No one actually mentioned Bush, or any of those things, Wolfgang (McGrath)

McGrath, I had thought about starting a thread about Ukraine and when I saw this title I hoped for a good discussion and was very disappointed about how it started. 'New world order' was explicitely mentioned (contrary to your claim in that quote above) and without mentioning the name Bush the elections in the USA were alluded to more than once (or I must be very much mistaken in reading between the lines). That my mentioning of oil would make any further mentioning of it a bit less likely was not surprising.

I've often been disappointed that all the discussions of local or world problems comes back so quickly to the same sort of discussion. It looks to me that wherever a discussion starts off it always ends along the same lines. And this time it even looked like it already started along the same lines. That's why I introduced the third ingredient for the same cake.


It was pretty good watching last night in TV what happens in Ukraine. It looks like a very peacful and forceful movement even joined by parts of the security forces. One can only hope the solution will be peaceful. To hand the decision to the courts could be good or not. I don't know what to think of it. It could mean two things:
(1) A way out of the dilemma and a way to new elections or
(2) Buying time until the strikes die down, then hand over the election to the Kremlin's favourite and hope that the opposition cannot again organise a further strong support as it can now.

Putin fears for the status of Russia. With the problems in the South (Chechens are only one people on the way out) and more of the new countries around Russia moving away from Moscow towards other centres (like the EU), Russia is on the way down to being the home of ethnic Russians. All the countries conquered during the Tsars times make up much more than half of the USSR area. If one looks at a historical map showing how large Russia was in, say, 1600, then one knows what Putin fears.

Wolfgang

(Little Hawk, you can PM me or come back to the other thread, but I won't respond in this thread.)