Rhetorical Ukraine

What are the words lightly exchanged on the street,
versus the camping out with friends in Nature,
or chilling in the quiet cafe on a lazy summer day ?

My brief  survey amongst the people who know me  outside the Kiev is simply this : They will admit business things aren't great for them, they carry on with  their lives in as much a normal pattern as possible, hope for the best and anticipate the least in results. They snicker about various  situations in their parliament, laugh about Russia , and yet for the most part they  are satisfied with the power structure that's in place , the Poroshenko administration has a reasonably solid foundation. The Revolution of Dignity , while it was fueled by rhetoric, along with facts, emotional references and public perceptions : people wanted  to gain their freedom, at any cost.  Yet what now is the result, was it worth it ? They think so :

It's hard for people to build trust when they've been  been mis-served,  for so many years by their government , and I can share it first hand, that the road through Romny Ромни , it  is really rough in some places: Victor Yushchenko's home area hasn't seen a lot of upgrades in the past 10/20 years. There is one spot in the road where an old railway track crosses, the brush and forest has overgrown it, where it once serviced some factory or something, and the road is just a complete wreck, a vehicle can barely go 1 kilometer an hour through the deep potholes everywhere. They are making repairs at major roadway hubs , and I've seen them doing seasonal bandage work on these country roads.

The road between Kiev and Odessa was supposed to be totally redone for the 2013 Euro soccer championships and that money as I hear it was heavily pilfered by the Yanukovych bandits. I don't know the real story of the road repair monies, how it got looted, mismanaged or lost in the shuffle. The new Prime Minister has staked his reputation on  getting the roads fixed, and I suspect it will be a  point of reference, these people are great with statistics, there is even a ministry of statistics or something like that, and those jobs are coveted.... But how people really manage on a government salary is difficult to fathom > Either they come in for a year or two, burn some savings, or just suffer the salary base as best they can. Without some investments or outside personal business, it would be hard to feed a family, pay rent and keep a car on the road.
It seems inevitable that they will get the East Ukraine fiasco sorted out, I think it's gotten to expensive for Russia to deal with, yet in what condition, under what conditions will they get it back ? Will there be a bill submitted for damages ? Repairs ? A lot of people are more than a little haunted by the whole thing. Donetsk went from being a civil, clean, orderly city filled with gardens of roses, to a broken , lawless town of thorns and random acts of terror. There appears to be a rabid hatred of Ukraine and Kiev, yet how much that can shift, to what extent it's simply a region filled with older pensioners and younger people basically working within some component of the Kremlin's payroll.

The real elephant in the room is essentially Crimea , clearly it's the bargaining chip Putin wants to keep in play vis-a vis Donbas . They had every reason for wanting Crimea, who wouldn't want such a scenic and strategic stronghold on the Black Sea?   And Ukraine will never agree to surrender it's sovereignty and rightful claim to govern it. I was there just before it all went down, talking to people, and during the lead up to the " referendum " knew people from Russian speaking families, who really, really weren't too keen on being usurped by the corrupt system of favoritism and patronage channeled by Mister Putin and his cronies. They liked Ukraine, more or less  as it was.
Russia had some success instilling  a simplified concept in the average person's  foggy recollections,  that there was some reasonably broad popular support,  yet  how is an election fair if it is managed by soldiers of a foreign power ? The argument by Russians that it was to correct a historical injustice doesn't make sense from several perspectives, historically or Geographically. But they are expert at blame shifting : several fruitless wars by the USA in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and so forth only made it a lot more easy to justify what they did.

It would be  like if California was invaded by Mexico, and people were given only 2 choices : to leave The United States of America , or to Join with Mexico : that would of course only be applicable in some sort of Terminator (the movie ) or perhaps an I-Robot (the movie ) scenario, or some other fantastic variant most people would currently find hard to imagine, but that was akin to the choice in the Crimea ballot referendum. But who knows ? Maybe the big beautiful wall built by The Donald will bring it on ?

