Russia's Influence

From USA Today:

"Russia's shadow lurks over Ukraine"

A struggling leader in an ex-Soviet republic appealed to Russia for help battling extremists as the West called for calm so a peaceful resolution could be found. The year was 2008, and the republic was Georgia. Now as then, Vladimir Putin lashed out at the United States and Europe for seeking to turn a former republic toward the West in the guise of a negotiated settlement. In the end, Russia invaded the South Ossetia region of Georgia, and its tanks rolled all the way to the outskirts of the capital of Tbilisi until they halted. Russia's military is still in the country. Some analysts say a similar scenario may be playing out in Ukraine, where as many as 100 anti-government protesters were killed Thursday in clashes with police in the service of a president who has been appealing to Moscow for help while Western diplomats pressure him to sit down and talk. "When the music stops," does Ukraine want to be "on the losing side" with President Viktor Yanukovych's crumbling police state backed by Russia's muscle, "or on the side of political compromise and engagement with Europe?" asked Damon Wilson, who served as White House director of European affairs under President George W. Bush. After a brief truce collapsed Thursday, the European Union voted to impose sanctions on Ukraine's leaders responsible for the violence. The sanctions, unanimously approved by EU foreign ministers at an emergency meeting, include a travel ban to the 28-nation bloc and the freezing of assets held in EU countries. The White House had condemned both sides for escalating violence and asked them to calm the situation. But in a telephone call Thursday with Yanukovych, Vice President Biden called upon the Ukraine president to immediately pull back all security forces, the White House said. Biden stressed that the United States "supports an independent, democratic Ukraine that pursues the future its people choose." And so embattled Ukraine finds itself caught squarely between the West, which has been wooing it, and Putin, who is clearly determined not to let the republic slip away. Police and protesters, who are seeking a European-style democracy, continued to clash into the evening in Kiev. Protesters threw rocks and firebombs at lines of police after government snipers shot into crowds of protesters. Ukrainian television showed scenes of protesters being gunned down and others lying on the street as comrades rushed up to pull them to safety, carrying them on planks of wood. Oleh Musiy, head of medical service, said the number of dead is "from 70 to 100 protesters." The Ukraine Interior ministry says 67 police were captured by protesters. Video footage on Ukrainian television showed protesters leading captured police officers around a protest camp in central Kiev.  The confrontation is not limited to the capital. In the West Ukraine, near Poland, protesters have taken over government buildings in Jhmelnytskyi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod and Ternopil, according to Ukrainian media. In Lvov, protesters have replaced the authorities with their own created council. In Russian-speaking East Ukraine, attacks on both pro-government and opposition party buildings have taken place over the past few days. The offices of opposition leader Viktor Klitschko's Udar Party were attacked in the cities of Dnepropetrovsk and Krivoy Rog. The split between East and West is a remnant of centuries of warfare, in which European powers and ethnic Cossacks and Slavs fought for control of the fertile land along the Black Sea. Czarist Russia asserted control in the east, and during World War II the Soviets reunited Ukraine with its Western provinces, then under Polish domination. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine declared independence, along with many other former Soviet republics that had been forced to live under Communist rule. But Russian President Putin has never accepted Ukraine's sovereignty or that of any of the republics. He has described their loss as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" and has said that among his top priorities for his latest term is the reintegration of former Soviet republics through tighter economic links, political ties and security pacts. He has said Moscow seeks a new Eurasian Union to rival the European Union and NATO, the U.S.-European military alliance. "What we've got in Putin is a man with a strategic vision and an autocratic mentality," John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, said recently. In January, Putin stepped in to offer Yanukovych a foreign aid package of $15 billion in cash and below-market-rate natural gas to aid Ukraine's economy, which has been ailing. It came with a string attached: Ukraine needed to reject an economic pact with the EU that had been in the works for years.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to cancel all joint space and defense industry projects if Ukraine made a move toward the European Union.  "Russia has never not intervened in Ukraine, that's the whole issue," said Ben Tonra, head of the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin in Ireland. "President Putin has actively intervened in Ukrainian politics since the separation of Ukraine." "There is an imbalance in terms of what tools the EU and Russia have in their disposal, and clearly the Russian Federation, as we have seen in Georgia, is willing to use military force as it deems necessary." But now, amid the violence, European heads of state and foreign ministers are trying to pull Yanukovych in their direction with sticks of their own. The EU said the sanctions it imposed Thursday will target "those responsible for human rights violations, violence and use of excessive force" in Ukraine, the EU said in a statement. The U.S. State Department banned travel to the USA for 20 Ukrainian officials implicated in the violence and said it will consider joining European leaders in freezing bank accounts. It called on both sides to stop the violence. "We are outraged by the images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people," White House press secretary Jay Carney said. "We urge President Yanukovych to immediately withdraw his security forces from downtown Kiev and to respect the right of peaceful protest, and we urge protesters to express themselves peacefully. "

Wilson, the former White House European affairs director, said such sanctions may be able "to avert civil war in the coming days and to salvage the prospect of a European future for Ukraine." Many of the leaders of the ruling party have substantial wealth and investments in Europe and may be swayed by measures to keep them from their money. But Bolton dismissed the sanctions as trivial. "If that's what people think motivate the hard men of power in control of the Ukrainian government, they're sadly mistaken," he said. "They love to stroll the European boulevards, but when it's that or maintaining their power in the Ukraine, this is worse than nothing."  The USA should make clear to the Ukrainian opposition and everyone in the country "that doesn't want to be brought into the Russian orbit" that the USA will push for Ukrainian membership in NATO, because "NATO provides security," Bolton said. Russia is already talking like the uprising in Ukraine is a major security threat to the region that must be tamped down. Its Foreign Ministry on Thursday described the violence as an attempted coup and even used the phrase "brown revolution," an allusion to the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. The ministry said Russia would use "all our influence to restore peace and calm." Sanctions are a "painful stereotype" that will only make things worse, says Alexander Konovalov, president of the Moscow-based Institute of Strategic Assessment. "Sanctions against Moscow won't sway it, nor will sanctions against Ukraine. You need to stop the bloodshed, not issue sanctions," he said. "So they'll ban a few officials from entering the United States – so what? What is that going to change?" Wilson said sanctions have helped influence government officials and politicians in the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in the past, especially those who own homes and business assets in Europe. In Belarus in 2006, the USA used targeted sanctions against officials involved in trials against political dissidents, until the dissidents were released, Wilson said.

^ The situation in the Ukraine is at it's breaking point. It could end in a few ways. It could erupt into a civil war, the Russians could invade and put the Ukraine firmly back into its influence with no outside help, the Russians could invade and the US and the EU could step in militarily or the Ukrainian Government and the protesters could figure things out themselves. I have big doubts about the last solution. The Ukraine is split between East and West in political affairs as well as being split East-West internally. Most of western Ukraine was part of Poland until the Soviet Union invaded and annexed it to the USSR first in 1939 and then again in 1944. Eastern Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union from it's founding in 1922. That means for a decade one part of the current country was in a communist dictatorship under a extreme famine while the other part was in a flourishing democracy. Hopefully, the violent situation will end and the Ukraine will become a truly stable and democratic country. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/20/ukraine-violence-russia-europe-united-states/5642577/