Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

I en folkomröstning för 15 år sedan - Sovjetunionen hade upplösts - tog Krims medborgare ställning till om man ville bli en egen suverän republik. Det vill säga frigöra sig från Ukraina. Över 90 procent ansåg att det vore en bra idé. Det ansåg förstås inte statsmakten i Kiev. Förmodligen inte de ryska ledarna heller - det mer fredliga inflytandet över Ukraina skulle minska på det sättet. Så medborgarna som röstat fick vackert stanna kvar. Vilket accepterades mot att man fick behålla en bred och djup autonomi.

Alexander Solzjenitsyn är förresten en av dem som 1998 vädjade om att "krimbornas rättmätiga krav att tillhöra Ryssland" borde tillgodoses.

Förmodligen är viljan att bli fria från Ukraina lika stor idag så då - inte minst nu när provocerande budskap når dem från Kiev om att ryskan bör hållas kort. En stor majoritet på Krim talar nämligen ryska, en minoritet talar krimtatariska. En mycket liten minoritet talar ukrainska.

According to Chatham House’s Lutsevych, “it is fair” to describe the Ukrainian crisis as a result of the politics of pillaging. “Yanukovych and the rich would use public office to build monopolies and benefit from them,” she said. “Corruption in the Ukraine skyrocketed and corporate raiding increased.”
According to Olena Zakharova, director of the foreign policy department at the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev, “The Ukrainian economy has been pillaged by the oligarchs during all the years after independence, and this process reached its highest point during Yanukovych’s presidency.”

She added that “all the money flows were oriented to the ‘Family’ oligarchs, first of all Yanukovych’s son Oleksandr, young Family representative Serhiy Kurchenko, Yanukovych’s right-hand man Andriy Kliuyev, and others. The other oligarchs had to share their businesses and assets with the Family in order to survive and have the possibility to profit from the state budget, which has put the country on the edge of bankruptcy.”

The biggest threat comes from within: from old habits and old-boy networks, from sophisticated corruption schemes and shadow funds accumulated by oligarchs, from lack of much needed skills on part of the revolutionaries and lack of political will on part of the politicians.

The rapid fall of ancien regimes are often deceptive. In most cases they are as resilient. The two Ukrainian revolutions - of 1991 and 2004 - rather pitifully illustrate the rule.

The new revolution, however, was not that peaceful. It cost the lives of so many bright and courageous people that Ukrainian politicians have simply no moral right to spoil it by pursuing their selfish, partisan, and parochial goals.