Brexit at Tiffany's
The Revolution of Dignity , as it's called now, or during the actual event , of which I was a shoulder to shoulder witness to the central advent of the Euro Maidan that precipitated the hostile takeovers of territory in Crimea, the Donbas region, it arose in Protest of an abrupt reversal to what most people thought was a more easy way to modernize Ukraine's Economy , help cleanse it of the rampant corruption , Kleptoparasitism of the Yanukovych regime. I think that there are some errors in the estimation of the regime's taking from Ukraine, in that his taking of wealth was rampant during the period he was Governor of the Donetsk Oblast. The press, media seems to float a low number of 100 million US $'s yet I have heard that in total, Clan Yanukovych stole closer to 100 billion US $'s. And of course his Kleptocracy was encouraged as a way to weaken Ukraine's defensive capabilities.
European integration was a widely supported idea by people, and it offered many advantages, didn't seem to have many latent limitations on trade with the Russian economy. Yet 8 or 10 months before, during the spring of 2013, the Russian President travelled to Kiev , Ukraine , and personally dressed down Victor Yanukovych in the privacy of his Presidential suite to tell him that the agreement was unacceptable, that there'd be consequences... Yet the Fortresslike US Embassy in Kiev seemed to mute the memo of this matter, something like "Oh that's only the Russian President blowing off steam" And it's true that Russia , despite it's vast land reaches, mineral wealth barely seems to equal our state of Texas, economically ( well that's a distortion, since the Grey economy of Russia is huge, and there's a massive Kleptoparasitic effect within Russia, wherein the governmental elites take the easy pickings from their Oligarchs.
In some ways, both Brexit, as an electoral process that lacked elucidation (a cogent explanation of it's true potential consequences ) and the Euro-Maidan with the resultant warfare, loss and damage to sovereign territory of Ukraine, are akin to Bookends, in an examination of modern economic and strategic flux. \
The media in Russian world seems to promote a regular mix of small worries and big concerns that fills people's minds with the Idea of all the things wrong in the West.
The Kremlin's disregard for bilateralism, throwing under the bus an amazing historical agreement, such as the Budapest Memorandum, coyly nudging Ukraine into opting to be a non-Nuclear state, then slowly inserting a corrupted political hierarchy , biding their time before cleverly leveraging the smallish greeds of useful foreign people like Mister Manafort to ultimately elect a Pro_Russian President (Victor Yanukovych).
Even then, to utilize Mister Manafort as a middle man, and a protagonist in the election of 2016, coupled with a diverse subset of tactics that were being honed in early 2010 in theTymoshenko/Yanukovych contest. Much as they used levers within UKIP in England, during the run up to the Brexit Vote. Any disruption of European unification, solidarity worked to their agenda.
My thoughts wrapping up this long, often difficult (for me and Ukraine) year, focus on the rapid escalation in the Sea of Azov, where that is going to go, if a Blitzkrieg is being readied that would attempt to capture the entire Coastal region from Mariupol, Berdyansk, all the way through the lowlands, marshes of Crimean territory. Yet if that were to take place, then the Nordstream 2 pipeline project would probably stop. I don't know how anybody (other than China and it's Eastern flanking neighbor states) would continue non-essential trade with Russia , it would be a terribly costly scenario. Possibly leading to a Nuclear standoff, or it is already nearly so close to that, with the recent arrival of a squadron of (some, Nuclear capable ) fighter jets landing at the Belbek airbase.
It's interesting thinking back to Doctor Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Michael Flynn sharing a table at an RT celebration with the Russian President, in that the outcome of their actions seems to have now led led to a strategic vacuum in the US military's leadership, a less peaceful , more aggressive (perhaps revanchist ) Russian state. Now I'm well inculcated in the values and thinking of the American Left, and I respect many of the core tenets of their thinking, (however crazy that could be ) as much as I respect many core beliefs of quite a lot of people on the center Right , politically.
