The fighting has intensified in Ukraine this week. The Russians are using Obama’s obvious reluctance to act on the bill adopted by Congress that promised aid to Ukraine. At the same time, everybody is distracted right now by the massacre in Paris, and the Russians are using this to conduct a full-scale offensive.
Yesterday and the day before there was another big battle for the Donetsk Airport. The Russians brought fresh troops and sophisticated weaponry to the airport. After a long and exhausting battle, Ukrainians won yet again.
This is the worst type of warfare for Ukraine: a simmering low-intensity conflict that flares up every once in a while. The whole point of the Ukrainian revolution of 2013 was to conduct reforms and transform the country from a corrupt, sleepy mafia haven to a vibrant European state. This is precisely what the Russians don’t want. They sabotage Ukraine ‘ s project of reform by slowly draining the country of resources through an endless simmering conflict. It’s easy for Russia to do that since it isn’t pursuing any creative project of its own. Its entire creative agenda right now is limited to “Let’s stick it to the Americans.” So they can go on and on fighting. There’s nothing else to do in Russia that’s fun.
Realistically, the only hope for Ukraine right now is to resist until 2016 and then hope that a Republican gets elected in the US.
Clarissa's Blog 
The Polish government has evacuated 178 people “of Polish descent” from Donbas. In the Polish news they just call them Poles though most of them speak either no or only very rudamentary Polish (in interviews on tv at least).
http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/193256,Evacuation-underway-for-Donbas-Poles
Sometime in the 1990s the Polish government offered free university education to anyone in the former USSR who could dig up a Polish grandmother in their family tree and learn Polish well enough to survive in the university environment.
There are a few students from Ukraine in the place I work at any given time though it must be a different program because they mostly don’t have any Polish ancestory.
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First, there was a huge fashion of buying Jewish descent, then it was Polish. . . Let’s see what the new wave of descent-buying offers.
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Not just descent, but nobility, please. 🙂
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Yes, you are right, I’ve heard of that. I haven’t met anybody who’d done that. It was obviously less relevant in my part of the country. But I know several Vasya Petrov’s who suddenly realized they were Jewish. 🙂
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In general what are the young people in Ukraine doing (now and I suppose last ten years). I have family heritage from Latvia, although no close ties there. I have heard a major issue is the most talented are leaving, primarily for western Europe because there is little economic hope. Now, Latvia is like 2.5 million people where Ukraine is ~40 million I think so if there wasn’t a war perhaps there is room for a more robust economy? And of course you are here so many bright have left 🙂 but curious of the overall trend, if you are aware of one.
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Latvia is in the European Union while Ukraine isn’t. It’s extremely hard to leave Ukraine for Western Europe. For me, emigrating took several years and an amount of money that is simply not accessible to the vast majority of people in Ukraine.
Ukrainians had been leaving for Russia to work as migrant workers. Now Russia is making their lives there even more difficult. Ukrainians have been in Russia what Mexicans are in the US: an enormous, often illegal community that does the dirtiest work and is persecuted and mistreated. The only difference with the Mexicans is that Ukrainians are the most law-abiding immigrant community in Russia. They don;t form gangs or sell drugs.
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“For me, emigrating took several years and an amount of money that is simply not accessible to the vast majority of people in Ukraine.”
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I dare to disagree. Ukrainians were more like Canadians. Considered somewhat backwards and a butt of jokes, but visually indistinguishable from the Owners of The Land. Folks from former Middle Asian republics of the USSR were the Mexicans.
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We are all Russia’s Mexicans, albeit in our different ways. 🙂 Two of my cousins are in Moscow and everything about them reminds me so much of poor, confused Mexicans from some remote country-side who are working day and night and trying to ingratiate themselves with the gringos.
Middle Asians are Mexicans in the scarier “Breaking Bad” kind of sense. And Ukrainians are Mexicans in the more pathetic beaten-down sense. They might not stand out on first glance, but the moment they open their mouths, everybody knows who they are. My cousins didn’t even speak any Russian until adulthood, so of course, they had strong accents.
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Central Asians in Russia are more like the even more exploited and darker skinned Central Americans in the US.
