Ukraine

Ukraine declared independence from the USSR in 1991, but Moscow has made sure it’s remained heavily involved in Kiev’s affairs ever since. That has been relatively simple. Soon before independence, Anne Applebaum described how Russia’s ruthless annexation of its neighbour had left Ukraine without much identity of its own. ‘It took 350 years of Czarist domination, several decades of Stalinist purges, two collectivisation-induced mass famines, two world wars, and the refusal to teach Ukrainian children how to speak Ukrainian, along with the systematic elimination of anyone who might be thought a leader, an intellectual, a capitalist, or even a wealthy peasant. But they did it. The Russians have managed to

Perhaps it’s premature to say this now that the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, has sounded off about Russian citizens in Ukraine being in danger, but it strikes me that Russia has behaved in the current crisis with a certain commendable restraint. Judging from most pundits in most British papers, there is no redeeming element to the Putin regime – soup to nuts, gay rights to corruption – and if it hasn’t actually sent the tanks in, well, it probably wants to. Yet, reading the statement from its foreign ministry that ‘a forced change of power is underway’, it’s hard to say that it’s not strictly correct. Mr Medvedev wasn’t actually

After two decades in the economic basket, Russia is decisively back as an ideological force in the world — this time as a champion of conservative values. In his annual state of the nation speech to Russia’s parliament in December, Vladimir Putin assured conservatives around the world that Russia was ready and willing to stand up for ‘family values’ against a tide of liberal, western, pro-gay propaganda ‘that asks us to accept without question the equality of good and evil’. Russia, he promised, will ‘defend traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years’. Crucially, Putin made it clear

To discuss the Ukrainian crisis in terms of a choice between Europe and Russia is misleading for several reasons. First, the European issue has been ruthlessly exploited by the Ukrainian opposition and its Western backers as an excuse for overthrowing the government illegally and by force. Opposition leaders have never distanced themselves from the most radical elements on the streets of Kiev, even though these include neo-Nazis. On the contrary, they have done everything to use their violence as a bargaining chip in their battle with the government. Let us never forget that the majority of the 25 deaths on the night of 18 – 19 February were murders committed

Much as was the case with Syria, and to a lesser degree Egypt, I wonder if we are getting a true picture of the mood within Ukraine on our excitable daily news programmes. Reporters speak of a ‘revolution’, and certainly there is fury in the capital, Kiev and some other cities in the west of the country, such as Lviv. But what’s happening in the east of Ukraine, and the south? The country’s four largest cities, after Kiev, have been very quiet. A handful of protestors – about 50 – in Donetsk, and vague sounding ‘reports of unrest’ and ‘crowds of hundreds’ in Odessa or Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile,  one hundred thousand people marched