ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

but maybe there iwll be some sort of miracle transformation.

VS.

http://alumni.imsa.edu/~data/images/autographs/yankovic.jpg

Powell warned "there will be consequences" for the United States' relationship with Ukraine as a result of the developments in the former Soviet bloc nation.

Powell spoke shortly after election officials in Ukraine declared that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won the election over opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. The announcement raised fears of violence in Kiev, where tens of thousands of demonstrators have been demanding that the results be overturned.

orange is a wicked colour

argh i was reafing baout the ddrug they think was used on him, it is something with "chlor" in the name, and accelerates acne to a massive extent or something.

I mean, until they turn 30 and immediately turn super-dumpy

i really wanna go to kiev

2006?

There are no reports the death is linked to Mr Yanukovych's defeat by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in Sunday's presidential poll re-run.

Yeah, right.

http://www.eyecandyforthebrokenhearted.com/ukraine.jpg

nice pics of timoshenko. whats with the c.17th thing? is this some ukrainian nationalism schtick? national dress a gogo?

A Stratfor note today:

---

Ukraine made a radical policy adjustment on Thursday by essentially ending its bid for NATO membership. The move, which would have been unthinkable as recently as a month ago, probably resulted from external forces, namely Russia. Ukraine’s abrupt departure from its long-standing bid indicates the ominous involvement of Moscow. In its effort to maintain its security buffer, Russia probably employed its FSB security services.

Economic tools can include fostering closer integration, raising or lowering barriers to trade, embargoing another country, threatening to undermine a country’s financial stability by mass sales of its currency, or by simply shelling out cash. In the case of Ukraine –- and by extension, Western Europe –- Russia frequently has employed natural gas cutoffs.

Political tools are varied, and focus on finding political weak spots for later manipulation. The options include promoting closer integration among citizens with a common heritage found in both of the countries in question. These ties can then be manipulated later. For example, one country can threaten to intervene in the other to protect an allied ethnic group from alleged discrimination. Russia could employ this tactic in relation to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

Military tools to influence another state’s behavior include the threat of invasion, conspicuously aiming weapons — anything from artillery to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)— at the other country, or providing military assistance to the government or the opposition groups in the other country. Russia’s Feb. 12 threat to aim ICBMs at foreign forces that might deploy in Ukraine falls in this category.

The 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s subsequent loss of influence in its near abroad and in the West laid the foundation for Russia’s current geopolitical trajectory. Russia’s resurgence under President Vladimir Putin has involved a strong effort to regain the influence, respect and national security it believes it is due. Moscow’s desire is especially keen given previous Russian humiliations — particularly those suffered by the government of the late Boris Yeltsin, when the West encroached on what Russia perceives as its prerogatives. Russia, however, lacks many of the tools the Soviet Union had at its disposal for compelling other countries’ behavior. This complicates Putin’s effort to satisfy the Russian geopolitical imperative of establishing hegemony in its near abroad.

The Russian resurgence took a potentially fatal hit over Kosovo’s Feb. 18 secession from Serbia. This was an issue of minor importance to the United States and most Western European countries, but a major threat to Russia’s effort to demonstrate its return to major power status. For Russia and Putin to survive the Kosovo insult, retribution elsewhere in the Russian near abroad was expected — namely in the Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.

Ukraine’s dramatic about-face on NATO comes in the context of Kosovar independence. Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko — who came to power in his country’s 2004 Orange Revolution — was clamoring as recently as a month ago for NATO membership, despite a lukewarm reception from the alliance. Rumor has it that Yushchenko’s sudden change at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels occurred after the Russian president literally ordered him to withdraw Ukraine’s NATO bid, probably reminding him of the aforementioned Russian economic leverage over Ukraine.

Putin likely did not rely on economic coercion alone, however, and we can assume the FSB helped change Ukraine’s mind on NATO. The FSB is quite good at pressuring individuals using threats, intimidation, enticements and even sophisticated assassinations. Yushchenko knows the capabilities of the secret service underworld well, having barely survived a poisoning while seeking office in 2004.

Russia and the FSB probably decided that bringing the existing Ukrainian leadership in line would be easier than introducing a new leadership, allowing Moscow to avoid the pitfalls of Ukrainian politics. Given the lukewarm reception to Ukraine’s membership bid, Kiev could simply have let its application fall by the wayside. Instead, it made an active policy reversal. Compelling Yushenko’s U-turn on Ukraine’s NATO bid thus represents a significant Russian achievement, one that others — particularly Georgia — will observe closely.

