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Editor:
This is longer than most things that I post. However, the topic needs a more detailed explanation. Most Westerners have never heard our Russian POV in English. I’ve done my best to present it here.
BMD
******
The flaw in most American accounts of the Ukraine is that they assume a single “Ukrainian” nationality. That isn’t so. Look at the above map… roughly, it shows only the MAJOR divides in the country as shown by the latest actual election results (the elections run by the junta are jokes… they don’t show anything). Now, look at the map below:
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This shows the situation at the time of the Civil War superimposed on a contemporary political map. What one sees is that Novorossiya is a distinct socio-ethnographical entity… one that sees itself in profoundly non-Ukrainian ways. Firstly, “Ukrainian” isn’t a native concept… it’s a foreign import; it’s profoundly German and Polish… its anti-Orthodox and papist to the bone. In fact, that makes so-called “Ukrainian Orthodoxy” oxymoronic… how can such an inherently papist ideology be Orthodox at all?
“Ukrainian” per se only exists in the Lvovshchina (or amongst those with roots in that backwoods hillbilly backwater), in the formerly Polish lands ruled by the Habsburgs after the Polish partitions. It started out with a factual basis… there’s a difference between the Russian lands that remained free and those lands that went under the Polish papist boot. Prior to 1991, Uniatism didn’t exist outside of the formerly Habsburg lands… the Empire destroyed it in the lands that it took from Poland… and rightfully so.
Uniatism is at the heart of what it means to be “Ukrainian”, just as Orthodoxy is at the heart of what it means to be Russian. No Orthodox society can tolerate Uniatism, for Uniatism is a lie. Uniates are NOT “Orthodox in Union with Rome”… that’s simply gobbledygook. They venerate Francis of Assisi and REFUSE to venerate Orthodox saints… full stop. They HAVE to accept all the innovations of the papist confession, including papal supremacy… and, dontcha know, they can practise their “rite” because the Pope of Rome graciously “allows” them to do so (they’re always quoting a papist “encyclical” Lumen Gentium… as though it binds us, too). Indeed, they are the most violent and vociferous part of the ultramontane set… as one can see by the support given by such papists as George Weigel to the Galician Uniates in their attempts to subvert Russian culture in the southwest (the supposed “Ukraine”).
Ever since 1596, the papists have tried to detach the people of the southwest from Holy Rus and place it under Western cultural, political, and religious domination. WHY? Firstly, Orthodoxy has been the foremost foe of the papists from Day One. The Proddies aren’t really foes of Rome… they’re simply Rome’s bastard children, who share all of Rome’s innovations and fancies. Indeed, the so-called “Oriental” Orthodoxy are one with us in this… we’re ancient Churches not beholden to Rome… not founded by it… not an integral part of it… not culturally or intellectually subject to it. There are profound differences between Christians within Rome’s orbit and those of us who were NEVER part of it. Rome hates this… it sees itself as the guarantor of Christian Unity… look at the title Vicarius Christi… literally, from the Latin, it means, “Substitute for Christ”. No Orthodox can accept such a formulation ever… The Lord Christ Himself is the Centre of Unity… not a human being resident in Rome!
Note well that the papists refuse to abandon papal supremacy, papal infallibility, and papal immediate jurisdiction. What does this have to do with the notional “Ukraine?” Without the Unia, there’s nothing distinctive about “Ukrainian”. Everything in the southwest is profoundly Russian, there’s nothing distinct in it at all. There are some regionalisms, to be sure, but nothing as stark as the difference between Poles and Russians. In fact, most of the differences are Polonisms that crept in under Polish rule, not native growths at all. One can see this in the Lvovshchina. One can see that its dialect, the supposed “Ukrainian language”, is either a dialect of Russian corrupted by heavy Polish influences (for the Habsburgs used the Poles as “middlemen” even after the Partitions) or Polish moderated with Russian influxes. It’s nothing but a pidgin, not a true language at all. Also, note that the papists/Habsburgs introduced variant Cyrillic usages (and transliteration of it into Latin letters) different from that in Russia in a mostly successful attempt to tear Far Western Russians from their roots and graft them to the West.