For sure, it's a big unanswered question by both GOP and Democrats party platforms about Ukraine : Sanctions , what level of support to their defense and economy, investment incentives. It would appear quite possible Mister Trump can be persuaded to listen with a sympathetic ear to Russia about Crimea, that they can tempt him into "making an incredible deal" over the matter. But can he make a unilateral deal about it, without the approval of Congress and Senate ? Who knows ??
And Ms Clinton with her hodgepodge of issues, the private email server, Benghazi appears to be handled, yet I'm a bit disappointed  they haven't really owned up to the quite logical supposition that the overthrow of  Khadaffi was a plan set in motion during the Bush administration, that Obama went ahead with it : it's like a Bay of Pigs scenario , except with a different outcome. Everyone knows that the general who ran the opposition forces against Khadaffi, that he spent 5 or 6 years living in the US more or less in the same county as the CIA headquarters or something like that. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/unravelling
But for some weird reasons the Bush family likes Bill Clinton , and they are dead against the Trumpster for his ridiculing  of their Scion, The  Jeb : it's still possible that the next President of the United States could be none of the above,  if there is no outright victory in the Electoral College .

Because I know Crimean people, partied with them, had friendly discourse, and I see them, here and there in Ukraine, they often have more resources than most refugees, they are a people of means. I don't know from what that hidden prosperity derives, good business practices, good strategy, good alliances are likely attributes to their status.

The Tatar community  while figuratively  dispossessed of their property, and the ability to feel comfortable starting a business in their homeland , I see them around, looking comfortable, eating at restaurants. Maybe they don't show expensive clothes, flashy jewelry or watches , but they look comfortable : I wouldn't wish a fate like that on any people : being constantly watched by the FSB, arrested on arbitrary charges, disappeared  , or told that they must obey laws they weren't born to, pay taxes to a king they never asked for.  I worry that people I know personally, are at risk or even being held , worried about what the next day could bring to their dusty village in Crimea.
Their youth, with all their talent and abilities must have had to mostly leave, I don't know the percentages of 18-35 years old Tatars who've largely lost interest in remaining, but it has to be quite high : I wouldn't live under an occupation by a powerful and tenacious Nuclear Armed superpower, who's very survival, politically is inextricably tied to continuing an armed takeover of one of the world's most peaceful, untroubled  regions > we all knew there were a bunch of petty gangsters running a big part of the Crimean show, and they , along with the variant elements of a fairly corrupt parliament were easy to buy off, with the promise of rich spoils, some walking away from massive plus a million dollars loans against Ukraine's banks.
 The Ukraine press has got a lot of stories going about the dearth of tourist business in the Russian occupied Crimean Riviera , but Kiev itself is actually also fairly quiet : a lot of the cafes and restaurants that cater towards tourists are kind of empty, or even frighteningly empty looking. The waiters and waitresses care more about checking their social pages than on checking if a customer needs another beer, some dessert or some other thing like a check. They do have a lot to learn , it's lackadaisical and inattentiveness  that's a turn off,  for us Western formatted folks who do think of time as money yet don't want to be mean spirited or condescending about it. Of course the lack of attention leads to a significant motivation to stiff the waiter on their tip, and feeds the vicious cycle of poor service : It was also Ukraine somewhat neglecting Crimea,  due to that lack of good value and service, being drawn away by Resorts nicely built up in Turkey offering good deals and good service.    As I understand it, 2013 was also a mostly disappointing year for tourism in Crimea?  Yet it seems certain this scheme to take Crimea was on the planning board for quite some time . Who really knows how much autonomy Yanukovych clan felt that they had from the Kremlin ? , Certainly the Russian arguments seemed dissuasive of independent thinking. And what will they do with this deposed Kleptocrat ? Give him some award for making it more easy to correct  a "Historical Injustice "?

There doesn't seem to be any "Instant Karma" on the table for the bad players of Ukraine.
Some People are truly haunted about the war in their East, and what the eventual outcome maybe. As far as Crimea, I can't even begin to imagine when or how they can return it, short of a total collapse , reorganization of the power structure in Russia : some sort of move toward true Democracy.

Yet is THE USA, is it really having a Democratic election ? will the electronic balloting be completely safe, totally safe, infallible  ? People said that about Nuclear power for some time. We still have the mechanism in the Electoral College that allows for the entire election to be rendered null and void within a certain scenario : all this drama could  have no tangibly Democratic result.