News from Crimea circa 1850

Photo taken September, 2009
Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
1850s Living Museum, Gold Rush Town

Romanian grapevine revolution

Foreign Minister details 'messianic' Moldova meddling

Moldova's coat of arms - the only difference

between Moldovan and Romanian flags

(balkans360.com)

Months after snatching Serpent's Island from Ukraine, Romania’s Foreign Minister admitted that Romanians were involved in the protests that rocked neighbouring Moldova after elections last week. The poorest European republic’s “pro-European” communist party (PCRM) won a majority to the legislature it has dominated for the last eight years.

Mobilized via Internet, 10,000 mostly youth reportedly took to the streets of Chisinau to protest against the commies and their leader Vladimir Voronin, who has ruled Moldova as president since 2001. Some waved the flag of Romania (that is identical to that of Moldova sans coat-of-arms). Many went overboard and vandalized the parliament building (estimated $40 mln in damages) and presidential offices. Police reportedly detained 200 protesters. (Protests had subsided by week’s end, when “pro-European” communist Voronin, by now enjoying Russia’s support, announced an election recount.)

While lamenting Chisinau’s decision to cancel visa-free travel for Romanians, Romania’s top diplomat Cristian Diaconescu also publicly confirmed that Bucharest has been in the business of giving out passports to Molodovans. He accused Moldova of failing “to act according to the European pattern.”

Additional details about Romanian involvement in the protests, presumably done under the pretext of “getting Moldova closer to Europe” were revealed by Diaconescu during his April 9 press briefing in Bucharest:

“Starting with yesterday [April 8], the authorities in Chisinau carry out a methodical operation for the identification of the persons that participated in the manifestations that took place on 7 and 8 April, 2009. From the …General Prosecutor of the Republic of Moldova we understand that there are also foreign citizens among the 200 persons that are said to be arrested. We have also sent a notification and we are launching a firm and insisting call to the authorities of the Republic of Moldova to officially state the number of Romanian citizens arrested…”

“Thirdly… the internal situation of this State [Moldova] raises important issues regarding the safety of the Romanian citizens to whom we recommend to avoid the travels (sic) to this country. We know that this recommendation makes it difficult for the people with double citizenship, especially because the Orthodox Eastern (sic) is near. Unfortunately we have to make such a recommendation, following the actions and measures taken at Chisinau.”

“…we will continue to support the Republic of Moldova to get closer to the European Union. We consider that this action remains the best option for the citizens of the Republic of Moldova and for the consistency of the Romanian foreign policy during the last years.”

Diaconescu said that Romania has requested “solidarity” from the EU and NATO “to counteract the deviations from the standards of democracy and of the international law, which, at this moment, we think that it represents a sources (sic) of instability in the region were (sic) our country lies.”

Developing:
Ukraine asked to extradite alleged riot financeers Gabriel Stati and Auren Marinescu, both detained in Odesa after the violent protests



Diaconescu's full April 9 press conference:
http://www.mae.ro/index.php?unde=doc&id=13300&idlnk=2&cat=4

Stalins and Lenins under attack

Pottering loses something in translation as Regions, commies miffed

European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering addressed the Verkhovna Rada on Monday speaking in the local tongue to the delight of most of the narodni deputaty who initially clapped in approval when the conservative German politician uttered a sentence in transliterated Ukrainian.

But the white-haired Saxon began losing some of the crowd when he spoke about the democratic freedoms gained by the “Orange Revolution.” Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych may have been among those audibly grumbling disapproval at the mention of late December 2004, when he saw the presidency slip away to Western-backed Viktor Yushchenko. “Is there a problem? A problem with translation?” Pottering asked the restless Rada members.

