Sunday, December 15, 2013

Ukraine Winter


Ukraine Protestors Take Down Statue of Lenin
While everyones been busy with Nelson Mandela's funeral, people in the Ukraine are out in the freezing cold protesting. Why?
What's going on is that Ukraine's leader decided not to sign an agreement that's been in the works for years.
The EU said on Sunday that Kiev's government has "no grounds in reality".
 This country has only been a democracy since 1991. If their "democracy" is anything like ours, God help them. On the surface this looked like Russia did not want the Ukraine signing any deal with the EU and their leader, Viktor Yanukovych caved to pressure from Putin. I have read that more than 50% of Ukrainian people want the EU agreement. Why did Ukraine's Yanukovych give in to Russian pressure on EU deal? | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 2, 2013 | PBS
Here is a link to the poll Почти 60% украинцев выступают за евроинтеграцию - опрос : Новости УНИАН
Things must be pretty bad if people are in the streets freezing their asses off fighting the police.The first thing I thought about was the economy must be pretty bad there.
It looks like the "Great Recession" effected Ukraine, they have unemployment on a par with the U.S., according to the CIA World Factbook in Ukraine there are "large number of unregistered or underemployed workers", also 40% of it's economy is a shadow economy. According to what I read in Wikipedia there is no way to know what the true nature of their economy is, "Due to the double nature of the Ukraine economics,"
I read in the PBS piece that Yanukovych is a "short term" thinker, like almost every politician in the US, I guess Ukraine is no different in that respect, as we know politicians will promise anything to get elected, then reverse themselves completely. It surprises me that people would go through a bitter cold experience and protest a politician that didn't keep a promise. Happens all the time in the US. As if the people of the Ukraine didn't have it bad enough, John McCain decides to go over there to give his support. This guy ran for president with Sarah Palin. He's a national embarrassment. 
Yanukovych is one of the top 1% in the Ukraine and his son Oleksandr " has notably become one of the richest men in the country during his father’s time in office, leading a group known as “the family” and a conglomerate called Management Assets Company.[3]
  "companies linked to (Oleksandr) Yanukovych in 2012 at no cost had taken over majority stakes worth an estimated $10 million in five coal enrichment plants from the state" Nothing wrong with a little nepotism, we've got plenty of it in the U.S. Like a lot of relatives of politicians, Yanukovych's son has made a fortune through government contracts. Oleksandr Yanukovych - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Really, I think what the Ukraine situation comes down to is a leader who is really out for himself and his cronies.
Are the people in the Ukraine protesting corruption? That's not what anyone is really saying. What would be the result of a EU agreement for the Ukraine President Yanukovych and his friends and family? Russian sentiment is that if Ukraine signed the EU agreement it would be economic suicide. "It would make little sense to the Ukrainian elite and population to embark on a painful realignment of their entire socio-economic system to EU standards if the Union’s member states continue business as usual with a Russia." So you have a restructuring of an economy that would disrupt the status quo. Especially, for the elite 1% and their cronies.
Good Luck with that.



 

1 comment:

  1. They don't have to join the EU. They already got capitalism as it's currently practiced in the West down pat.

    ReplyDelete