The Ukraine

2014

Back in October 2013 I was in the Ukraine and the Crimea for two weeks. I’m guessing I won’t be back. Even then it was a divided country, with Russian flags flying here and there. The people were friendly enough, but not openly happy, mostly rather depressed appearing in fact. All this is not unlike the Russia I visited a few years earlier.

At one point there was a demonstration by communists waiving Russian flags. Exactly what do the Ukrainian people want to be? I’m not sure they know. The country is low income (average income about $1300 a month) and much in need of repair, every building seems to be “under restoration” as they say meaning work has started, scaffolding is up, but nothing appears to be happening.

The Ukraine is after all, the old Russia and Kiev was once Russia’s capital. Churches have thrones where Catherine the Great once sat.

The Ukraine suffers the vestiges of the Soviet Union as do most Eastern European countries. So now we have the new Russia again helping to turn the Ukraine into chaos. There seems to be no peace and little hope for the countries that were victims of the Yalta Conference, ironically held in the Crimea.

Russia wants recognition and respect as a great country of the world and why not, it should be and could be except for the near century of everything brought upon it in conflict to that goal. In the 21st century it still has a dictator by any other name, it still sees respect through aggression and it’s leaders still do not understand the real meaning of greatness or exceptionalism (except in the negative sense).