Now, if one posits that the Unia is at the heart of “Ukrainian”, and that having been under Polish rule is crucial to being “Ukrainian”… that leaves large swathes of the notional “Ukraine” outside of that definition. Podkarpatskaya Rus is outside of that definition… it was never part of the Polish commonwealth and its Unia was not that of Brest in 1596, but rather that of Mukačevo in 1646. Besides this, it was part of the Hungarian Kingdom under the Habsburgs, and not Austria. In short, it lived a distinct life from that of the Lvovshchina, a distinct life that continues. In fact, the Galicians hate the Rusins MORE than they hate the Russians! They’re continually trying to denigrate them and deny them their nationality… they’ve even influenced the Pope of Rome not to allow a Rusin Uniate Church, as they claim that they’re “really Ukrainians!” Needless to say, most Rusins HATE Galicians! They hate Galicians more than they hate Magyars… which is saying a lot (although many Rusins dislike Magyars intensely, it’s NOT at the level of gut hatred that they have for “Ukrainians”). There is much unrest in Podkarpatskaya now, and the junta has most prominent Rusin leaders in prison or under observation (“house arrest”… such as Fr Dmitri Sidor).
Novorossiya is not Ukrainian. It was never under Polish rule, so, it fails in one of the defining conditions of the term. During the Civil War, it wasn’t part of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, failing another condition. It became part of the “Ukraine” in the 1920s under the Soviets. To consider it part of the Ukraine, one has to accept this Soviet legacy… isn’t that delicious? The Galician nationalists, so vehemently anti-communist, have to accept this legacy of the Sov times! Novorossiya was one of the leading Red areas in the Civil War… one friend of mine at the Centre believes that the Sovs placed it in the “Ukraine” to ensure that the region stayed in the USSR and that it remained “Russian” in culture. That seems, to me, to make sense. Therefore, the present ferment for independence from the Galician Uniate ideology of “Consciousness” is no surprise to those of us who actually know history.
In the Centre, in Malorossiya, it isn’t truly Ukrainian either. The main language here is Surzhik… a dialect of Russian with some “Ukrainian” pronunciation peculiarities and some Ukrainian vocabulary, but closer to Russian than Ukrainian is. It sounds like an extreme Southern accent to Russian ears. The Galicians hate Surzhik and refuse to acknowledge its existence. This area was under Polish rule, so, particular customs have diverged a bit from the Russian norm (a “Holy Supper” on Christmas Eve, a profoundly Polish bit, for one). However, since the area returned to the Church after the Partitions, the “Ukrainian” fable penetrated much less than it did in the Lvovshchina. Recently, support for the war was much less here than in Galicia, except in Kiev. A Kiev informant told me that was due to Galician Uniate Euromaidantsy terrorists roaming the streets. No one is quite sure when they’ll be about, and they do torture and kill those whom they label as “traitors”. Ergo, normal people mouth the party-line to be safe.
Besides this, there are some defining fables of Galician Uniate “Consciousness”. The Golodomor as its presented by Uniate extremist nationalists is a derisory fable… there was a famine connected with Collectivisation, which affected the entire USSR, but there was no genocidal Golodomor… the UN and PACE agree with our Russian viewpoint on this. The Reds weren’t Nazis… they didn’t divide people on racial/national lines; they divided people on class/ideological lines. Even morons know this!
Collectivisation was an ideological conflict against a particular social class, smallholding peasants. It was NOT an attack on people of “Ukrainian” nationality (especially, as the “Ukrainian” nationality doesn’t really exist (at least, not in its Galician Uniate definition)). It so happened that many of the smallholders were in the so-called “Ukraine”… this was due to many factors, one of which was its more salubrious climate and the extreme fertility of its soil (“black earth”)… the present collapse of “Ukrainian” agriculture is inexplicable, the natural riches of the Ukrainian soil are still there… but the present state does suffer from Galician Uniate bungling, incompetence, and boastfulness. In many cases, smallholders destroyed crops and livestock, they didn’t want to turn them over to the collective, so, often, the famine, sadly, was self-imposed. I’m not defending it, mind you… I’m merely pointing up that a contributing factor was the peasants’ own actions.
