Ukraine Starting Over

The many heartbreaking aspects of the Ukraine crisis, one can sense it in people's bones, the everyday people, how they stand, how they look. They are tired of it, their sense of shock is palpable.The Western Media doesn't really cover conditions in the towns, villages and war zones the way Russian and Ukraine's media does, although one can dig around in youtube.  It has been 13-14 months of the most unbelievable sequence of events,, changes turnarounds of expectations, mutations of International policy. Has the United States, Canada, Europe been consistent? Maybe.... People are shocked by the shelling of Mariupol: it may be the first stage in creating enough anxiety among the civilians that it will initiate a mass evacuation, once that starts, other than squeezing past Berdyansk,, Russian forces have nothing in their way to block a somewhat easy occupation of all the entire East Ukraine coastline. Maybe they are already planning an Autobahn ? There was a sense that t...

The elephant in the room?     Maybe there are several elephants in the room : Ukraine is a big place, it certainly has the space to fit them. But if one boils it down in a big pot, what are the primary issues ? Guess it depends on who you are. If you live in America, "the Ukraine" is just another issue, like fixing the local freeway bottle neck, whether you like/dislike the keystone XL pipeline, balance of trade, State and National budget issues, deficits, drug wars and illegal immigration from/ through  Mexico, and it being impossible, demographically to change your congressional district, short of a redraw. The most large ever, Polish delegation to visit Ukraine hit town this week, certainly a prosperous, secure Ukraine is in their best interest. Ukraine ought to have done half as well, at least as Poland since they gained independence. There's Plenty of free advice going around. If you live in Ukraine, were coping every day with news of a sizable,  heavily a...

    With the long holiday calendar coming to a close, I had a chance over the weekend to visit the Lavra, walking from the Pechersk Metro, not too far : my knee has been hurting me after I slipped on icy steps at New Year, it was made worse by getting whacked on swinging subway doors and crammed into tight mini- bus seating, it's feels like strained ligament connected to an old injury. Plus it's damp and cold now. As I descended from street level , My knee was complaining about those downward angled walkways, the irregular cobblestones. Very few people around yesterday. Casually meeting the workers in the cafes and such, being in contact with calming people, they exude the energy of the place.     There is a lot to see in the Lavra, but mainly it's about the caves, perhaps it feels macabre, yet it's their  collection of  the great leaders during those spiritual  times: A  lot of stories about their miraculous powers abound. There ...

     Last week, when I asked the driver of the Mashrutka how he was doing, he just placed my bag in the rear and didn't say a word, like how should I not know how he is doing ? They are charging the same rates for rides that they did more than a year ago, the purchase power of his income from this tough bit of driving is half what it was, or something like that. If you went into a working class bar where they serve cheap beer, and ask around, what do you think they are saying ? Something like, "how in the Hell did we end up in this mess ?" Ukraine did not ask for 8 million of it's citizens to get killed in WW 2, a lot of bad things went down, one of them I only read about today was : this typically nasty Nazi gambit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan and now Russia is thinking about the "turn off the gas plan" they have played up the Ukrainian Nazi thing to no end, it's really pretty sad people I hang out with, the straight up regul...

Today, the look of the morning Metro crowd of workers, I'd call it un- enthusiastically resolute, but there was some diversity, it's not that old style monolithic mood, some people looked happy, whimsical, other moods. Ukraine , a place where people are constantly struggling for change, and I don't mean that type of change where the Democrats take the house and the Republicans the Senate (we are a little boring ) : just at the grocery store, "do you have 2 grivnyas and 20 kopecks ? " Some times they don't even care, the value of your 80 kopecks is worth less than what it's worth for them to hang onto their change...They may give you a bad look : this guy doesn't have 20 kopecks in his pockets(( it is like 1 penny. Most of the time they'll dig it out of their purse, rather than eat it, that penny. I guess that George Soros was in town this week, wonder how much money he made shorting the Russian ruble ? He and President Poroshenko will catch...

I remember being with some friends, a little over a year ago in Dnipropetrovsk, we went out to get dinner and drinks, enroute our taxi had a little accident on Karla Marx Boulevard, we were crossing and another taxi simply didn't stop. Our taxi driver got out and said "my damage is more than yours " (in Russian). While it was a  slightly scary crash, no harm done, we quickly got out, paid the driver and left them to settle it, and we laughed about it, as it was endlessly funny. Our group included an important business man, with a strong reputation for running a good company, and his associate from the company. We were a happy, active company of people enjoying the favorite night spot in DP.      When I look back at my history, being in Simferopol for New Year's party last year, that moment, being on the Maidan in Kiev, for a good period of time talking to people, feeling it, meeting the people who risked their lives to defend their right to protest the r...

 Finding a pragmatic approach to fixing things in Ukraine and it's not like it's that broken, yet it's nearly a broken economic equation, one that needs a fast, decisive answer, be it that they give up on NATO membership or whatever it is. I have heard that the US $ trades for as much as 18 UAH privatelyMy instinct tells me that the voices of business carry a lot of weight, be it groups or individuals, I have heard it said that the big dogs will sort it out and decide how the pack will work together. Who  they are,  and how it did work in the past, will work in the future, I can't exactly say. Nearly every person I get to know will boast that they know some successful business man, how great he is, it's their culture, the culture of the big man. If they can forget about all this madness and return to normalcy, escape the patterns of the past and enter a streamlined modern, Pro European configuration that leaves good economic benefits for the Russian people, that ...