympathy for a more European orientation is likely to grow.
“I will recall once more Russia’s most recent history,” Putin told Russia’s Federal Assembly in April 2005. “Above all we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”

For Putin, that disaster is continuing, in the streets of Kiev.

THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER OF THE UKRAINE? VITALI KLITSCHKO

18 comments:

  1. That is a truly lovely memorial and statue work on the city square !!

    Some people knew what they were doing with that.

    It will last, I hope, long after these recent demos, as important as many think them to be.

    bob

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  2. If the demo folk should tear that down, what ever it may represent, I would be inclined to turn against them.

    No dog in another fight I know nothing about, but I am for those lovely columns.

    bob

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    1. Viva la revolution conterporaire and Skype and Bank of America and cell phones !!!!

      Viva Las Vegas !!

      Viva Sleep.

      Viva Sheep.

      Viva la philosophy perpetual !!

      But let those lovely columns remain.

      When Quirk and I and the crew were in Ukraine securing art works for posterity we sat under those columns and shared dried sheep meat and Russian vodka. Later we had Quirk's hair schurred and beard shaved by a cheap Ukrainian barber, who kept the hairs for resale in a carefully guarded American garbage bag

      .bob

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  3. Replies
    1. Pootie's Most Lethal Weapon

      ...along with Lyudmila Putina Poot Poot, of course.

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    2. Vladimir Vladimirovich, in short.

      ...or all too often, in shorts.

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  4. GREAT!

    ...in the time between me linking that pic above of Sharpova, and now, almighty Google has made it impossible to upload a photo unless I join Picassa or whateverotherthefuck the are trolling for souls with.

    At any rate, if you click on this Young Pootie Spying on Reagan and scroll down, you can see the Pic I could have linked to directly a few minutes ago.

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    Replies
    1. "THEY" are trolling for souls with.

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    2. I had a pair of pants just like Pooties!

      Beltless.

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  5. By 1997 Putin was also running the "Our Home Is Russia" political party.

    You go, Vlad!

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  6. From the link in the article:

    "Yesterday, Azarov stunned the EU by publishing on the government website a statement saying that Kyiv had decided to freeze its talks with the EU and revive economic relations with Russia. Thus, Ukraine abandoned plans to sign a landmark association agreement (AA) with the EU at the Eastern partnership summit in Vilnius on 28-29 November.

    Yatseniuk said that by adopting the decision, the government had broken all possible laws and rules governing such actions and so should resign. He said that since he came to power three years ago, Yanukovich had been trying to sell the country to Russia and buy himself the post of 'governor of Malorussia' in the wider Russian empire. ‘Malorussia’ (or ‘Little Russia’) was the name used by Ukraine at the time of the tzars.

    “Yanukovich in person got himself guarantees from Russia that he would be re-elected for a second term, a sort of gas price discount, and also 20 billion dollars for himself and his entourage, of which they will steal half, and the other half will be spent for the election campaign, so that Yanukovich would falsify the result and get the post in 2015,” the news website Pravda Ukraine quotes Yatsenyuk as saying."

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  7. Weird Al Yankovich is a lot more entertaining than all these vitches!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I am reverse-ordering today’s posts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To put The Farmer in front of Me?

      Shirley, you Jest!

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    2. Windows 98 doesn't DO anything over 200 posts, so I'm moving over here.

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  9. Six trillion miles, multiplied by however many light-years, and do the aliens go to the United Nations, or land on the Washington DC mall, or Peter's Square, or Tian An Men Square, or some shit like that? No, they just want to fuck with Betty and Barney Hill in their sedan.

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  10. The exodus has already begun. On November 15, the day after Wasserman Schultz predicted her party would win on Obamacare, the House held a vote on Michigan Republican Fred Upton’s bill, which would allow insurers to continue selling plans they currently offer through next year. President Obama threatened to veto the Upton bill if it came to his desk, since the proposal would have gutted a critical element of the law. Bill Owens and 38 other House Democrats voted for it anyway.

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    Replies
    1. The Obamacare ponzi scheme requires that all the young people sign up so they can have their money siphoned off and
      given to the elderly. Premiums on the young rise so the premiums on the elderly don't have to. Oh, and those numbers Rufus keeps citing, showing the flood of sign-ups, those are mostly elderly.

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