The willingness of right-wing analysts to suggest that personal threats by the FSB against the Ukrainian government were probably behind the policy change, while completely omitting to mention the saleient fact that Gazprom did in fact cut gas supplies to Ukraine beginning on Monday and only restored full flows on Thursday... well, you're smart guys I'm sure Stratfor, but don't pretend you have less of a policy agenda than Putin does.

I imagine anybody writing about Russia who doesn't themselves work for the Kremlin is likely to have on about fifteen tinfoil hats as regards the FSB/GRU apparatus, and with perfectly understandable reason

it has come to...trebuchets

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-clashes-kiev-molotov-907/

can someone with more geopolitical smarts explain what's happening to me?

the american MSM seems to painting this as a peaceful-freedom-fighters vs. entrenched-corrupt-government thing, but I get the feeling it's more complicated. for one thing reading the foreign press tells me that some ultra- right-wing groups (whose nationalist distaste for Russia apparently trumps reservations they might have about the EU) with a distinctly anti-Semitic bent (and some soft-right groups who have connections to the ultra-rightists) are taking an increasingly visible (and increasingly violent) role in the Kiev protests.

but you know, I don't really know anything about all this. so 'splain me.

some discussion here - Rolling European Politics Thread

maybe this will help: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-ukrainian-smears-and-stereotypes/2014/02/20/450b8d62-9a72-11e3-b88d-f36c07223d88_story.html

the protesters are fascists trying to impose the EU on a country that doesn't want it

xpost

i think that washington post thing is a little pollyanna-ish (pollyanish?) about the nature of the protest movement(s), it's true.

but i honestly don't know what to read/who to believe.

I'll break it down as i see it.

Yanukovich indicated that he wanted to sign a provisional agreement with the EU to liberalise trade relations. He's not on good terms with Putin and Russia's decision to keep charging Ukraine high fees for gas (which is partly Ukraine's fault for reasons i won't go into) has wrecked the Ukrainian economy. He took the view that opening up Ukraine to the EU would have some short term difficulties (cheap EU products competing with domestic Ukrainian goods, etc) but it was worth it for the potential long term gains. The EU prevaricated over exactly what was on offer, didn't give a clear indication that full membership could be on the cards in the future and wasn't willing to provide financial assistance to help compensate for short-term hardship.

At the same time, Russia did what Russia always does. They said that if you don't want to have a special relationship (in this case preferring the EU over a post-Soviet trade agreement) then you can't expect special favours. Russia started imposing the kind of border checks on Ukrainian traffic into Russia that Poland always has on the other border and stopped giving Ukrainian companies preference on government contracts over Indian, Chinese, etc firms. Ukraine's eastern side is economically reliant on Russia and trade income went down by about 30% over the course of two or three months.

Ukraine also owes Russia a stack of cash for gas it hasn't paid for. The Ukrainian government was very close to defaulting until Russia offered to defer billions of dollars worth of loans in return for signing their trade agreement. Yanukovich didn't really have much of a choice other than accepting.

This went down very badly with a wide range of people, from EU-minded liberals to hardline neo-Fascists and ended up highlighting deep political, regional and ethnic splits in the country that go back decades. Bear in mind that Stalin was responsible for starving millions of Ukrainian peasants and Ukrainian nationalists later collaborated with the Nazis to murder hundreds of thousands of Russians and Jewish people. Western Ukraine remains strongly nationalist - both in the soft sense of wanting to make sure that the country is free of Russian control and in the less soft 'Mein Kampf displayed in bookshop windows' sense. The nationalists are not all violent right-wing extremists, as the Russian press would like to have it, but some of them certainly are. On the other hand, lots of the East of the country, and Crimea, retain a strong Russian identity.

There is no unified protest movement. Some are hardline nationalists, some are liberals, some want to be part of the EU, some want to be free of Russian control, some want to split the country in two, some want to unite it. There are a million positions in between each. The protests are also equally about the economy. Ukraine has been in a massive slump for several years, partly as a result of the oil situation, and people are sick of it.

