What Is Ukraine's Future

The map shows the political divide that has developed since the country gained independence in 1991. Daily Mail

With President’s Departure, Ukraine Looks Toward a Murky Future -- New York Times

KIEV, Ukraine — As ranks of riot police officers, Interior Ministry troops and even the president vanished Saturday from the capital, Ukraine slipped, with often-eerie calm after months of tumultuous protests and a week of bloody mayhem, into the hands of revolution.

Gone along with President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who had fled to eastern Ukraine, was any trace of a Friday peace deal that had sought to freeze the country’s tumult by trimming the powers of the president while allowing him to stay in office until the end of the year.

At the president’s mist-shrouded residential compound just outside the capital in Mezhgorye, Sergey Belaus, a major in Ukraine’s State Protection service, said he had handed over control of Mr. Yanukovych’s living quarters and his tennis court to the head of a small band of antigovernment militants at 9 a.m.

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My Comment: So .... a corrupt but democratically elected President with one year left in his mandate is overthrown by the mob. To say that I feel very uncomfortable with what is happening in Ukraine is an understatement. After the political fallout .... I expect the economic one to be even more severe. Ukraine is broke .... and is facing default on it's debt obligations. Runs on the banks by depositors grabbing their money in the fear that they may lose their deposits have been reported. Businesses are at a standstill. And everyone is now wondering if they will get paid (from work, pensions, government salaries, etc.). I do not expect any help from the EU (they are also broke) .... and as for the U.S. .... the White House and the State Department are completely out to lunch on what is happening there. The only country that can help is Russia .... but I know that they are not going to give one cent to this interim (and in Moscow's eyes illegitimate) government.

But what is more worrisome to me is the seizure of power by Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine is a deeply divided country along ethnic and political lines ....and if the more radical Ukrainian nationalists get their way (purging the government of Russians, laws limiting the use of the Russian language, discriminatory laws, targeting assets owned by Russians, etc.) .... I can all but guarantee that the Russian part of Ukraine will rebel with votes of succession from Ukraine. Will Ukrainian nationalists accept the division of the country .... I doubt it .... and like Yugoslavia in the 1990s .... a civil war is possible. Peter Hitchens is spot on in his analysis on what may happen.