Russia is on a roll, feeling truly imperial with the "little Russians" next door in Ukraine. The new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, has acted more like Ded Moroz, handing out gift after gift to the Kremlin. First and foremost, there was the quarter century extension to the lease for the Russian Black Sea fleet at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Ukraine's opposition accused Yanukovich of selling out the country's sovereignty for cheap Russian gas. While maybe not as explosive but more symbolic, Yanukovich assuaged Russian sensibilities again, opining that the 1930s famine was not a genocide as most Ukrainians feel and the country's parliament has ruled. And now it's Moscow's turn to add to Ukraine's humiliation. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Russian gas giant Gazprom to swallow up Ukraine's gas transit system.
It's been a good week for Moscow vis-a-vis ties with their Slavic brethren in Ukraine. First, the Kremlin secured a 25-year extension to the lease for its Black Sea fleet. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin smirked smugly as Ukrainian lawmakers rocked and socked amid the a haze from smoke bombs to ratify the extension, which opposition gadflies blasted as a sellout of Ukraine's sovereignty. For Russia, Yanukovich was paying immediate dividends. But he wasn't finished. Now, Yanukovich has had a rethink on the Holodomor, the Stalin-era 1930s famine that Ukrainian patriots, as well as more than a dozen countries, have classified as a genocide.Yanukovich said that Holodomor was “a consequence of Stalin’s totalitarian regime,” but cannot be called genocide against any particular nation, since mass famine was a tragedy for all countries in the Soviet Union.
Twenty four years after a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the nightmare is far from over. As another anniversary ticks by, attention for a moment turned to the former power plant and the threat it still poses. In particular, the huge concrete sarcophagus that entombed the destroyed the reactor. The concrete was plastered together pell mell after the accident and the work was roughshod. Not surprisingly, the concrete tomb hasn't held up well, and needs to be replaced, or else it could all come crumbling down, unleashing radiation still trapped inside.
Fisticuffs, smoke bombs, and a legislator hiding behind an umbrella to avoid the barrage of eggs hurled his way. Such was the scene Tuesday in Kiev, where Ukraine's law givers convened to ponder whether to allow Russia's Black Sea fleet to stay moored at Ukraine's port of Sevastopol for an addition 25 years. The decision by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was a Faustian bargain. Ukraine, tipped to the economic edge by the global financial crisis, is desperate to save money any way it can. In return for the Black Sea fleet lease extension, Moscow is dropping gas prices to Ukraine about a third. However, many Ukrainians, the more patriotic in the Western parts, see the pact as nothing more than a loss of sovereignty and act of treason.
The NATO leviathan wants more prey, and the elites in Bosnia are offering their fractured, internationally supervised state, on the military tray. At a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Tallinn, Bosnia had the honor of being issued the dazzlingly named Membership Action Plan, or MAP, which spells out the dos and don'ts to joining the globe's preeminent war machine. Amid a period of warming relations with Russia, NATO is doing its darnedest to piqued Russian paranoia. Croatia and Albania were lassoed into NATO last year. Montenegro got its own MAP back in December. If the statelet of Montenegro and the basket case of Bosnia join, NATO jumps to 30 members.
The election of Viktor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine is starting to pay big time benefits to Russia. In a bit of horse trading to secure lower prices for Russian gas deliveries, Yanukovich has agreed to allow the Russian Black Sea fleet to remain anchored at Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Sevastopol until 2042, tacking on a 25-year extension to a lease that was due to expire in 2017. Yanukovych made the deal with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the eastern city of Kharkiv on April 22. Brimming with glee over the deal, Medvedev said it would bring better European security to the Black Sea basin.
The financial tsunami has knocked down one European economy after another. Greece is one heart beat away from economic ruin, an EU cash catheter keeping it alive. Greece is part of a new acronym of the economic down-and-outers, including Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, all mired in high unemployment and low growth. In Hungary, frustrations over the economy catapulted into power a far-right party equipped with its own Nazi-like guard. All is not gloom and doom, however. But the good news can't be found among the sophisticated, and seasoned economies of western Europe. Rather it is the former East Bloc, Poland, to be exact, that has weathered the storm the best. Remember the fears of the Polish plumber?
