good morning Hank it's Tuesday I want to
talk about Ukraine today but this is
extremely complicated and I just want to
apologize in advance for anything that I
get wrong / leave out / oversimplify
okay okay so this is Ukraine the second
largest country in Europe by area and
this is the Crimean Peninsula which saw
much of the fighting in the Crimean War
that lasted from 1853 to 1856 it was
sort of a Catholic versus Orthodox thing
but the larger cause was Europe fearing
that Russia's power would expand as the
Ottoman Empire declines so Brittany
France and the kind of still a thing
Ottoman Empire teamed up to eventually
defeat Russia and 500,000 people died
and it was generally pretty awful and
obviously resolved very little since
Europe just 60 years later would go
ahead and have World War 1 then toward
the end of World War 1 Russia had its
famous communist revolution and Ukraine
enjoyed a brief period of independence
although enjoyed may not be quite the
right verb in fact from 1917 to 1921
Ukraine was mired in endless wars among
competing factions including Poland in
the USSR and Ukrainian nationalists even
some real live anarchist it was all very
complicated it was also extremely
violent more than 1.5 million people
died and then finally Ukraine became
part of the USSR and things became more
stable for a while but then Stalin as
many as 10 million Ukrainians starved to
death in 1932 and 1933 thanks to
Stalin's agricultural policies which
were not just stupid but also actively
evil I mean there was widespread
starvation in a country that is now the
world's third largest exporter of grain
then following World War two Stalin
forcibly deported the Crimean Peninsula
the entire indigenous population of
ethnic Tatars to Central Asia so if you
want to point to one individual who's
responsible for a lot of this I don't
want to you know call anyone out but
Stalin Stalin also moved many ethnic
Russians into Ukraine especially into
the Crimean Peninsula in the western
part of the country which is the
industrial center and then Stalin's
successor Khrushchev decided to transfer
the Crimean Peninsula from Russia to
Ukraine in 1954 why well Khrushchev had
lots of ties to Ukraine but also the
Crimean Peninsula is not actually
physically attached to Russia as you can
see here it is physically attached to
Ukraine and it gets all of its
electricity and water from Ukraine and
it's easier to administer places you are
physically connected to which is why
Alaska should be part of Canada but that
is a different story okay so quick
contemporary demographics
today about 67% of people living in
Ukraine speak Ukrainian as their first
language about 30% speak Russian
although only about 17% of the
population identify as ethnically
Russian and as you can see here Russian
is spoken mostly in the West and in the
Crimean Peninsula many Tatars have
returned to Crimea since the breakup of
the Soviet Union but today they only
make up about 12% of the population okay
so flash boarded December of 1991 after
the Soviet Union has broken up Ukraine
had a nationwide referendum and 90% of
people including a majority of those
living in the Crimean Peninsula voted
for independence from Russia but Ukraine
remained much more closely aligned with
Russia than many other former Soviet
republics did like for instance Estonia
which is now part of the European Union
in 2004 there was an election and there
were widespread reports of vote rigging
but the Russian friendly viktor
yanukovych was elected the opposition
leader Viktor Yushchenko led massive
street protests in Kiev that came to be
known as the Orange Revolution that
opposition leader Yushchenko was
disfigured and almost died as a result
of mysterious poisoning sidenote but the
number of mysterious poisonings in
Russia and Eastern Europe has absolutely
skyrocketed since Putin came to power in
Russia which I'm sure is a coincidence
anyway the Orange Revolution protests
led to a second election and the
poisoned opposition leader Yushchenko
won and yeah everything would be made of
puppies and freedom and rainbows and
friendliness toward Europe forever
except know for one thing a lot of
people in Ukraine especially in the
western part want to be more closely
allied with Russia and also despite
being an economist Yushchenko wasn't
very good at running the Ukrainian
economy although Yushchenko couldn't
push through austerity measures needed
to deal with Ukraine's rising debt and
his friendliness toward Europe
infuriated Russia which cut off gas
supplies briefly but disastrously to
Ukraine in 2006 so by 2010 Ukraine was
being led by the Europe friendly and
somewhat corrupt Yulia Tymoshenko and
then there were elections and the
presidential election declared free and
fair by international observers was won
by the affer mentioned Russian friendly
Viktor Yanukovych in November 2013
Yanukovych announced that Ukraine would
abandon an agreement to strengthen ties
with the EU and would instead become a
closer ally of Russia and that is when
the protests began in Kiev's
independence square those protests grew
and grew until February 20th when dozens
of protesters were killed by military
and police and the next day Yanukovych
disappeared from Kiev the protesters had
one they installed a new temporary
government to prepare for new elections
and then the Putin regime marched into
the Crimean Peninsula ostensibly to
protect ethnic Russians there and
Russian military installations but this
violation of Ukraine's territorial
integrity is known in diplomatic circles
as like a big effing deal Crimea is
already an autonomous province with its
own government so what does it want
doesn't want independence that would be
hard all of their electricity and water
has to come through Ukraine does it want
to be part of Russia again that would be
impossible without Ukrainian cooperation
which right now seems inconceivable so
that's where we are right now I mean
unless something has happened in the
last 30 minutes so here's one narrative
of these events an unpopular and
ineffective but democratically elected
politician was removed from power by a
mob of protesters and the new unelected
parliament briefly passed a law saying
that only Ukrainian can be the official
language of the country even though many
people in the country speak Russian
furthermore this new government wants to
become part of the EU which might bring
NATO missiles to Russia's border and
that is unacceptable to Russia
I mean I'm American we've had some very
ineffective and unpopular leaders and
what we've done is just waited for them
not to be president anymore but here's
another narrative a tyrannical leader
who ordered the murder of peaceful
protesters was chased from power and
replaced by a government that will
transition Ukraine toward free and fair
elections and Russia responded to that
by invading Ukraine I think I'm not
trying to make a false equivalence here
but I think it's really important to
understand both of these narratives and
I want to give a little more historical
context than we've been seeing on the
news because it helps us to understand
that the pull between Western Europe and
Russia and Ukraine is not new I mean the
word Ukraine itself means borderland it
has for centuries functioned as the
border between West and East what
Ukraine needs is stability decades of
stability so it can grow to have its own
identity to have relationships with both
Europe and Russia without being
controlled by either right now that
dream seems really far away but 60 years
ago
Japan was in ruins 25 years ago Germany
was divided into two countries 12 years
ago Sierra Leone was mired in a horrific
and seemingly endless Civil War but
today it's the second fastest growing
economy in the world the arc of history
is long Hank let's hope that it bends
toward peace Hank I'll see you on Friday