Re: Ray's post
tl;didread: Ukraine is a shitshow. No film at 11 because it's obvious.
Ray knows his stuff, no doubt, but this is pretty much what I've always said after 2014 when I got interested in this and started reading about it. Ukraine has adopted more poorly to post-1989 freedom than any of the major former SSR's (or pseudo-SSR's) that I've read. I'd like to find out more about why they have so badly screwed themselves - perhaps it's the oligarchical culture as Ray defines, perhaps it's such a mixed bag of identities that there is no real self-identity, or perhaps they just don't know how to do democratic elections, the "Russian system" being burned into their culture, I don't know. But it seems that the Poroshenko's and the Zelensky's (Kuchma was a crook in the 90's, and of course the Yushchenko affair, followed by the Yanukovych presidency, which mysteriously flip-flopped more to the Russian side of things, which of course was right after Tymoshenko's Prime Ministership (and subsequent conviction of fraud and corruption, with a 7-year jail sentence, 3 years served). I mean, this government history makes Xi Jiping and the Chicom Boys look like amateurs in comparison!).
The Ukraine situation existed long before Manafort or 2014; it had been bad (though not as much so) through the 1990's and into the 2000's. They just either suck, are corrupt, or can't get out of their own way.
Ray or 956, do you think Germany is hedging so much not only because of the gas issues, but because Ukraine is such a stinking mess, and has been?