Yanukovych Admits Defeat. We Now Await the Terms of Surrender.

Today Yanukovych expressed a willingness to disband the government of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and create a new government with Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the Batkivshchyna Party, as Prime Minister.  Vitaliy Klychko, the Leader of UDAR, would be made Deputy Prime Minister with a brief for Humanitarian Issues.  There is no news the leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok was offered a position in the government. [Ed Note -- this is how he spells his name in English, so I have adopted this over the Library of Congress transliteration used earlier.]  

Yanukovych’s offer was conditional and well below the minimum set by the Maidan, so he knew it would be rejected, as it was.  Indeed, it was designed to put the opposition in the corner by suggesting that by rejecting the offer the opposition showed that it was unwilling to accept the responsibilities of governing.  After turning in poor performances in their previous efforts to win support from the Maidan protestors, the opposition leaders finally found the right message tonight with the help of Petro Poroshenko, the only oligarch openly supportive of the Maidan.  In his speech he confirmed their rejection of Yanukovych’s offer but declared that this did not reflect the opposition’s unwillingness to accept the responsibilities of governance.

Yet, if the opposition is finally getting on track, today’s move really amounted to Yanukovych admitting of defeat.  For the past two months Yanukovych has played at being conciliatory, but always in ways designed to belittle the opposition.  At the first “round-table talks” arranged by the previous Ukrainian presidents in December, Yanukovych managed to include all sorts of supporters and seat the opposition well away from him.  Even the talks earlier this week, when Yanukovych offered nothing substantial to the opposition, and then only if the protests disbanded first, was also insulting, something that further hurt the opposition’s reputation with the Maidan protestors when they did not immediately address this insult during their speeches.  

Maybe the boos the folks on the Maidan gave the opposition finally convinced Yanukovych that the protestors were not in the pay of the West, or maybe it is it is the growing unrest even in what the Ukrainian East.  Most likely though it was a meeting with the oligarchs who urged a peaceful solution that finally forced Yanukovych to offer something that on the face of it at least had to be considered.   Yanukovych may not realize it himself yet.  He has dug and is still playing games, but today he admitted that he cannot go forward without acknowledging that the Maidan has won.  Having done that he cannot go back, because he has admitted weakness.  If that was not enough, this evening Maidan protestors stormed Ukrainian Institute (once the Lenin Museum), which was right behind the Maidan but had been used as barracks for special forces and Internal Troops.  They did not fight back, and more importantly, for the first time in a week the peaceful Maidan protestors regained center stage, when they formed a corridor to insure that the troops inside were able to leave the Ukrainian Institute unharassed.  

There will be many difficulties ahead.  We can expect more trickery by Yanukovych, and those that have stuck with him have more reason to stick by him as the prospect of punishment for what they have already done becomes real.  Still, in some ways the biggest obstacle has been overcome today, Yanukovych's denial that he is responsible to the Ukrainian people.  Sadly there are several stages of grief left to go before acceptance.

[Updated 26 January]

Where Is Russia in This? Or Why I Am Not Losing Sleep over a Russian Intervention in Ukraine, Yet

Things are now moving very fast in Ukraine, and if things continue as they have been, it is hard to imagine Yanukovych will last another week.  This raises the question of whether Russia will intervene?  Smart observers like Professor Mychailo Wynnyckyj (Kiev Mohyla Academy) are assuming that even if things get really bad, Putin will wait until the end of February when the Olympics in Sochi are over. That seems right, but even though I have never looked Putin in the eye and seen his soul, I do not think Ukraine can expect a serious military intervention soon afterwards either.

As the highly knowledgeable analyst Edward Lucas has reminded us this week, when Yanukovych and Putin reached the loan deal there was talk that Yanukovych would also have to put down the protests.  While we cannot know for sure, that seems to have been the plan this week, which leads one to wonder again, what was the rush?  As Lucas and others have noted the protests were again losing steam.  Perhaps, it was just impatience on Yanukovych’s part, but another possibility is that Putin gave Yanukovych a deadline, presumably the date next week when the first influx of money is to reach Ukraine.  

Now of course Putin wants to be sure he is not left holding bonds declared invalid by a new Ukrainian government, but really why would Putin insist that the clampdown happen at a time when Putin’s hands are tied during the run up to Sochi?  The reason was that he wanted to test whether Yanukovych could actually handle the job, and Sochi has given Putin the perfect excuse not to do anything, at least not more than send some Special Forces to age in the dirty war that has been going on against activists.  

It doesn’t look like Yanukovych is going to pass that test.  So Putin will not waste the blood of Russian soldiers to put Yanukovych back in control.  What is more, today’s events where even the rebellion is now taking place in key centers of the eastern half of the country will make it much more difficult to use civil war as an excuse to partition the country in the name of maintaining order.  Indeed, if today’s trends continue, it would be painfully clear to all that he was fomenting civil war, not preventing it.  

Of course Putin will not give up on his plans to bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold.  Among other things, the return to using Gazprom as weapon seems almost certain, but with Yanukovych gone and the Party of Regions discredited with him, Putin is going to have to cultivate a new ally, and that will take time.   

The Revolution Reaches the Next Stage

Four days ago, it looked like it was just a matter of time before Yanukovych had crushed the fighting on Hrushevskyi Street. The Internal Force troops (something equivalent to our national guard) would then move on and clear protests at the Maidan a few blocks away using the actions of those on Hrushevsky Street to justify any violence, even though the protests at the maidan had remained resolutely committed to non-violence.  That in turn would usher in a new phase of civil disobediance that would bring people out on the street in a week or two.  That of course did not happen.  The revolution proceeded to a new stage but because the fighting on Hrushevsky street carried on, giving the first indication of the soft support for Yanukovych among the Internal Forces.  One only had to consider that if those troops were unwilling to use deadly force against people attacking them, they were even less likely to fire on the unarmed and peaceful protestors at the Maidan to realize how weak Yanukovych’s hand had become.