The communists demonstratively did not clap or rise to honor the president of the European parliament after his speech: Pottering mentioned the Holodomor and lamented the fact that other countries in the region have not come to terms with their Stalinist past like Ukraine has. He put the Soviet Union’s communists in the same league with Germany’s national socialists, landing a black eye to Ukraine’s Leninists (who also saw the rear ends of their proletarian fuhrer’s statues blown off in Russia and Luhansk oblast in the first week of April [see links below]. But the marxists in neighboring Moldova had cause to cheer on April 6, as election results showed that former Soviet republic’s ruling communist party scored a 60 seat majority in Sunday’s parliamentary poll. However Moldova’s communist party is described as being “pro-European,” oddly enough).

Pottering also had a clear message to Ukraine when it comes to changing its constitution:
“Of particular importance for Ukraine is the implementation of a proper constitutional reform, which would establish a viable system of checks and balances and define clear distribution of competences between all branches of power, on the basis of the recommendations issued by the Venice Commission,” he said.

Last week, President Yushchenko said that the constitutional reforms he submitted to parliament on March 31 will be submitted for scrutiny of the constitutional legal beagles based in the Italian city.

Yushchenko’s proposed changes include the introduction of an upper parliamentary house that would be elected directly with equal regional representation (three senatory per region). The electoral system would also be changed to include open list proportional representation in the lower house (occupied by deputaty). Yushchenko’s version would have the presidency cede powers of formation and oversight responsibilities for the premier and cabinet of ministers to the lower house as a way of combating the dualism currently plaguing Ukraine’s executive branch.

Improving the constitution has become a legacy issue for Yushchenko in the last year of his presidency. Ukraine’s parliament ordered presidential elections to be held on October 25 instead of January 17, 2010, as the president initially suggested.

This week Yushchenko agreed to even earlier presidential elections, if voters are given the opportunity to simultaneously elect a new Rada and the deputaty agree to give up their immunity from prosecution.

The back-and-forth can be expected to last until sufficient political consent is manufactured to provide the 300 votes necessary to push through constitution-changing, veto-overriding votes in the already fractured parliament. And you can bet your bottom hryvnia that not too many deputaty are willing to gamble their cushy seats and in early elections… for many it’s possibly their last time at the personally-lucrative parliamentary trough and far from the expected five-year term: the current Rada was elected only 19 months ago in Sept. 2007.

Then, early elections were made possible only after the Cabinet of Ministers led by Yanukovych agreed to finance the elections. But Yanukovych is now in opposition and the premier post is currently occupied by Yulia Tymoshenko, who has her own presidential bid to worry about.

====

For Lenin statues under attack:

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-04-05/Lenin_statues_under_attack.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7976883.stm

Back to Bicameralism

President Yushchenko delivered what’s supposed to be an annual address to parliament on the last day of March. (He was prevented from doing so last year by MPs loyal to erstwhile orange ally and prime minster Yulia Tymoshenko).

On paper, Yushchenko’s speech was very strong, but the delivery appeared strained on the tube. For starters, the president was not in friendly territory and many politicians rejoiced that this was “the last time” this person would ever address parliament. Opposition MPs hung caricatures of the president and provided a suitcase with an oversized one-way airline ticket from Kyiv to Washington. One of the caricatures depicted Yushchenko pointing like Uncle Sam and declaring “You poisoned the president!” (In the afternoon, MPs voted to re-create an ad hoc commission to investigate Yushchenko’s 2004 poisoning and re-appointed KGB veteran Volodymyr Sivkovych as its head.)

Yushchenko’s speech was received like a lame duck. Legislators did not stop babbling while the president reported on the state of the republic and outlined strategic national priorities. The shoom in the room turned into catcalls when Yushchenko announced that he thinks Ukraine needs a bicameral parliament, with an upper house Senat (3 senators per oblast, direct representation) and a lower house called Palata Deputativ (elected according to an open list proportional system). In order to eliminate the current dualism paralyzing the executive branch, Yushchenko’s model would have the Cabinet of Ministers fully subordinate to the Rada (instead of president and parliament) including in foreign affairs and policing that are currently in the presidential purview. The lower house would be fully responsible for forming and controlling the Cabinet of Ministers - another concession from the presidential office.