This was a tragedy and a black mark on the USSR… but it wasn’t genocide, and anyone who labels it as such is a cretin with an agenda. Note well that the Uniates make much of this (and use their bought-and-paid-for “scholars” in Western academe), but they weren’t involved in it! They were in the Polish state and didn’t suffer at all! NOT A BIT! They’re liars through-and-through on this. No one with Galician roots suffered in this, so if you hear bloviations from “Ukrainian Catholics” or “Ukrainian Orthodox”, know that they’re talking through their hat… their people suffered not at all!
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Note the silence of Galician Uniates on the fact that many Galicians collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. It’s an open secret that SS veterans headed many “Ukrainian Catholic” and “Ukrainian Orthodox” organisations in the diaspora during the Cold War. No Galician can deny that the 14 SS Division existed, staffed with Galician Uniate VOLUNTEERS (just as the Balts can’t deny that Estonians and Latvians enthusiastically joined the SS, too). No Galician can deny the massacre of Khatyn, carried out by Galician collaborators under Nazi orders. No Galician can deny the countless murders of Jews, Roma, Russians, and Poles carried out by the UPA. In fact, the Galician Uniates want to replace celebrating the heroism of the Red Army with glorifying rightwing murderers, racists, and Nazi collaborators. I can’t see why any Jew supports the junta… it glorifies those who murdered Jews and helped in the Holocaust (this shows Victoria Nuland to be a soulless pig). The Galician Uniates don’t want to tell you that many of their forebears not only supported the Nazis, they bore arms defending Greater Germany, helped the Nazis to commit war crimes, and willingly murdered thousands in the Holocaust.
The main blame for this state of affairs lies on the American filth who fomented this affair… the 27 Republican senators who penned the anti-Russian bill aren’t only ignorant, they’re active agents of aggression; therefore, all decent people must oppose the GOP in its support of bellicose neocon meddling throughout the world (what would “Mr Republican”, Robert Taft, have thought of the present GOP? He’d call ‘em all RINOs… especially, the neocons and teabaggers!). I don’t believe that the Galician Uniate diaspora ginned this up (although they do support it vociferously). It has all the hallmarks of Teabag Stupidity stamped all over it, with overtones of Liberal Bleeding Heart Handwringing as well (both the Bleeding Hearts and the Baggers are neoliberals. They’re two sides of the same debased counterfeit coin!)
Secondly, the blame lies on the local thugs who’re implementing the American plan. Interestingly, Yuliya Vladimirovna isn’t an active player in this… a Kiev informant tells me that she won’t play nice with the Americans… if so, good on her! The main players in the junta are all pro-American toads… Yatsenyuk has a sister in the USA (she’s a Scientologist and Yatsenyuk HAS been seen in their circles), Turdchinov coördinated things for the CIA in extraordinary rendition (that is, he was a facilitator of torture), and the good word has it that Langley recruited Avakov when he was in the nick in Italy for real estate fraud. Poroshenko isn’t a part of this triumvirate… he’s a figurehead because none of the pro-American puppets has the domestic cred to be “President”. Shall a Nazi or oligarch junta replace this triumvirate in turn? It may… as the pro-Americans have handed over too much control to their patrons (Joe Biden and John McCain are equally guilty… Ted Cruz and Chilly Hilly are equally ignorant).
V V Putin need do nothing… and he hasn’t! The only thing that he’s done is to turn over former Ukrainian equipment to the patriots, and most of the Ukrainian long-service troops who rallied to Russia in the Crimea now serve in the VSN and are its professional hard-core. Today, there are a larger number of former Ukrainian Army officers and long-service troops serving in the VSN than in the junta forces. The junta forces have degenerated into a mixed bag of oligarch militias, rightwing terrorist bands, pressed Territorial forces, and some few regular units. That is, the VSN is more of a professional military force than the junta bands are! It has more professionally educated officers… and the August offensive showed that. A writer spoke of Kolomoisky’s “battle-hardened militia”… that writer (an American academic) is an idiot. There are no military pros in Kolomoisky’s units, nor have they distinguished themselves in battle. They can steal and bully people… but fight a real stand-up fight against a proper military opponent? Fuggedaboutit! The Ukraine is falling without any help from V V Putin.