That put Yanukovych in a bad position, that only looked worse the longer he was unable to bring things under control.  When 2 people were killed on Wednesday, the first time Ukrainian forces have ever killed Ukrainian protests he had to do something, and by the end of the day a truce had been called with talks between the government and the three parliamentary opposition for Thursday 24 January.  This proved to be a typical Yanukovych trick, however, as he offered no serious concessions, and instead seemed to be playing for time.  Parliament would be reconvened, but not until 28 January, and those arrested would be released if the the protestors abandoned their positions on Hrushevsky Street.  The opposition leaders dutifully brought that news back to the Maidan, and again disappointed by not immediately condemning these offers as unacceptable.  The Maidan rejected the offer, and extended its occupation to a couple more blocks of the government district in Kyiv.  

Meanwhile, people outside the capital, have seized the initiative.  Predictably mass takeovers of regional governments started in the West where several regions are under complete control of the opposition forces, but as it has become clear just how weak Yanukovych is that kind of rebellion is spreading fast.  The story is not over, and sadly that weakness has led his loyalists to increase disappearances and other shameful acts, but this does not look like a civil war, it looks like what we supporters had always hoped, the removal of a criminal regime that was willing to sell out the country for the price of some deaths and loan guarantees that would allow Yanukovych to continue to enrich himself.

See the map below as of the evening of 24 January.  

Crimson:  Taken

Red:  Blockaded and under siege

Pink:  Anti-government meetings

Where Things Stand in Ukraine after More than 24 Hours of Violence in Kiev: The End of the Beginning

When violence broke out in Kiev yesterday, the original instigators were identified as a radical right organization “Pravyi Sektor”  the Right Sector.”   Their involvement invariably leads to the question as to whether or not they were acting as provocateurs since they are a shadowy and small group whose base and funding are secret.  If indeed Yanukovych and his allies cynically enlisted the radical right yesterday as provocateurs to discredit the Maidan protests, as they have been accused of doing before, the Yanukovych team blundered terribly.  While the protests at the Maidan have remained peaceful, the “provocateurs” have become heroes.  From her cell imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has shown herself more in tune with many of her ostensible political allies who have spent time at the Maidan by declaring her support for those fighting government forces on Hrushevskyi street.  The inability of the government forces to restore order within 24 hours and without the use of deadly force cannot help Yanukovych either, since it makes him look weak.  That said, with reinforcements coming from Donetsk and with permission to use deadly force, it seems highly likely that government forces will eventually restore order, when they do a new stage in the revolution will begin. 

A Primer on the Situation in Ukraine

Returning After an Absence

For the past several years I have been distracted by many things, but recent events in Ukraine compel me to bring this blog back to life.  In the coming weeks, I will post thoughts here about the situation.  While I am not on the ground there myself, I count people who are among my friends and believe my insights will be helpful to those who are unsatisfied with the information they are getting about the unrest in Ukraine they are getting in western media.   I anticipate things will be unsettled in Ukraine for a while, so that should keep the posts coming at regular intervals for a while.

My absence and a few thoughts

I would like to thank anyone who has shown up here in recent months for their patience and dedication, and please forgive me for trying that patience by disappearing once again. For those not in the loop, since just before my last post I have been working as customer service representative for a major television provider. The stability of having a job allowed me to recognize that I basically could not move forward with any of my dreams and ambitions until my book on the emergence of Polish and Ukrainian nationalism in the Habsburg monarchy was completely revised. So I have dedicated my days off to that whenever possible and deliberately avoided thinking too much about something that would fit here.

I have made considerable progress in that direction, enough so that I have decided to weigh in on the issue raised by Newsweek's new article How Wall Street Rolled Obama. While I don't think I have it documented, I have felt since the 2008 that despite hopes and expectations, Obama would find it difficult to do anything comparable to what FDR did to restore confidence in the economy. The fact of the matter is, the political and economic cycles did not coincide in the way necessary for radical rethinking of economics that is now evident to more and more people. FDR was elected president 3 years into the Depression and took power close to 3 1/2 years after the 1929 crash. By contrast, Obama was elected less than 2 months after the collapse of Lehman, which put an end to the notion that the mortgage backed security crisis could be ridden out. While the crash did upturn 20 years of dominance of market fundamentalism in the community of economists by reviving Keynesianism, the immediate solutions, ham-fisted as they were, were undertaken out an immediate panic rather than the long-term frustration and desperation that was leading Herbert Hoover to make suggestions to FDR during the interregnum that FDR would take full credit for during the 100 days.

None of this means that Obama could not have been tougher or been a bit more ready to break with the economic establishment of Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner, but I am not so sure such a break would have been as politically feasible as some critics seem to believe. After all, if you the Republicans on Capital Hill can cynically maintain that the bailout was not necessary imagine what would have happened if Obama had chosen to nominate Paul Krugman or some other economist who is not tainted by the economic reforms that made this mess possible. The Republicans might even have blocked that person's nomination with even more heated rhetoric about how a socialist was now in the White House.

Now three years on the Republicans will do what they can to make hay out of the continuing economic crisis, but they do not have a plan, and electoral success may well hurt them even more in the long-run because it won't take long for that to become apparent once the election campaign is over, although that may just mean the election campaign will just not end until after November 2012. I do hope not, because it is now clear as it was to anyone willing to look at the damage done by the mortgage-backed securities bolstered hosing bubble cannot be remedied quickly and will require new creative thinking that will both stabilize the country and reign in Wall Street in ways that people on Main Street will be able to see and appreciate.