Kiev....

[exedir]

To most of us, Kiev, is the capital of the state of Ukraine, one of the exotic places of the east, capital of a land of the simple, but hard life of living in an endless plain surrounded by the seasonal bounty of grain, a breadbasket for its people and those around them dependent on their bounty.

The Ukraine is one of the birthing places of modern man, and his society, as modern man spread both east and west, adopting and adapting to the found environments, having reached the Steppes in the move out of Africa, by moving through the biblical lands, starting with Egypt and the Nile, up the Mediterranean Coast through Turkey and then reaching around the Black Sea to the rich lands of the Ukraine and a homeland to build and defend.

It would also be noted in Ukraine history as the beginning of the Rus, a Viking group, from which the Muscovy lords would rise and take land conquered by the Asian Mongols and replace, in time, the Khan's hegemony with their own land mass empire, an empire greater than any created by the classical societies of the West.

Kiev is also the most important religious starting point for what became Christian Russia, Orthodox Christian Russia, as Kiev became the refuge and promoter of the Orthodox faith inherited from the failed eastern Roman empire of Julian and Constantinople, and Orthodoxy became both the symbol and the faith of Tsarists Mother Russia.

Ukraine was also the site of some of the worst abuse and violence in the Soviet sponsored killing of the Kulaks in the process of a plan to make farming a state business of the collectives. Land held by the people, but manipulated by the state to fulfill central decrees of production regardless of nature and
capacity of the land and people. The Soviet state was ruthless and exploitative in turning the Ukraine into the first, and most important province of the Soviet and Russian state, making the Ukraine an integral part of the Russian economy and nexus of a security system for the Soviet Black Sea Navy and as a warehouse of Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems posed against Western Europe and the Untied States as a part of the Cold War.

Ukraine has a long, bloody history of being in the path of the hordes of the east and west, and a long history of association and suppression by the Russian hegemony. But that is not the only story, the Ukraine is populated by a number of peoples that have come to the Ukraine attracted by its resources, and have come by that opportunity, not from other parts of Russia, but from other places, such as Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and Germany. Once there was a large, active and successful population of ethic Germans in the Ukraine, farming and enterprising in a land that was given them to do their best on behalf of the Russian Tsarists state, and, to offset the other ethics that might not be so interested in the Tsarists control of the province. This, however, became a fatal flaw Nazi German used as a fifth column in 1940 invasion of the Soviet Union and the Nazi's were able to use the residing population as a part of the Nazi military, police and militia to control, suppress and commit atrocities on other Ukrainians and Russians.

This same long history however, does not cover up the aspirations of a subjected people that have their own language, their own culture and their own sense of ethnicity suborn by centuries. Being Ukrainian still exists as force of what many would strive to be, independent and sovereign in their own land. Such was the possibility when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union cease to exist, and independent and sovereign Ukraine came into being, and as such has no experience in being its own state and economy outside of Moscow's control.

Now the story takes a turn, that has shown itself time and time again as the difference between the idea of government and the will of the people to be represented and heard as to their needs and wants. And such popular aspirations are resisted, sometimes brutally with violence and the worse human rights suppression. What happened in Maidan Square(Freedom Square) is not dissimilar to what happened in Tahrir Square in Egypt and Tienanmen Square in Beijing, China, or at the Bastille in revolutionary Paris, mass of population demand changes and a changed future from the government. And we know that change is difficult and resisted, and those that replace the old regime can have power that can be fragile, but in end be overthrown,leaving a vacuum that supersedes many times what is wanted and leaves much unchanged and aspirations unmet, if not repressed by following events.

We are now seeing events that change hour by hour and yet there is a clear historical pattern where organized interest can suppress, intimidate and limit any popular change, usually with the military forces of those best organized. It happened in Tienanmen Square, it happened in St. Petersburg in the October Revolution where the Bolsheviks were able to subvert the prior socialist revolution and control the Russian state through a small, organized cabal of communists.

What we do know at this hour is that the Russian state has taken action, in their own self-interest, to control sovereign Ukraine territory. As to what happens next, it is unknown but if not dealt with care and consideration, events could spin out-of-control to an end that can hardly be anticipated much less calculated. Clearly, President Putin will impose his understanding of Russian hegemony wherever and whenever he can, and sees it his personal imperative and prerogative to impose the Russian will as he sees it, and can do so as an autocrat and dictator, in line with his predecessors; Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, Lenin and Stalin.

What we don't know is what the rest of the world is going to do about any of this. And yes, we can expect serious, sharply worded diplomatic correspondence to be sent to President Putin from governments around the world, including the United States. But as to any meaningful action to deal with Russian imposition in the affairs of a sovereign Ukraine, there is little anyone can do, except the Ukrainians themselves.

Worse, what is happening in Ukraine has serious ramifications to other, even more serious situations that require direct, focused Russian cooperation and leadership. Starting with Syria, then the nuclear agreement with Iran and the Islamic radicals in the southern Russian Caucasus provinces.

As to American leadership in this time, we are in a weak position to deal with any and all of these ongoing events, which include events in Venezuela and the South China Sea, where our national interests are different and more direct as to what happens.

We are coming up to August, 2014, and to the hundredth anniversary of the War to end all Wars, that changed our world forever, and changed America forever, World War I. It was a terrorist attack that started it all in Serbia, and from the weakness of international will and the height of ambitions of certain states, millions die for the cause of whatever the leaders held to be in their best self-interest. And that war ended with a guarantee of yet another war to be fought as both revenge and restatement of what had start the WW I in the first place, the continued self-interests and the ambition to rule everyone else.

[Ioruach]

In solidarity with the Ukraine people I have decided to head to the supermarket and buy a couple boxes of frozen Chicken Kiev for dinner.

[exedir]

It is a done deal, Crimea, is Russian.  Putin won.  And ...? who lost?

Well, the EU did, certainly, bargaining power with Russia over natural gas and oil just got a whole lot more difficult as to how much and at what price Europe is going to have to pay Putin to keep the lights on in Berlin.  He also won the undying love of the Russian people, if not the respect of his opponents to pull off the corrupt Olympics and blatant aggression and occupation of the Crimea peninsula within 30 days.

The next group of winners in all of this, Damascus and Tehran.  With The Soviets....er....the Russians in their corner nothing much will happen to stop the centrifuges or the the barrel bombs from spinning their way to their targets, one that Putin wants, hegemony of the Greater Russia state and an antique, the Cold War, that seems to have warmed up, a lot.

The losers, plenty of those, starting with the EU, Germany and the last super power, the US.  And not saying that we could have done anything about this...well, of course we could but, BUT, that would have taken foresight, strategy and nerves to carry out, something that lately is not the stuff of what the free world is made of, for now.