Oh hello there everybody.
It's been a long time hasn't it? How long ? Over a year you say? Good lord i'm sorry about that. To the 20 or so people who used to frequently read my stuff... I apologise profusely. I've had a lot going on over the last 13 or so months but oddly enough not much of it is worth writing about. I got my degree though! Yay! But I can't find a job. Boo. So here I am, whiling away the minutes and hours once more, tapping away at a keyboard trying to make sense of this ridiculous planet we call Earth. Or, to be more precise, the people in it and their behaviour.
So we begin.
Far to the east, a great land known as Russia is... well lets face it, behaving extremely unpleasantly towards one of its largest neighbours, why? Ah ha well therein lies the meat of this post. Settle in dear reader and allow me to illuminate you. It started all those months ago, with the Ukranian riots and presidential crisis. Old Viktor Yanukovych, the now former president of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republi... I mean Ukraine, was pretty pro Russia see? By pro Russia I of course mean pro Putin. But those are essentially one and the same these days. So while he was in the big chair, everything was fine and dandy as far as the Kremlin was concerned. No meddlesome EU or NATO presences in Ukraine threatening Russia's ever shrinking sphere of influence. How unfortunate then, that the new bunch of guys, ostensibly led by Oleksandr Turchynov and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, (don't you just love Eastern European names?) Aren't. At all. In fact those lads and their mates are pretty keen on the whole EU/NATO thing. I guess crumbling socialist infrastructure projects and faded murals just don't have the charm they once did. Of course this sets alarm bells ringing in Red Square. Crimea, a rather large, semi-autonomous region of Ukraine, is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. A small but reasonably powerful naval contingient - if a little decrepit by western standards - and also Russia's only real means of potentially projecting power into the Mediterranian Sea. (Albiet through the Straits of Bosphorous which is potentially awkward but the point still stands.) Anyway Russia REALLY didn't want to lose that, a reasonable fear by all accounts, but instead of entering into a dialogue about it and discussing the issue like big grown up countries are supposed to. They went old school and annexed it. With Spetznaz. Gotta give them style points for that I suppose, it was very slick but not very well disguised. 'Pro Russian militia' don't arrive in Ural transport trucks and Hind Helicopters wearing modern body armour and masks.. Unless they're extraordinairily well funded.
Still, that was that, Crimea is now Russian again. Of course according to many Russians and ethnic Russians within the Crimea/Eastern Ukraine, it always should have been and this is all fine. After all, they've had a refferendum and everything now haven't they? Well sure they did. But let me ask you this? If you were anti-Russian and you were going to vote 'no', but a highly trained soldier from a foreign power, the very power you're going to vote against as it happens - was standing on the corner of your street. Would you? I doubt it. Still, very little can be done at this point. Flags have been raised, the soldiers are very well dug in and on the surface things appear to have calmed. At least there. The ongoing situation in Eastern Ukraine is a little more fluid. The interim Ukrainian government has decided enough is enough and started to push back against various groups that siezed several towns in Eastern mainland Ukraine. There have been clashes and casualties have resulted from them on both sides, but the level of conflict remains very low. The real problem here is there is suggestion that some of the pro-Russian agitators are in fact not ethnic Russians from Ukraine, but actual Russians.
So why is Russia continuing to push? Well, frankly, it's because they can. Realistically there is absolutely nothing anyone, not least the Western powers, can really do about this. Sure we can slap the Russian elite with a sanction or two, but that isn't going to change the picture militarily. This is actually a pretty common pattern of behaviour for Russia, particularly in the Putin era. Whenever there is unrest within their former borders they sieze upon the opportunity to not only protect, but expand their interests. The Georgia/South Ossetia/Azbhakia conflict being the most recent other example.
Why can't we do anything? That's even simpler - the very systems and structures in put in place half a century ago to stop Russia and the West lighting the world on fire... are stopping them from lighting the world on fire. Ironically this means that up to a point, Russia can stomp around in its former back yard with near impunity. Everybody is afraid of escalation and rightly so. Ukranian's military power isn't insignificant, but it is less than that of its larger neighbour. Additionally, with it's civillian government still in a transitional phase, the military of Ukraine isn't exactly at its most cohesive. A lot of people don't realise just how much Armies and such rely on a stable civilian government. Supplies are arranged through procurement agreements negotiated by... you guessed it! Now guess who Ukraine's biggest arms supplier has been for decades. Go on, I'll wait... There you go! As interesting an intellecutal exercise it is to imagine two former Eastern bloc countries go toe to toe, the result is rather predictable. However I doubt the issue will be pushed that far. A full scale clash would draw much more unwanted attention. Remember that fear of escalation I meantioned? That fear only goes so far. How things will turn out eventually is impossible to truly predict. Recent news seems to indicate that Russia might be turning down the dial now, after flirting with the abyss too many times in one quarter for everybody's tastes, but a match has been lit. Whether or not it ends with singed fingers or a huge blaze remains to be seen.
Thanks for reading (and your paitience)
Wheelchairman2
