politik

in the last 2 weeks, there has been a lot of beer. and with beer, there has been a lot of politics talk. there is a war going on in the eastern part. although it is not called war. ATO or anti-terrorist operation cannot be called a war because in order for it to be called that, there has to be at least two official warring parties. there are not. ukraine is essentially fighting an internal scuffle, figuring out its own internal affair, but with weapons and with a foreign country supplying the 'enemy'. here i have to digress and explain. DNR (Donetskaya Narodnaya Respublika or Donetsk People's Republic and LNR, Luhansk....you get the idea) are fighting for their sovereignty. or independence. it is hard to tell exactly how much separation or autonomy without separation they are willing to accept. Russia is not involved, officially, and has officially has denied involvement. but...
after fighting at independence square and after the president was ousted, or rather after he fled, events happened quickly and rather confusingly, at least for me as an outsider. crimea was lost. i did not say taken over because that would mean implicating a whole foreign nation. there was a referendum and people, somehow, by like a 90% margin of vote 'chose' to leave ukraine and join russia. strange men in unmarked uniform swiftly took over military ukrainian military bases. why? why now? unclear as it was a 'democratic' vote, but this did conveniently coincide with the expiration of russia's lease on sevastopol, their black sea military base. then, DNR and LNR decided they wanted to go too. somehow, again very quickly, militants materialized. these militants claimed to be representing the people, defending people's will. somehow, the people's army suddenly had weapons, weapons big enough to blow up a plane. although wait, who is responsible for the malaysian flight remains a controversy.
the fighting continues today. ukraine calls on a mass mobilization efforts. the standing army has been on overdrive for over a year trying to contain and maybe take back the fighting separatists, which is what they are called. russia remains uninvolved. the russian news, which i have watched for 3 tajik weeks reports on the fighting daily. the reports are skewed, very skewed: the ukrainian armed forces continually, i mean, daily, violate the minsk agreement not to shoot. the evil ukrainian forces shell civilians, daily. every news reports, every station starts their segment by listing exactly how many shells, artillery hits, and agreement violations happened overnight. there are interviews with poor civilians and brave separatists. there are stories of crazy accounts of lynching and mass executions by the ukrainian army, who are presented as blood-thirsty off-their-rocker nationalists. russia remains uninvolved, despite reports of mass crossings across the border, militarization and mobilization of russian army forces along the border, captured separatist fighters who somehow end up being officers and soldiers in the russian army. volunteers, russia says, and continues to supply hoards of humanitarian aid across the unchecked border.
ukraine is doing its best. to fight the mass media hysteria put out by russia, to support its own troops, to decide what to do with the population left in DNR and LNR. the majority of people fled and ukraine is actually facing its own little internal migration crisis. it has no true enemy as russia is not involved, but somehow the separatists have weapons, artillery, and man power which is unending. the question i continue to have is why? speaking to both russian (in moscow) and ukrainians, russia does not want DNR or LNR. their claim to russian-ness, although great, does not inspire great desire to incorporate these regions into the country. ukraine does not want to let go. what would happen if it did? if these people really want to separate, maybe just let them? well, that would set a precedent, that would show weakness of the new revolutionary government. so the fighting continues. and the government? many think it is better. reforms within the system itself are happening, they are evident, people at the top are trying. but others think that nothing has changed, adn the events, all of the events, is just another well-orchestrated political move to claim power. and maybe steal money. there is something like 160 political parties registered in ukraine today. which is sort of great (and better, in some ways, than the two party system we are so used to) but also, logistically, makes it harder to get anything done. the support of EU and NATO and economic sanctions (in which the US participates) is helping to weaken Russia and its economy, but not sufficiently enough, not quickly enough to end the fighting. Is there a resolution? it is unclear, both to me and ukrainians.
life goes on despite the fighting and people, still shell-shocked are hopeful. i went to the institute street again. walked among the makeshift memorials, looking at the 'heavenly one hundred'--the name given to those who died or were gunned down in the february fighting. the oldest was 83, the youngest 17.