Postwar, my guess is that there’d be two successor states, Novorossiya and Malorossiya… the latter a non-aligned neutral buffer, and the former a pro-Russian ally in the Eurasian Union. Putin would NOT merge them in the Russian Federation… you see, if he refrains from doing so, that’d split the EU and NATO, and I believe that he’ll succeed in it. The patriots would advance to the line of the Zbruch (the Russian boundary in 1914) and stop. Podkarpatskaya would secede from the Lvovshchina… some pieces would go to Hungary, and most would probably federate with Slovakia. My guess is that Poland would grab the Lvovshchina (it’d be VVP’s reward for Polish acquiescence in letting Russia control most of the former Ukraine). Probably, Tyagnibok would be their local satrap… he’d shoot Lyashko (just as he shot Sashko Bily… there’s no doubt that Tyagnibok was behind that). Romania would grab its piece. America would be out in the cold, as it wouldn’t play the game with its allies (Russia would hand out pieces of the former Ukraine… the USA wouldn’t… that’s why Putin will succeed and Obama/McCain will fail).
The “Ukraine” never “went bump in the night”… it never existed in a real way. Its present collapse is only the logical result of internal contradictions that are beyond any human (or divine) intervention. The junta’s spilt much blood in trying to preserve this notional construct… much more will flow before it ends on the rubbish tip of history (and rightfully so). The USA has met its second “Bridge too Far”… it didn’t learn its lesson in South Ossetia… will it learn it here? God alone knows…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Why There are FOUR “Ukraines”… Why the Pro-American Narrative is Crank and Unbelievable
Tags: civil unrest, Galicia, Novorossiya, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, Vladimir Putin, war and conflict
______________________________
Editor:
This is longer than most things that I post. However, the topic needs a more detailed explanation. Most Westerners have never heard our Russian POV in English. I’ve done my best to present it here.
BMD
******
The flaw in most American accounts of the Ukraine is that they assume a single “Ukrainian” nationality. That isn’t so. Look at the above map… roughly, it shows only the MAJOR divides in the country as shown by the latest actual election results (the elections run by the junta are jokes… they don’t show anything). Now, look at the map below:
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______________________________
This shows the situation at the time of the Civil War superimposed on a contemporary political map. What one sees is that Novorossiya is a distinct socio-ethnographical entity… one that sees itself in profoundly non-Ukrainian ways. Firstly, “Ukrainian” isn’t a native concept… it’s a foreign import; it’s profoundly German and Polish… its anti-Orthodox and papist to the bone. In fact, that makes so-called “Ukrainian Orthodoxy” oxymoronic… how can such an inherently papist ideology be Orthodox at all?
“Ukrainian” per se only exists in the Lvovshchina (or amongst those with roots in that backwoods hillbilly backwater), in the formerly Polish lands ruled by the Habsburgs after the Polish partitions. It started out with a factual basis… there’s a difference between the Russian lands that remained free and those lands that went under the Polish papist boot. Prior to 1991, Uniatism didn’t exist outside of the formerly Habsburg lands… the Empire destroyed it in the lands that it took from Poland… and rightfully so.
Uniatism is at the heart of what it means to be “Ukrainian”, just as Orthodoxy is at the heart of what it means to be Russian. No Orthodox society can tolerate Uniatism, for Uniatism is a lie. Uniates are NOT “Orthodox in Union with Rome”… that’s simply gobbledygook. They venerate Francis of Assisi and REFUSE to venerate Orthodox saints… full stop. They HAVE to accept all the innovations of the papist confession, including papal supremacy… and, dontcha know, they can practise their “rite” because the Pope of Rome graciously “allows” them to do so (they’re always quoting a papist “encyclical” Lumen Gentium… as though it binds us, too). Indeed, they are the most violent and vociferous part of the ultramontane set… as one can see by the support given by such papists as George Weigel to the Galician Uniates in their attempts to subvert Russian culture in the southwest (the supposed “Ukraine”).
