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Ukraine: Winter And Reigniting The War
(While I am busy ..)
The Saker says something is up in Ukraine. He expects a Ukrainian offense after tomorrows election (in which the anti-coup opposition is given no real chance to compete).
As I wrote earlier I believe that Jack Frost makes a new military campaign unlikely. I am not sure which side would want to again heat up the low flame "truce" war that has waged over the last weeks. Though both sides seem to have some itch for it.
But it has started freezing in Ukraine and a winter-war would be mostly road-bound, difficult to proceed for both sides with some additional advantages for those defending build up areas. Tanks and trucks would get stuck in muddy fields. It is not the environment in which one can expect wide space taking movements that would change the overall situation.
I am therefore scratching my head and wondering what military genius, obviously without any knowledge of World War II battles in Ukraine, would plan for such a campaign. It would be a quite lunatic endeavor.
The elections were done to cement the Kiev-East.
To augment a divide with the Donbass. To present a democratic face, legitimacy, and have the W applaud a new Gvmt, an anti-corruption one (not.) To this end, a plurality of political parties were allowed, which do present ideological differences (e.g. Svoboda vs. Opposition bloc.) These pol. parties are a re-shake, a re-mix, of many previous figures, oligarchic, hangers-on, etc. The only real pol. division, *if any*, and that has to be enphasised, is between the extreme nationalists or fascists and all the rest, who are concentrated on only on thing: their status, popularity, pocket-books, gains.. for ex. the money that will be made from privatization will be consequent. Whether Poro or Yats’ party (both new formations) win more votes is no account. Other parties, as we all know, were prevented from competing (Regions, Communists.) This applies to candidates as well: intimidation, threats, lustration, etc.
The bar to enter is high. To be a candidate from a district, which are subdivisions of Oblasts (50% of the seats) costs about 10,000 dollars, and around 100,000 for a party candidate. These are huge sums for Ukr. The money is returned only to those who win. These are the official rules. Ppl should stop thinking about the Ukr. parliament as if it were anything like a W parliament. It is simply a sink pit of money interests and criss-crossing aims and internal deals, rife with mafia-like and violent acts, and other things unmentionable. The ‘binning’ of some parliamentarians is a cute, funny meme for the intertubes.
These new election results won’t lead to any change, except to cristallize the E/W division. Poro is the W point-man, “pro-peace”, and they will support him, *for now.* Not with any amounts of money though, not to shore up the country/banks, pay the gas bills, support the local currency, re-build, etc. As for joining the EU, this is a pipe-dream that was sold to naive Russophobes, Kiev twitter-types, languid hopefuls, those who follow power always (now Poro) and bloodthirsty neo-Nazis (as a pretense of least-bad on their part, they are not for US / EU domination or jewish oligarchs, etc.)
The USA’s main aim in this story was to split Russia away from Europe. That has succeeded now. A secondary aim was to poke the Russian bear (the idea that Russia would intervene over the Ukr. matter and be provoked was utterly fantastic), shape W-world opinion against Putin > check that box. For the rest, nobody has any interest in continuing the conflict in Ukr. Except for the violent forces within Ukr. itself., some oligarch quarrels I presume, and the ppl. of Novorussia who with Russian support want to gain some independence / ties to Russia… well we will see.
Posted by: Noirette | Oct 28 2014 16:08 utc | 119
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