The Ukrainian elections have raised fears in the east that there might be a break-up of Ukraine:
YALTA: In the city where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met to draw up a plan that would split up Europe and the world for the next four and half decades, citizens hope an election that has divided their country won't break it in half.
Ukraine's five-week election saga has roiled this ex-Soviet nation - pitting the more nationalist western half and the Russian-speaking south and east against each other - and in a Cold War flashback raised tension between Russia and the West.
The Crimea has a long history of ties with Russia and separation anxiety is to be expected. For his part, Tushchenko is sounding like a claming influence:
Yushchenko himself has downplayed the split saying in televised remarks that close elections happen all over the world and this election has left "no scar on society's body."
The pattern seemed to be Russians (5 million) returned to the Motherland as independence spread in the Baltic states and other "satellites"....Russia is apparently suffering the same decline in population as is Europe. See Stromata link.
Do you think there would be a split in the Ukraine rather than Russians just leaving and going to Russia?
http://stromata.typepad.com/stromata_blog/2004/12/russia_wanes.html
Posted by: Maggie | January 04, 2005 at 07:37 PM
FWIW, I don't see a dramatic split in Ukraine because I don't see an overt muscular Russian influence. The amount of money and pressure expended by Putin in the Ukrainian elections dwarfed any aid that came from the west and still Yanukovych lost.
This is a much different world and different situation than Budapest in 1956. The Oranges, now that they've had a victory will bring out the tents again if they have to. And everybody has a digital camera and many have Internet hookups. And Putin isn't crazy.
Russia will continue to decline because now, after opening up the country, the infection that had been allowed to fester throughout the Cold War has come to the surface (how's that for tortures metaphor?). Is there a cure?
Posted by: Daniel | January 05, 2005 at 06:48 AM