They're also sick of corrupt, criminal politicians. Pretty much everyone who has held a political post in Ukraine since independence is a corrupt criminal, though, so Yanukovich is not unique in that regard. There's a chance that Klitchko might be different though which is why a lot of people are uniting behind him.

that's the sanest, most even thing i've read about the situation since i stopped listening to the BBC pretending to be impartial

I think that's about right, although the geographic split being talked about doesn't seem to be working out so much in reality -- my Ukrainian pals are all Russian-speaking Easterners, and are supporters of the protests. Yanukovich is also widely considered to be the worst of a bunch of idiots -- this is an "enough is enough" moment in many ways. There are neo-fascists in the protest movement, but I have seen no sources that are not Russian-friendly that suggest that they are the majority or growing, and there sure as hell are neo-fascists in Yanukovich's troops as well. There are agents provocateurs at work as well. For the people on the ground this is primarily and simply anti-government protest, but of course there is far more going on than just the people on the ground.

in the context you folks describe the way the west (esp. US) is dealing w/ this is kind of embarrassing.

we all know john mccain is an idiot, but appearing with some of the right-wing protest groups and calling for "freedom" was one of his more embarrassingly credulous photo ops.

what about those folks that briefly came into power after the "orange revolution"? my understanding was that they were both crooks _and_ victims of political show trials.

The elite political class in Ukraine is a disaster -- the lack of a central strong figure leading the protests is both a result of and a reaction to that.

Yes, Yushchenko (who was president) is a minor crook, his son is a fairly major one. Tymoshenko (who was Prime Minister) stole several billion dollars worth of gas from Russia while people on both sides of the border were dying in poverty. Her reinvention as a St Joan figure is laughable.

Yushchenko and Yanukovich were both PM under Leonid Kuchma, the journalist-murdering crim who was Ukraine's first independent President, so the idea of a major political difference between the two is somewhat overstated.

Ukraine is generally though of as more corrupt than Nigeria. All politicians are required to state their income on electoral forms. There was one election in the mid-2000s where every single candidate but one claimed that their only source of income was their government salary of £5,000 - £13,000. All had BMWs, plush Kyiv apartments and massive country dachas. The one candidate who didn't claim to be living off his stipend ran with the campaign tagline "i'm too rich to need to be corrupt!". He didn't win.

Much of Ukraine's economy is carved up between a small number of oligarch factions and they bankroll everything. Some are pro-Tymoshenko, some are pro-Yanukovich. Quite a few are in favour of EU membership as they think it'll stop future governments from trying to reclaim the money they've stolen, some are against it as they think it'll prevent them from stealing more.

The oligarchs tend to be worse than the politicians. Ukraine' richest man, Rinat Akhmetov (who's more famous as Chairman of Shakhtar Donetsk), for example, was a prominent member of the Donbass Mafia and acquired most of his wealth when his boss (and former Chairman of Shakhtar) died in a bomb attack at a football match.

it's only a credible source when I quote from it!

there is a book called The Forsaken about the miserable fates of US citizens who fled to the Soviet Union to escape The Great Depression and then after them having their passports snatched from them by incredibly scary and impolite NKVD agents on arrival and their suspicion this might have been a shit move was later proved to be correct!

Lee Harvey Oswald sought the workers paradise but ended up not liking it.. but he met his wife there, who's still alive I believe?
I think he lived in Belarus

he missed The Great Purge with just everyone with foreign ties getting arrested on espionage charges, though.

Xp gotta read that. I read a biography of Prokofiev and about the misfortune of his estranged wife once they were cajoled to return.

everyone with foreign ties getting arrested

even the poor suckers who had the misfortune of doing time in German POW camps

xp

ffs, they returned there in '36. You wouldn't ask Prokofiev for some lucky lottery numbers!

This woman is no fool, Derek needed to go

jfc, after all that - she lived until the age of 89

Sergei also wouldn’t win any husband of the year awards either

well well well: https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-russia-deal-west-bank-occupation-ukraine-wfvnt6v6f

https://archive.ph/Oz78B

US and Russia ‘propose West Bank-style occupation of Ukraine’

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is understood to support the idea, which can be revealed before the president meets Putin in Alaska on Friday

Russia and the United States have discussed a model for ending the war in Ukraine that mirrors Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, The Times has been told.

Under this scenario Russia would have military and economic control of occupied Ukraine under its own governing body, imitating Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory seized from Jordan in 1967.
The idea was raised weeks ago in discussions between Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s peace envoy, and his Russian counterparts, according to a source close to the US national security council.

Witkoff, who is also tasked by Trump with bringing peace to the Middle East, is understood to support the idea, which the Americans believe circumvents barriers in the Ukrainian constitution to ceding territory without holding an “all-Ukraine” referendum.