Ever since 1596, the papists have tried to detach the people of the southwest from Holy Rus and place it under Western cultural, political, and religious domination. WHY? Firstly, Orthodoxy has been the foremost foe of the papists from Day One. The Proddies aren’t really foes of Rome… they’re simply Rome’s bastard children, who share all of Rome’s innovations and fancies. Indeed, the so-called “Oriental” Orthodoxy are one with us in this… we’re ancient Churches not beholden to Rome… not founded by it… not an integral part of it… not culturally or intellectually subject to it. There are profound differences between Christians within Rome’s orbit and those of us who were NEVER part of it. Rome hates this… it sees itself as the guarantor of Christian Unity… look at the title Vicarius Christi… literally, from the Latin, it means, “Substitute for Christ”. No Orthodox can accept such a formulation ever… The Lord Christ Himself is the Centre of Unity… not a human being resident in Rome!
Note well that the papists refuse to abandon papal supremacy, papal infallibility, and papal immediate jurisdiction. What does this have to do with the notional “Ukraine?” Without the Unia, there’s nothing distinctive about “Ukrainian”. Everything in the southwest is profoundly Russian, there’s nothing distinct in it at all. There are some regionalisms, to be sure, but nothing as stark as the difference between Poles and Russians. In fact, most of the differences are Polonisms that crept in under Polish rule, not native growths at all. One can see this in the Lvovshchina. One can see that its dialect, the supposed “Ukrainian language”, is either a dialect of Russian corrupted by heavy Polish influences (for the Habsburgs used the Poles as “middlemen” even after the Partitions) or Polish moderated with Russian influxes. It’s nothing but a pidgin, not a true language at all. Also, note that the papists/Habsburgs introduced variant Cyrillic usages (and transliteration of it into Latin letters) different from that in Russia in a mostly successful attempt to tear Far Western Russians from their roots and graft them to the West.
Now, if one posits that the Unia is at the heart of “Ukrainian”, and that having been under Polish rule is crucial to being “Ukrainian”… that leaves large swathes of the notional “Ukraine” outside of that definition. Podkarpatskaya Rus is outside of that definition… it was never part of the Polish commonwealth and its Unia was not that of Brest in 1596, but rather that of Mukačevo in 1646. Besides this, it was part of the Hungarian Kingdom under the Habsburgs, and not Austria. In short, it lived a distinct life from that of the Lvovshchina, a distinct life that continues. In fact, the Galicians hate the Rusins MORE than they hate the Russians! They’re continually trying to denigrate them and deny them their nationality… they’ve even influenced the Pope of Rome not to allow a Rusin Uniate Church, as they claim that they’re “really Ukrainians!” Needless to say, most Rusins HATE Galicians! They hate Galicians more than they hate Magyars… which is saying a lot (although many Rusins dislike Magyars intensely, it’s NOT at the level of gut hatred that they have for “Ukrainians”). There is much unrest in Podkarpatskaya now, and the junta has most prominent Rusin leaders in prison or under observation (“house arrest”… such as Fr Dmitri Sidor).
Novorossiya is not Ukrainian. It was never under Polish rule, so, it fails in one of the defining conditions of the term. During the Civil War, it wasn’t part of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, failing another condition. It became part of the “Ukraine” in the 1920s under the Soviets. To consider it part of the Ukraine, one has to accept this Soviet legacy… isn’t that delicious? The Galician nationalists, so vehemently anti-communist, have to accept this legacy of the Sov times! Novorossiya was one of the leading Red areas in the Civil War… one friend of mine at the Centre believes that the Sovs placed it in the “Ukraine” to ensure that the region stayed in the USSR and that it remained “Russian” in culture. That seems, to me, to make sense. Therefore, the present ferment for independence from the Galician Uniate ideology of “Consciousness” is no surprise to those of us who actually know history.