The idea of the upper house was immediately criticized across the board: it’ll be nothing else but a resort or reserve for oligarchs or lords who are able to spend their way into their senate seats. Yushchenko argued that bicameral models are standard practice in European countries like Czech Republic, France, Poland and Spain.

The idea of creating a bicameral parliament is not a new one for Ukraine. Back on April 16 2000, the majority of Ukrainians (over 80 percent) supported the idea of introducing a two-chamber legislative branch, lowering the number of parliament deputies from 450 to 300 and eliminating immunity from prosecution for MPs. The referendum, initiated by then President Kuchma, was called a farce by the opposition. Five months after the referendum, journalist Heorhiy Gongadze disappeared and Kuchma soon had other things to worry about than over constitutional reforms.
Kuchma would not revisit the issue in a big way until his Independence Day speech in 2002, when he single-handedly announced that Ukraine was going to change over to a “parliamentary-presidential” model of government (in place of the “presidential-parliamentary” model that Kuchma enjoyed during his decade-long rule).

That constitutional time bomb was laid by Kuchma’s new administration head Viktor Medvedchuk, socialist Oleksandr Moroz (supposedly Kuchma’s arch enemy) and commie Petro Symonenko, but did not go off until Yushchenko term as president. Kuchma never saw his presidential powers limited – some would claim circumcised, not quite castrated – the way Yushchenko did. According to the reforms, the president is supposed to be weak!

The fiercest critics of Yushchenko’s constitutional reform announcement point to its timing: “Hello!!! There’s a crisis in the country – factories shutting down, jobless rates rising, banks are holding back money (etc.)… and you’re wasting time rewriting the constitution?”
In fact, Yushchenko’s proposed changes to the Constitution have been on the table since 2006. I

Politicians of all stripes repeatedly sing the same song during the marathon political talk shows bombarding viewers nightly: the current proportional electoral system is in desperate need of fixing. But no party or bloc in the current Rada has actually done anything about. Despite promising voters they will lift immunity from prosecution for legislators, the lawmakers have failed to do so. MPs naturally want to hang on to their seats as long as possible. Plus parliament is so fractured that the task of gathering the more than 300 votes necessary in the 450 member chamber seems insurmountable. The rare occasions this Rada has seen more than 300 MPs vote together are when Tymoshenko’s BYuT and Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions combined forces to pass legislation and override presidential vetoes. Do they have a draft Constitution ready an alternative to the president’s vision? Now that’s question for Viktor Medvedchuk.

Sivkovych’s website (last updated December ’07):
http://www.sivkovych.com/ua/

Armies of the north east and south west

Russia and Romania wedge Ukraine

The Ides of March woke the Russian bear salivating at the prospect of Ukraine losing its sovereignty and falling apart. That’s understandable and even predictable when it comes to the country’s largest neighbor to the north and east. More alarming is that Ukraine’s disintegration is waking appetites in the belly of Romania to the south west, who also happens to be a NATO member.

While Russian strategists declare Ukraine “a failed state” on the verge of losing its sovereignty, some Romanian officials and media are suggesting that only part of Ukraine, with its capital in Lviv, can ever come under the alliance’s euroatlantic umbrella. In addition to delivering the informational wedgies, both Romania and Russia are handing out passports to Ukrainian citizens in their bids to restore territorial glories of eras gone by.

Unfazed by the reset relations with the new US administration, Russian Cold warrior and imperial policy guru Sergei Karaganov recently said that Ukraine will inevitably join the list of failed states – a list that currently numbers a dozen countries, but will grow in geometric proportions across the globe. Karaganov argued that the process of “desovereigntization” of one state can be managed by stronger states in times of stability, but the global financial mess only compounds problems.

