Developments in eastern Ukraine have been taking some interesting turns.<\/p>\n
Among the themes I’ve been seeing in the coverage are more detailed profiles of the pro-Russian separatists, who are looking ever more like a motley bunch<\/a>. As noted<\/a> on this blog\u00a0before, many have links to far-right groups in Russia. (Some of those groups — like Russkaia Pravda, with its bizarre conspiracy tales<\/a> of how the Jewish-Masonic “Kiev junta” is planning to massively resettle Hasidic Jews from Manhattan into eastern Ukraine — are pretty outlandish.)<\/p>\n University of Manitoba\u00a0historian Myroslav Shkandrij<\/a>‘s account of the\u00a0Russian mercenearies in Donbas<\/a>\u00a0details the criminal and\/or neo-Nazi backgrounds of about a dozen of the most prominent pro-Russian separatist figures, including Strelkov\/Girkin, “Babai”\/Mozhaev, “Dingo”\/Ponomarev, and several others. Collectively, their prospects seem to be\u00a0declining<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another theme is that left-wing eastern Ukrainians — from coal miners and steel workers to national-communists and anarcho-syndicalists — have\u00a0either begun to clearly distance themselves from the separatists, or have been doing that all along (if less noticeably).<\/p>\n An example is this interview with Mykola Tsikhno<\/a>, co-ordinator of the National Communist Front<\/a>, which models itself on the national communists who were prominent in Ukraine in the 1920s (before getting squashed by Stalinism). Another is this interview with Mykola Volynko<\/a>, head of the Trade Union of Donbas Miners.<\/p>\n See also Oleh Yasinsky’s statement here<\/a>, and Marko Bojcun’s Observer Ukraine<\/a> blog, which has been covering this re-emergence of left-wing voices in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n The coal and steel workers who rose up to retake control of Mariupol<\/a> a few days ago were an indication less of a left-wing uprising (against the pro-Russians) than of a clear move by coal magnate and billionnaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov to distance himself from the pro-Russians. See Yaroslav Koshiw’s analysis<\/a>\u00a0of Akhmetov’s “policy shift,” as well as this Kyiv Post<\/em> piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Developments in eastern Ukraine have been taking some interesting turns. Among the themes I’ve been seeing in the coverage are more detailed profiles of the pro-Russian separatists, who are looking ever more like a motley bunch. As noted on this blog\u00a0before, many have links to far-right groups in Russia. (Some of those groups — like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[103260,103265],"tags":[103270],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eastern-ukraine","category-ukrainian-left","tag-oligarchs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdPO21-8J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}