Yet the joke seems hypothetically to be, that Doctor Jill Stein failed to make an appropriate judgement of what the Russian State RT (Russia Today ) Interests represents, it is not the 1% in Russia, it's the .00001% who hold and control all the wealth. Their agenda in Ukraine was compulsive, and obsessive as the Euro _Maidan escalated.
Russia, today is an ultra-exclusive cabal of a tiny sliver of individuals who enjoy a vast luxurious wealth, that they don't really pay much of any taxes on, and don't share with the common people. (it sounds like Trump's version of reality)
The crushingly low wages of common people , meager pensions, low quality of goods available in stores, it is obviously only getting worse.
With Doctor Stein's Russian promoted active pushing for shifting of votes, through her media, her perhaps relevant campaign, those activities tended to be quite significant., in the swing States lost on very narrow margins, pushing in the election of \ "Russia's guy" , she has perhaps enabled one of the most environmentally unfriendly US administrations in modern history, furthered the goals of the 1% in USA by reducing taxes, and so forth for the quite ultra wealthy. Not that I really care about who has money or why, it's simply their thing. I have no problem with that.
I guess one could take these things with a generous grain of salt. If Russia likes being a police state, with a rigid pecking order that ultimately leads to the Hen House of the Kremlin, at least they have "order" they aren't caught in the Chaos of Brexit, or the Yellow Vests of France (they are said to be promoting that activity to some extent , as certain persons in the protests, are alleged to have displayed the Separatist flags of Eastern Ukraine),
in Russia , there isn't the statistical urban gun violence of America. And they can quietly celebrate that they have truly turned the White House into the Dog House, at least for now.
Despite the Sea Change of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Autocephaly , via Constantinople , the people haven't actually changed much.
Most people I know aren't deeply religious, they are respectfully religious\.
Young people don't care so much, they want to have fun with friends, do cool stuff, be kind, and aware of things that affect them directly. In the spirit of the Holidays, I'd ask the Russian people to not think angry thoughts about their brotherly Neighbor Nation of Ukraine, not to think about the slideshow of Death, woundings and destruction , the misery of their hybrid war upon Ukraine,
but to ask, how hard it could be, for Ukraine to become a quiet House of Peace on the street of their neighborhood once more ? Many people have family that lives on either side of the many borders, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Hungary, Romania , Slovakia.
Maybe the difficult thing is that the Russia, the West can't afford to lose or win wars anymore, they need to keep selling expensive military toys and a rigid hierarchy, that has no room for negotiation.
The conflict could go on for 30 years, or end in 3-4 months, somehow, if there is a popular will for things to change, coupled with Diplomatic , economic and security agreements.
If Ukraine was going to disengage from NATO membership , they may well couple that with a plan to partially rebuild the Nuclear Missile arsenal they once dismantled, to once again join the Nuclear Club. Russian aggression gave them moral justification to build a nuclear deterrent, but that sort of deterrent probably doesn't make anybody more secure. Their best security tool kit lies in a robust economic integration with the global economy, improved business practices and a reasonably robust standing army that has some parity with their currently hostile neighbor.
I am not Anti-Russian in any sense, it's their aggression towards Ukraine I oppose. I'd like to see living standards rise in all of Eastern Europe, Russian Federation. Perhaps the trains, trucks and goods and people can flow freely and efficiently once more, who knows ?
at least they still have Victor Tsoi's music as a legacy (Kind of like a Russian Bob Marley) and I still like to listen to the music of Polina Gagarina, and Leonid Agutin. When Agutin teamed up with the famous Jazz guitarist AL Di Meola in 2009 (was it) I thought they produced a great release, still play it a bit. I'm sure Leonid Agutin gets pressured to make a reprise of his barefoot balladeer type videos on the beaches of ALushta , Yalta, someplace in Crimea like that, but I'd hazard a guess if he phoned up AL Di Meola to join up with him in some such project,
Al DiMeola might decline saying something like "that can be awkward for me, there's State Department Travel warnings and it's pretty much a front page war zone about to be breaking bad, sorry Buddy"
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