I have not updated about the war in Ukraine in a while. I have had a lot of personal issues going on and life has been a struggle. One of the consequences of that struggle has been my personal contacts into Ukraine have been heavily curtailed.
That said, there are two separate, but related crises going on in Ukraine. One is centered in Kiev and about - gosh, wow, I'm shocked! shocked I tell you! - corruption. The second is the ongoing war in the Donbass.
Corruption in Ukraine is frakkin awful. The Bite is more like the chump of a Megalodon shark. Even those who start out fighting corruption often succumb to the seduction of people both offerring and demanding money. That may have been what happened here.
The crisis in Kiev came to a head on February 15th when the deputy prosecutor resigned. He stated friends of Poroshenko were being protected by the government from being prosecuted and many of his corruption cases were simply being blocked. Poroshenko asked him to retract his resignation and he refused. Poroshenko then asked for Yatsenyuk to resign. Yatz refused and a no confidence vote was called. Yatz's government survived, but at least two parties quit his government, including the Ukrainian Ann Coulter, Timoshenko's faction. And now there are protestors calling for a new revolution. To say the situation is precarious is to be polite.
The Donbass War has flared enormously since. It never went away, to be sure, it over Christmas, the fighting dropped significantly, down to merely a handful of shots fired across the line of contact each day. Yesterday, around just Donetsk, over 300 explosions and numerous machine gun battles took place. The fighting is now up and down the line from Shirokyne to Lugansk. And the OSCE, the ones reporting this, are far from reporting even half of what has been taking place.
Furthermore, there have been multiple instances of artillery shelling, not just squad level fighting.
Since, soldiers have died and rather than petering out, the fighting has intensified. This is almost assuredly an attempt to put more pressure on Kiev.
Also, in a lesser confrontation, Russia and Ukraine had a tiff where both sides blocked each other's trucks from crossing the border for trade.
And, finally, Ukraine has put forward a Crimean Tatar with a song about Crimea for the Eurovision contest.
The war hasn't ended by any means. I worry the Syrian ceasefire will be as empty as the Ukrainian one. And the people there will suffer. Just so politicians can claim they made peace. Even if its an empty, bitter and false one.
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