What a ridiculous, stupid idea... Ukraine would never agree to this shit, and more importantly no EU/Nato member will agree to this shit

Putin is attempting to rebuild some mythical Russian empire.. if they allow this partition, then he'll go after the Baltic republics, Finland, Moldova... Witkoff has never held any diplomatic post EVER and it shows

also: the Ukrainian people will never accept this 'solution'... too much pain & bloodshed at this point

would it be too mean or too demoralizing to start a thread cataloguing ilxors' confident predictions about the future?

Nah, US politics/Trump threads already have that covered.

I'll take that as a vote for demoralizing

Ukraine could conceivably be brought to the point of ceding the "annexed" regions to Russian control, but only if the war continues to the point of exhaustion and no other ending seems available. The fact that the NATO countries of Europe continue to provide Ukraine with strong material and diplomatic support means they have no compelling reason to cave in to Putin, even if Trump tries to pressure them into it. ofc, Trump is capable of totally aligning the USA with Putin and using US power to punish Ukraine and NATO with extreme sanctions, so they will continue to cajole, flatter and placate Trump as necessary to maintain Ukraine's sovereignty as long as possible.

sick that these people see "west bank-style occupation" as a model to be followed

US and Russia ‘propose South Africa-style apartheid of Ukraine’

sick that these people see "west bank-style occupation" as a model to be followed

yeah, how has that worked out so far

Putin says he's in Alaska to make business deals lol

Looks like it's back to trying to bully Zelenskyy in the Oval Office again on Monday

Uber driver told me he got a lot of both Ukranian and Russian people here in Porto these days, fleeing the war - mostly middle class in his estimation. Sadly most of his Russian customers were nonetheless rabidly pro-Putin, do think if you believe in Russia's imperial project you don't get to baulk at your son being recruited for its war machine.

Trump: "Vladimir Putin said something -- one of the most interesting things. He said 'your election was rigged because you have mail in voting.' He said, 'mail in voting, every election -- no country has mail in voting. It's impossible to have mail in voting and have honest… pic.twitter.com/glEXFHWp6u

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 16, 2025

Putin's playing this moron like a fiddle.

The one sided contest here isn't Russia v. Ukraine, it's Putin v. Trump.

I have seen reports that Ukraine have temporarily disrupted/destroyed up to 20% of Russia's oil infrastructure and there is rationing at petrol stations and crazy petrol inflation, even in Moscow. And their ability to strike deeper into Russia with the flamingo missiles really could put some serious stress on the Putin regime this winter. Might be some propaganda bullshit sponsored by the arms industries + boosted by Ukraine state media, also could be something to this.

Well, this seems bad

Ukraine's air force has warned Poland that Russian drones have entered its air space and Zamosc is under threat, Reuters reports.

More details in thread

https://bsky.app/profile/chadbourn.bsky.social/post/3lygscurmbc2k

yeah, that's bad.. one could be an 'accident' but not a whole formation

Guessing that a lot of western weapon shipments enter Ukraine via Poland's rail system?

NATO needs to slap back hard & fast or they'll do it again

more details:

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russian-shahed-drones-enter-poland-during-1757458138.html

Poland & NATO now thinking that this was a kind of 'testing the waters' operation - these drones did not have warheads and the bulk apparently ran out of gas and crashed. But Russia just wanted to test their response and the coordination of their reaction

But no doubt this was intentional

Belarus appears to be suggesting they also shot down a bunch of drones and notified the Polish and Lithuanian air forces, though obvs needs to be taken with a pinch of salt given that it would presuppose a mistake on Russia’s part (due to jamming) rather than a deliberate act.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/belarus-says-it-shot-down-some-drones-that-went-astray-during-russia-ukraine-2025-09-10/

holy shit:

Polish couple's house hit by drone as they watched TV news about drones

Pensioner Tomasz Wesołowski had a lucky escape on Wednesday when a drone crashed into his house as he was watching news on television about Russian drones flying into Polish airspace, Reuters reported.

sheeit, that's not good! Imagine if you were watching a video about FPV kamikaze drones and you turned around and saw one hovering outside your window. I'm shit scared of drones. A few weeks back there was one hovering above me when I was heading to the park. It was a serious drone, because it was a very windy day and was very stable and it was quite big. For a second I thought some psycho is going kill me with a drone. By the time I got to the park there was a police officer there and he seemed he was getting some drone training or something.