In the Centre, in Malorossiya, it isn’t truly Ukrainian either. The main language here is Surzhik… a dialect of Russian with some “Ukrainian” pronunciation peculiarities and some Ukrainian vocabulary, but closer to Russian than Ukrainian is. It sounds like an extreme Southern accent to Russian ears. The Galicians hate Surzhik and refuse to acknowledge its existence. This area was under Polish rule, so, particular customs have diverged a bit from the Russian norm (a “Holy Supper” on Christmas Eve, a profoundly Polish bit, for one). However, since the area returned to the Church after the Partitions, the “Ukrainian” fable penetrated much less than it did in the Lvovshchina. Recently, support for the war was much less here than in Galicia, except in Kiev. A Kiev informant told me that was due to Galician Uniate Euromaidantsy terrorists roaming the streets. No one is quite sure when they’ll be about, and they do torture and kill those whom they label as “traitors”. Ergo, normal people mouth the party-line to be safe.
Besides this, there are some defining fables of Galician Uniate “Consciousness”. The Golodomor as its presented by Uniate extremist nationalists is a derisory fable… there was a famine connected with Collectivisation, which affected the entire USSR, but there was no genocidal Golodomor… the UN and PACE agree with our Russian viewpoint on this. The Reds weren’t Nazis… they didn’t divide people on racial/national lines; they divided people on class/ideological lines. Even morons know this!
Collectivisation was an ideological conflict against a particular social class, smallholding peasants. It was NOT an attack on people of “Ukrainian” nationality (especially, as the “Ukrainian” nationality doesn’t really exist (at least, not in its Galician Uniate definition)). It so happened that many of the smallholders were in the so-called “Ukraine”… this was due to many factors, one of which was its more salubrious climate and the extreme fertility of its soil (“black earth”)… the present collapse of “Ukrainian” agriculture is inexplicable, the natural riches of the Ukrainian soil are still there… but the present state does suffer from Galician Uniate bungling, incompetence, and boastfulness. In many cases, smallholders destroyed crops and livestock, they didn’t want to turn them over to the collective, so, often, the famine, sadly, was self-imposed. I’m not defending it, mind you… I’m merely pointing up that a contributing factor was the peasants’ own actions.
This was a tragedy and a black mark on the USSR… but it wasn’t genocide, and anyone who labels it as such is a cretin with an agenda. Note well that the Uniates make much of this (and use their bought-and-paid-for “scholars” in Western academe), but they weren’t involved in it! They were in the Polish state and didn’t suffer at all! NOT A BIT! They’re liars through-and-through on this. No one with Galician roots suffered in this, so if you hear bloviations from “Ukrainian Catholics” or “Ukrainian Orthodox”, know that they’re talking through their hat… their people suffered not at all!
******
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Note the silence of Galician Uniates on the fact that many Galicians collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. It’s an open secret that SS veterans headed many “Ukrainian Catholic” and “Ukrainian Orthodox” organisations in the diaspora during the Cold War. No Galician can deny that the 14 SS Division existed, staffed with Galician Uniate VOLUNTEERS (just as the Balts can’t deny that Estonians and Latvians enthusiastically joined the SS, too). No Galician can deny the massacre of Khatyn, carried out by Galician collaborators under Nazi orders. No Galician can deny the countless murders of Jews, Roma, Russians, and Poles carried out by the UPA. In fact, the Galician Uniates want to replace celebrating the heroism of the Red Army with glorifying rightwing murderers, racists, and Nazi collaborators. I can’t see why any Jew supports the junta… it glorifies those who murdered Jews and helped in the Holocaust (this shows Victoria Nuland to be a soulless pig). The Galician Uniates don’t want to tell you that many of their forebears not only supported the Nazis, they bore arms defending Greater Germany, helped the Nazis to commit war crimes, and willingly murdered thousands in the Holocaust.
