Ukrainian roop deployment makes confrontation likely
After recently pulling an all-nighter, I was reading the front page of the New York Times yesterday when, without warning, I was aware of the distinct smell of gunpowder in the air.
I licked my thumb and held it up in the breeze, testing the wind’s direction, to make sure that, yes, that smell was coming from the east. I looked back down at the article I was reading: “Ukraine Forces and Pro-Russian Militants Battle Over Local Police Station.”
So that was it. The Ukrainian powder keg was about to go off, and its implication for the world was heralded by the smell of gunpowder. All of it made logical sense.
A day later, and much less sleep-deprived, that experience still makes some kind of sense. The new Ukrainian government, literally backed into a corner, has finally decided to send its military force to secure its eastern provinces. Many eastern cities, most notably, Donetsk and Slovyansk, have been taken over by pro-Russian militant groups and, possibly, actual Russian agent provocateurs.
The confrontation between these men and Ukrainian forces are expected some time Monday, as outlined by Ukraine’s interim president. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are waiting, patiently, on the border. Even the tiniest hint of gunfire between Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian agitators would give the Russian government an excuse to barrel in to the conflict, in the name of “protecting citizenry.”
Match, meet powder keg.
If this doesn’t remind you of a middle-school lecture on World War I, it should. For the sake of the math majors (in all likelihood already bored at this point), I’ll put it like this: regional instability ethnic hatred international alliances Russia expansionist meddling = bad things happening in Eastern and central Europe. That last addend is of special importance: If the 20th century has taught us anything, it’s that when Russia feels like it can expand, it will.
Ukraine’s overarching political and economic dependency on the Soviet Union translated into a mere economic dependency on the newly-created Russian Federation. It had been under Putin’s thumb since his rise to power, until an unwelcome western-inspired uprising swiftly took them out of it. Putin isn’t a man who likes to see his property (or what he believes to be his property) taken away.
So what now? Here we have Russia: A “tandemocracy,” intent to keep its supposed property away from the EU and willing to concoct all sorts of lies and incitements to bolster its influence. They have manpower and the will to use it.
Does NATO have the similar, yet opposite conviction to keep the sovereignty of a U.N. member state intact? Although not a member of NATO, Ukraine’s new government, with its openness to western ideas, is worth looking at for tentative signs of democracy. Not to give it that chance is to abandon all hope of democracy for the average Ukrainian.
In any case, we’ll soon see what comes next. (What’s that smell in the air?)