“As a result of the Ukrainian government’s loss of control over their own territory, mad desuverenizatsiya is occurring there, but not to the benefit of some foreign force. It’s simply the breakdown of the state. That is completely obvious. And the situation is unacceptable – on its own the state is a little too large.”

Karaganov said that Russia and Europe do not have the right to let Ukraine fall apart. “I think the process will be drawn out and can be controlled, influenced in some way. But it’s completely unacceptable to let affairs spin out of control. I do not see any chance that Europe will give Russia the carte blanche to occupy Ukraine, as a whole or in parts, in the near future. However Russia does not want to see a completely unmanaged territory at its side… and Russia will not allow anyone to display excessive activeness. That’s because the Cold War is not yet over and the level of mistrust still runs high and the super powers cannot work together to deal with existing challenges.”

In wake of already strained relations (Serpent Island territorial dispute, Danube delta shipping dispute, Romania and Ukraine expelled diplomats on espionage charges earlier this year and Romanian president Traian Basescu indefinitely postponed a visit to Ukraine) Romanian and Russian media circulated a sensational statement concerning Ukraine’s future by Romanian army general and elected senator Ioan Talpes (head of the Romanian SIE Foreign Intelligence Service from 1992 to 1997):

“In conversation, a high-ranking NATO official confessed that the North Atlantic Alliance can be joined by a part of Ukraine with the capital in Lviv, meaning the division of the country into the western and eastern parts. …”

So now Ukraine is surrounded by two countries subscribing to Vladimir Putin’s vision of Ukraine’s division. The Ukrainian Center's for Independent Political Research Ilona Bilan provided a great report on the state of Romanian-Ukrainian relations:

“… According to Moldovan political scientist [Oles] Stan, the international community represented by the West has assigned Ukraine the role of not only ‘loser’ but also ‘victim.’ The process of Ukraine’s disintegration will occur according to the same principle as the split of the USSR and Yugoslavia, since Kyiv allowed the challenge of its borders inherited from the Soviet Union. He also underscored Romania has no intention of limiting its interests to Snake Island, as seen from behaviour of official Bucharest, which assures Ukraine support for EU and NATO integration on the one hand while meddling with its internal affairs on the other.”

“A deputy of the European Parliament from Romania recently registered a bill on preferences for Romanian national minorities up to the creation of ethno-cultural autonomies. In addition, the media reported that positioning himself as the collector of Romanian lands, [president Traian] Basescu has publicly challenged the borders established by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, under which Romania lost a part of its territory - Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. … the idea of ‘Greater Romania’ is deeply ingrained in the head of the Romanian ruling elite. Taking small steps, Bucharest is realizing its plans by giving out Romanian passports to residents of the Odesa region and Bukovina and trying to integrate these territories not only economically and culturally but also politically.”

“The Romanian minority in Ukraine enjoys much broader rights than the Ukrainian one in Romania. In the Chernivtsi region alone, there are some 140 schools and kindergartens providing tuition in Romanian; periodicals are published in Romanian; TV and radio programs are broadcast in Romanian; Ukrainian citizens study in Romanian higher institutions on preferential terms. According to data of the 2001 Census, more than 50 percent of Ukrainian Romanians do not speak the national language…”

“Nevertheless, Bucharest regularly attempts to accuse Ukraine of violating rights of citizens of Romanian origin and engages in open anti-Ukrainian propaganda. Romania is doing its best to convince Moldovans who live in Ukraine that they are Romanians, because if 20 percent of the population of a certain region represents a national minority, this gives grounds to demand the creation of an ethno-cultural autonomy. Hence, while Ukrainian authorities try to oust Russian TV channels from the Ukrainian information space and to reduce the number of education establishments offering tuition in Russian, on the territory of Ukraine Romania insistently creates its information and cultural space that has long ago expanded beyond the bounds of the Romanian border and has taken on political overtones.”

