Ukrainian Musings

I don't know what the answer is. The folks in the western part of the country were correct in charging that the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was corrupt to the core. The folks in the eastern part of the country are correct when they charge that Yanukovych was the duly elected president and that he was ousted by a coup. The westerners want closer ties with the EU, the easterners want those ties to be with Russia. Both sides include fascist elements.

There may have been a workable solution to all of that. Maybe a form of regional entities with a federal government over them. A lot of countries have such forms of government. They sort of work and they allow regional differences to be taken into account.

Maybe that could have worked in the Ukraine.

But the window for that is closing. Once bullets fly and people die, attitudes harden. The combatants will want to extract a blood price and, like most civil wars, this one will spin out of control and go on until one side wins, both sides are exhausted, or a superior power intervenes and puts down the fighting.

I'd bet on #3.

UPDATED to add: But even if the Russians do intervene to put down the Ukrainian civil war, I would not assume that they'd automatically absorb the eastern regions of Ukraine. For if they do that and leave a truncated state to the immediate west, it's probably a dead-nuts certainty that what remains of Ukraine would clamor for admission to the EU and into NATO. The Russians have rued the admission of the Baltics into NATO, they'd be eight kinds of pissed off if even a portion of the Ukraine joined NATO.

On the other hand, given that, if the Russians do move into Ukraine, they'll probably occupy all of it, for the reason stated in the previous paragraph.