The main blame for this state of affairs lies on the American filth who fomented this affair… the 27 Republican senators who penned the anti-Russian bill aren’t only ignorant, they’re active agents of aggression; therefore, all decent people must oppose the GOP in its support of bellicose neocon meddling throughout the world (what would “Mr Republican”, Robert Taft, have thought of the present GOP? He’d call ‘em all RINOs… especially, the neocons and teabaggers!). I don’t believe that the Galician Uniate diaspora ginned this up (although they do support it vociferously). It has all the hallmarks of Teabag Stupidity stamped all over it, with overtones of Liberal Bleeding Heart Handwringing as well (both the Bleeding Hearts and the Baggers are neoliberals. They’re two sides of the same debased counterfeit coin!)
Secondly, the blame lies on the local thugs who’re implementing the American plan. Interestingly, Yuliya Vladimirovna isn’t an active player in this… a Kiev informant tells me that she won’t play nice with the Americans… if so, good on her! The main players in the junta are all pro-American toads… Yatsenyuk has a sister in the USA (she’s a Scientologist and Yatsenyuk HAS been seen in their circles), Turdchinov coördinated things for the CIA in extraordinary rendition (that is, he was a facilitator of torture), and the good word has it that Langley recruited Avakov when he was in the nick in Italy for real estate fraud. Poroshenko isn’t a part of this triumvirate… he’s a figurehead because none of the pro-American puppets has the domestic cred to be “President”. Shall a Nazi or oligarch junta replace this triumvirate in turn? It may… as the pro-Americans have handed over too much control to their patrons (Joe Biden and John McCain are equally guilty… Ted Cruz and Chilly Hilly are equally ignorant).
V V Putin need do nothing… and he hasn’t! The only thing that he’s done is to turn over former Ukrainian equipment to the patriots, and most of the Ukrainian long-service troops who rallied to Russia in the Crimea now serve in the VSN and are its professional hard-core. Today, there are a larger number of former Ukrainian Army officers and long-service troops serving in the VSN than in the junta forces. The junta forces have degenerated into a mixed bag of oligarch militias, rightwing terrorist bands, pressed Territorial forces, and some few regular units. That is, the VSN is more of a professional military force than the junta bands are! It has more professionally educated officers… and the August offensive showed that. A writer spoke of Kolomoisky’s “battle-hardened militia”… that writer (an American academic) is an idiot. There are no military pros in Kolomoisky’s units, nor have they distinguished themselves in battle. They can steal and bully people… but fight a real stand-up fight against a proper military opponent? Fuggedaboutit! The Ukraine is falling without any help from V V Putin.
Postwar, my guess is that there’d be two successor states, Novorossiya and Malorossiya… the latter a non-aligned neutral buffer, and the former a pro-Russian ally in the Eurasian Union. Putin would NOT merge them in the Russian Federation… you see, if he refrains from doing so, that’d split the EU and NATO, and I believe that he’ll succeed in it. The patriots would advance to the line of the Zbruch (the Russian boundary in 1914) and stop. Podkarpatskaya would secede from the Lvovshchina… some pieces would go to Hungary, and most would probably federate with Slovakia. My guess is that Poland would grab the Lvovshchina (it’d be VVP’s reward for Polish acquiescence in letting Russia control most of the former Ukraine). Probably, Tyagnibok would be their local satrap… he’d shoot Lyashko (just as he shot Sashko Bily… there’s no doubt that Tyagnibok was behind that). Romania would grab its piece. America would be out in the cold, as it wouldn’t play the game with its allies (Russia would hand out pieces of the former Ukraine… the USA wouldn’t… that’s why Putin will succeed and Obama/McCain will fail).
The “Ukraine” never “went bump in the night”… it never existed in a real way. Its present collapse is only the logical result of internal contradictions that are beyond any human (or divine) intervention. The junta’s spilt much blood in trying to preserve this notional construct… much more will flow before it ends on the rubbish tip of history (and rightfully so). The USA has met its second “Bridge too Far”… it didn’t learn its lesson in South Ossetia… will it learn it here? God alone knows…
BMD