‘Nikom ne nuzhni chudishcha: desuverenizatsiya Ukrayiny,’ Interview with Sergei Karaganov, Russki Zhurnal, March 20, 2009
http://www.russ.ru/layout/set/print//Mirovaya-povestka/Nikomu-ne-nuzhnye-chudischa

‘Unfriendly Steps of a Friendly Country,’ by Ilona Bilan, Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research Update, March 24, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 8(568)
http://www.ucipr.kiev.ua/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=603276887&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Battle for Crimean minds

+ Stalin rehab alert

A mother found the following version of history in her son's grade 8 notebook from a lesson delivered by a teacher (identified only as Alexandr A) at Simferopol's Lyceum No.1 in Crimea earlier this month:

"The word Ukraine is derogatory, it means 'borderland.' The word Ukraine was made legal in order to divide [the country]. We do not live in Ukraine, we live in Russia. Rus was baptized, not Ukraine. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities, not Ukrainian. In order to maintain unity of the Russian people, we should not recognize a state such as Ukraine. The Ukrainian people and language do not exist."

In Sobytiya's "Schoolchildren are taught to hate Ukraine," Crimean newspaper journalist Lana Myrnaya found officials at the school and in the autonomy's education ministry dismissed the need to take immediate action against the historian who's merely providing 12 year-olds with "his own point of view."

But an article about Russia's New History in the Sept. 20 edition of Dzerkalo Tyzhnia suggests that teacher Alexandr A. is merely following the history educational guidelines approved by the Kremlin.

In the article history PhDs Ihor Hyrych and Olena Radzyvill review resurgent Russia's rewriting of history in "New Russian Stalin, or constructors of the 'bright past'." According to a speech delivered by Moscow Memorial head Arseny Rohynsky in Paris, December 2007, the new Russian history textbooks and teachers' guides admit Stalin was bad, but spend more time focusing on the positive aspect of Stalin's thirty decades of bloody rule. Here's how the Holodomor in Russia is explained away:

"Yes, many villagers (peasants) died or were subject to other repression during collectivization, but an agricultural economy was given an industrial base; yes, industrialization was conducted on account of the peasantry and using violent methods, but in place of agrarian Russia there came an industrialized USSR; yes Stalin organized mass repressions, but he won the war…" and "Stalin was an effective 'manager'"

This whitewashing of Stalin for the Holodomors, purges, terror, Molotov-Ribbentrop, Katyn and demonization of Ukraine and Poland is part of the new Russian Ministry of Education's State Standard for teaching history.

This standard, used for all textbooks for all grades has resulted in "the latest Putin-era textbooks treating Russia's history from a position of strength, justifying militarism and the Russian state's aggressive designs. They include xenophobic treatments, demonize other nations and formulate a clear image of the enemy, thus recreating the old bipolar model of the world from the times of J. Stalin to L. Brezhnev."

Concerning the enemy "what is good and positive from Europe and North America's point of view is not good for Russia, it's negative," according to the authors.

The "Third Rome's" geopolitical designs include the Balkans and Asia Minor.

As for Molotov-Ribbentrop and two years of joint Nazi-Soviet collaboration, Russian teachers tell their students that Stalin was forced to do so, otherwise Hitler would have strukh a deal with Great Britain to attack Soviet Russia.

On Sunday afternoon, with just under 22.5 million votes, nameofrussia.ru had Stalin in second place, 300,000 votes behind Alexandr Nevsky and less than 100,000 votes ahead of Peter I. I was able to cast a vote for Mendeleev from the list of twelve, but only after correctly answering a multiple choice history question – a clever filter to make sure that only Russians can vote for their greatest.

