Es handelt sich um eine, wie ich finde, schön gelungene Zusammenfassung der derzeitigen politischen Situation in der Ukraine. Hier sind ein paar Auszüge:
Mehr: Nur eingeloggte Mitglieder sehen alle Links ...FOR anyone writing about Ukraine, language is always a problem. Not the Ukrainian that is favoured in the west of the country, nor the Russian that is still spoken in the east, but the language used to describe the country’s politics. The usual terms simply do not apply.
With Viktor Yanukovych, a thuggish president, in charge and his arch-rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, in jail, Ukraine is clearly not a democracy. But it is not a dictatorship either. Political power is a means of enrichment rather than governance. Street protests are scarce not because of fear of repression but because Ukraine is increasingly atomised. Opposition politicians are an extension of the business groups they claim to fight. Rules are flexible, allegiances fluid and the idea of an elite—a class of people responsible for the country—is almost meaningless. Oligarchs treat Ukraine as a cash cow. Graft is so rife that it is hard to see how any money at all is left in the budget. In the words of one foreign observer, Ukraine “resembles a car in a fog with no light and no map.” Surprisingly, it is still running.
But it is not following any particular route. With Russia pressing Ukraine to join the Eurasian Union and the European Union still trying to lure Ukraine into an association and free-trade agreement, Mr Yanukovych’s choice seems to be to do neither—justifying Ukraine’s name, meaning “borderland”. At a recent summit, the EU told Mr Yanukovych to take genuine steps towards political reform and to stop persecuting his political opponents if he wanted a deal. Yet within days, Ms Tymoshenko’s principal lawyer, Sergei Vlasenko, had been kicked out of parliament and charged with car theft and robbery. A few weeks earlier, asked at a press conference about the risk of being arrested, Mr Vlasenko showed a middle finger to Mr Yanukovych. Mr Yanukovych seems to have responded in kind, to the disbelief of many Western ambassadors.
Yet Mr Yanukovych is hardly more accommodating towards Russia. After Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, angrily lectured him about the benefits of the Eurasian Union, including cheaper gas, Ukraine started to buy gas from Hungary to reduce its dependence on Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant. Gazprom accused Ukraine of scheming.