I spent some time watching some frontline FPV drone footage in late '23 I think, the kind where it cuts out as the drone explodes near the target(s). And that horrific shit lives in my head ever since.

it'll be interesting to see if this was a one-off 'accident' or if they try something similar elsewhere (the Baltics, etc.)

it seems insane that Putin would really want to expand the war and test the NATO resolve right now.. they're not exactly doing super well on the current front. But he's thinking like he's Peter the Great reclaiming his empire or some shit. He's not a rational person

They’ve flown drones into Lithuania as recently as July, though not on this scale.

if they were testing the Polish air defences, then managing to shoot down 4 of 19 drones is probably not much of a success.

There have also been drones flown as far as Germany recently. Germany elected not to shoot them down. The issue with shooting them down is where they land (houses? heads?)

It looks like this has been completely cooked up by the US, with some involvement from Kiril Dmitriev and has taken both Ukraine and the EU by surprise but I’m not sure it quite as bad a deal for Ukraine as was initially floated (other than the abhorrent US demand for about 50% of the country’s economic production).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/20/ukraine-us-russian-peace-proposal-is-absurd-and-unacceptable

It pretty much gives Russia almost everything they’ve been publicly saying they wanted (land, no foreign troops, smaller Ukrainian army, no NATO expansion, etc) but would ostensibly stop them getting what they actually want (a Belarus 2 that they can invade at will should they dislike the government, etc). As a result, I think it’s almost certainly going to be rejected by Russia despite looking like an absolute sweetheart deal drawn up by them.

but would ostensibly stop them getting what they actually want (a Belarus 2 that they can invade at will should they dislike the government, etc)

what would stop them exactly? apart grom what is already impeding them

'election within 100 days' ...feels like just trolling but maybe they think they could manipulate sufficiently in that timeframe

is their any substance to the stuff about some alleged Zelenski corruption bubbling up (taking some big kickbacks in dodgy energy deals) and his long term accountant (who has been with him since his tv show) doing a runner to Israel?

what would stop them exactly? apart grom what is already impeding them

The deal would be give Ukraine a security guarantee from the US that would treat any future attack as equivalent to an attack on a NATO member. That’s obviously not necessarily going to be worth the paper it’s printed on, in practice, but gets around the idea that Ukraine would have to be a NATO member to have security while placating Russia’s supposed concerns about NATO troops stationed on their border, etc. It also envisages a fast-track to EU membership, which is something that Russia has always wanted to prevent. Again, not discussed with the actual EU, though.

election within 100 days' ...feels like just trolling but maybe they think they could manipulate sufficiently in that timeframe

The idea that the Zelenskiy is illegitimate because elections have been suspended has been a pretty consistent Russian talking point for a while, partly because they thought they could negotiate with someone else in Ukraine who might be more sympathetic to them and they could position as the true ‘head of government’. This again placates that supposed concern. There’s no meaningful possibility that any election would return a pro-Russia government.

is their any substance to the stuff about some alleged Zelenski corruption bubbling up (taking some big kickbacks in dodgy energy deals)

It’s pretty clear that there has been corruption at all levels of government for the entire history of modern Ukraine, including people close to the current admin, but not any strong evidence, afaict, that Zelenskiy has been directly involved.

the often quoted stat is that Ukraine loses nearly 25% of annual GDP to corruption, which sounds a bit too crazy to be true. But taken in context of the post-Soviet power vacuum and how it went in Russia - it's probably about right.

I don't understand the 'smaller army' provision.. it's already threadbare, and do they expect Ukraine to invade Russia or something? I think that's a recipe for disaster. I also think Ukraine should join NATO, they've shown themselves to be a tough, resourceful force. I don't care about 'poking the bear,' fuck Putin and all those people

NATO won't admit Ukraine while it is actively under invasion because the NATO charter would require the member states to immediately enter a state of war with Russia. This would not be politically acceptable for the general population of most member states and could rapidly split NATO apart.

I don't think there's ever been a serious suggestion that Ukraine would be allowed into NATO (even before the question of whether there still is a NATO or not).

EU membership seems floated as a more plausible outcome, but even that seems tenuous. Though with EU process you can get parked indefinitely like Turkiye until the illusion well runs dry

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia & Bulgaria are all NATO members

If the door for Ukraine was ever open it has been solidly closed since 2014.

The membership of the nations mentioned above isn't a surprise given the join dates. Montenegro and Macedonia are the ones to mention as more surprising