Links:

Schoolchildren are taught to hate Ukraine by Lana Myrnaya (Russian, Sobytiya, Sept. 12, 2008):
http://www.sobytiya.com.ua/index.php?number=136&doc=1221207546

New Russian Stalin, or constructors of the 'bright past' by Ihor Hyrych and Olena Radzyvill (Ukrainian, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Sept. 20):
http://www.dt.ua/3000/3150/64125/

Will the tongue lead to Moscow? by Valentyna Samar (Ukrainian, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Sept. 20):
http://www.dt.ua/1000/1550/64140/

Russian Education Ministry's History Standard:
http://history.standart.edu.ru/

"Greatest Russian" project website:
http://www.nameofrussia.ru/

Crimea on my mind

One can only hope that the warmongers and analysts are wrong and that the Kremlin’s keepers, drunk from “victory” in Georgia, are not seriously considering an invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea. But the situation in Crimea is very different and a South Ossetia scenario seems unlikely. First, Southern Ossetia was de facto a war zone before the events of 8-8-8. Second, Ukraine’s president has been called a lot of thing, but "hothead" is not one of them. The only way Russia could conceivably justify invading Crimea would be if Russians began being killed. Rumors abound that the FSB is preparing cells of jihadists in the peninsula to provide the pretext for military annexation. In may well be in the realm of fantasy, but Moscow has resorted to similar trickery in the past. Recall the NKVD units that posed as UPA soldiers during WWII and killed innocent civilians disguised as nationalist freedom fighters.

This of course does not mean that the situation in Crimea does not warrant attention. Last week, I had the opportunity to talk about Crimea with Oleksandr Skipalsky, a 40-year veteran of Soviet and later Ukrainian intelligence services and Boris Kozhin, the first commander of independent Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet. Both men cautiously praised president Yushchenko’s words and actions vis-à-vis Georgia but warned of the problems posed by the country’s increasingly dysfunctional state apparatus.

Vice admiral Kozhin spoke frankly about Ukraine’s ability to prevent Russian ships from returning to Sevastopol. He said that Ukrainian forces are incapable of physically blocking the Russian boats with ships, mines or bombs of their own. But Ukraine was right in making the declaration and sending the right signals through diplomatic channels: “Now the world knows our position.”

Concerning Crimea, Kozhin said that twenty to twenty-five thousand of the peninsula’s residents have already been already granted citizenship and passports by Russia. Skipalsky said that in comparison to South Ossetia, Russia has completed about 50 to 60 percent of the groundwork in Crimea. He said that the Kremlin’s Crimea-based initiatives are systemic in nature and worked down to the nitty-gritty details: when Russia opens a school in Crimea, the event is not just about a school-opening: it’s a military event, a media event, an intelligence event, all geared towards creating “positive influence” in Crimea. He criticized the Ukrainian government for failing to take a systemic approach to affairs in the peninsula.

I asked Skipalsky about the last time the specter of Crimean separatism reared its ugly head and the formula for success in its defeat. It was the year 1994 and Kyiv was embroiled with its own economic and political problems as “nationally-conscious” president Leonid Kravchuk was in the process of being replaced by “pro-Russian” president Leonid Kuchma. Crimea elected its own president in February of 1994 – vehemently pro-Russian Yuri Meshkov, who campaigned on promises of holding a referendum on Crimean independence and joining Russia, introducing Russia’s ruble as the peninsula’s currency and dual citizenship. “Meshkovshchina” is the term used to Crimea separatism of that vintage and many of the same faces were around then that are around now, including Konstantin Zatulin. Skipalsky said that the separatist movement was funded by a drugs-for-cash spetz-operation to Turkey organized by Russian intelligence. Meshkov lasted in office for a little over a year until the presidency was abolished

With the political mayhem in Kyiv and the country’s hyper-inflated economy in general, it would seem that Crimean separatism had very high chances of succeeding in 1994-1995. How was it averted back then?

Some Ukrainian politicians take credit for avoiding the loss of Crimea to Russia. But Skipalsky said that ultimately it was Russian president Boris Yeltsin that put the kibosh on Crimean separatism in 1995. "Yeltsin stopped it. Yeltsin did not want it." The problem today is that Yeltsin is no longer the Kremlin’s keeper.