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“Central Asians in Russia are more like the even more exploited and darker skinned Central Americans in the US.”
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Thanks for that response. And feeling stupid here I didn’t realize the difference of not being in the EU made. Really huge point (thanks for pointing out). Interesting then on how important the EU (and less so but somewhat similar NATO) status can be.
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I’m not sure about the current situation regarding citizenship but for many many years after the disappearance of the USSR many or most Russian speaking residents of Latvia didn’t have citizenship which meant that most of those leaving are Latvian speaking which could easily lead to a Russian speaking majority in the country. That would be ironic given the struggles of Latvians to make their language the primary one in their own country (many if not most of the Russophones only moved there during the Soviet occupation and never bother to learn Latvian).
Lithuania doesn’t have that problem since the number of Russian speakers is smaller and they all have citizenship IINM I think Estonia too.
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Estonia had intermediate situation and intermediate reaction to it. The percentage of Russians was higher than in Lithuania and lower than in Latvia. And the citizenship law fell in between, toughness-wise. One did not get it automatically, one had to pass the exam. But there were no quotas like in Latvia (which were ridiculously small, if all Russians in Latvia actually wanted to get Latvian citizenship, it would take about a century).
And I do not think it was too difficult to leave Latvia for a stateless person. Most civilized countries recognized Latvian and Estonian alien’s passport.
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\ Realistically, the only hope for Ukraine right now is to resist until 2016 and then hope that a Republican gets elected in the US.
In Israel, Republicans are much more popular too.
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Because they have a foreign policy. If the Democrats have one, they are doing a really good job concealing it.
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As if their preference is based on anything other than whichever party promises to kill more muslims.
Iran: the next frontier. I’d be sickening to witness this election where the fate of millions of Iranians will depend on chickenhawk politicians vying for the affections of unhinged loonies like Adelson.
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Both el’s “Muslims want to kill me” and your “Israelis want to kill Muslims” are equally disturbing. And neither has anything to do with foreign policy, Israel or Muslims.
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Actually given Iran is fighting against ISIS in Iraq I am predicting that whatever party wins the US election that US-Iranian relations on the covert level will actually improve.
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After Carter the Democrats figured having a foreign policy was way too much trouble. 😎
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// Both el’s “Muslims want to kill me” and your “Israelis want to kill Muslims” are equally disturbing. And neither has anything to do with foreign policy, Israel or Muslims.
Hey! I don’t think that f.e. average Iranian on the street wants to kill me. I do think that ISIS, Hamas, other terror organizations and, yes, average Palestinian wants to do so. And that Arabs in states around me at least dislike my country, if not outright hate it. Look at news number 3 below as a small example.
As for Arabs who are Israeli or EU citizens, most won’t attack, but most dislike me, some will kill and … I don’t want to pretend “I have Arab friends.” Middle East conflict would always stand between us.
Btw, after talking about Arab taxi drivers on this blog, I had to catch a taxi, thought the driver was Arabic (he turned radio on what seemed to me Arabic after we began moving) and felt this unpleasant feeling of almost fear till reaching the destination. The funny thing was that I tried to calm down and at some point wondered whether those few minutes of radio were really Arabic and whether he couldn’t be a Jew from an Arab country instead. I am worse than others at judging nationalities at a glance.
Only today read that (and there are similar news every day):
1 – Self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State chief of staff in Palestine’ arrested
Former public defender Adnan a-Din among seven-strong cell of Islamic State supporters arrested by Israel for attempting to join terror organization; charged with planning to kill security officials and Druze.
2 – Two dead in anti-terrorism raid in Belgium
Anti-terror police operation in Verviers leaves two dead, day after Belgium man with ties to Paris kosher supermarket terrorist turns himself in to authorities; ‘We’ve averted a Belgian Charlie Hebdo’, police officer says.
3- Miss Lebanon Saly Greige is in some serious trouble in her home country after she posed for a selfie with Doron Matalon, Miss Israel for 2014 […] Lebanese media and social networks have been in furor […] Some detractors are even calling for her title to be stripped from her in wake of the photo.
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