McG: "much of what we are hearing is Russian propaganda." But rather more probably comes from the other direction. A lot more complicated and less clearcut than the media seems to be telling us.

I'll agree with the fact that there's propaganda from both directions....but not with your estimation of balance. The propaganda from the pro-Russian side has been much more evident than that from the people who were originally demonstrating, who were actually pretty disorganised when it came to getting their message across.

McG: Yakumovych and Putin both have some dictatorial qualities, but both were elected, as is of course quite common with dictators. Undoubtedly a lot of people in Kiev and the western part of Ukraine were hostile to him, and had voted against him, but there is no particular reason to assume that a majority of Ukrainians felt the same way.

Again, I think this is quite simplistic. Yanukovych (you should at least get his name right) was indeed elected, probably quite fairly at the time...and not along a strict east/west split, either. A (slight but nevertheless real) majority of Ukrainians, both Russian Ukrainian speaking were fed up of the way the "orange revolution" government were governing and decided on a change. Part of the change they voted for was that Yanukovych promised to improve ties with the EU, and end corruption. However, the corruption just shifted to his own mates and he caved into Russian pressure to repudiate the agreement with the EU.

McG: The complicating thing in Ukraine is that it's really two countries, one in the west that has quite a lot in common with Poland, and where popular opinion was against Yakumovych, and preferred the idea of links with the EU, in the East of the country it is far more Russian in language and other ways, most especially in Crimea. And the Eastern part is actually larger, with a bigger population.

The language division is a bit of a red-herring in itself....almost all Ukrainians speak Russian, both east and west. My Russian teacher's Ukrainian,from the west, and Russian's her native language....she doesn't speak Ukrainian at all. Culturally the west has more in common with Poland and the east with Russia, but it's not clear-cut. Popular opinion was pretty divided across the country for and against Yanukovych. It was his corruption, then his repudiation of the EU agreement that kicked off demonstrations, fairly small-scale at first. They intensified when he started bringing in repressive laws and also imported hundreds of Russian "advisors".

The eventual scale of the demonstrations grew to the size they did on the back on Yanukovych's actions. The portrayal of the demonstrators as right-wingers is just not a good picture. There were right-wingers involved, true, but the movement was actually broad-based across the political and linguistic spectrum. A very close relative was in Kiev for quite a while just before the main violence kicked off and was surprised on talking to people at just how broad-based their politics were, from neo-fascists through to lesbian socialists! The relative's expectation on going there had been to find the demonstrators mostly conservative/ right-wing.

McG: So when the Russians move troops into the Crimea, that isn't seen by the people there as an invasion, but a liberating force, in support of the legitimate government of Ukraine agains a coup which has overthrown it. And they appear to hope to be able to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. And that is probably more or less what the people in the rest of Ukraine think as well.

I think you should say "some" of the people....probably largely drawn from the descendants of the ethnic Russians moved in by Stalin in 1944 when he deported the Crimean Tatars (original inhabitants) and killed most of them. Those who managed to return from the Gulags comprise about 12% of the region's population now, and they are terrified of a Russian takeover. I think that the 30% or so of "original" Ukrainians in the area, both Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking, may also feel ambivalent. There are strong memories throughout Ukraine of the fact that it was the Ukrainian "kulaks" who suffered most during Stalin's starvation policy of the 1930s, with around 7 million Ukrainians being deliberately starved to death by Stalin.

In fact, Yanukovych was properly, and legally, impeached by the Ukrainian Parliament, which is the ACTUAL legitimate government of Ukrain and has, under law, the right to impeach the President. Yanukovych's bleating that he's *still* the legitimate President is just not true...no more than would Nixon have been able to claim he was still President of the USA if he'd been impeached rather than resigning.

The whole sitution there is much more complex than east/west! I could say more but I have to be a BIT circumspect as I'm due back in Russia for a 6 week stint in 3 weeks or so, assuming that by then there hasn't been wholesale visa cancellation!