What Is Happening in Ukraine and What Kind of Future Awaits It?

Abstract

In March 2014, the journal Svobodnaia mysl’ [Free Thought] and the Institute for Globalization Problems organized a roundtable to discuss the rapidly escalating political crisis in Ukraine. The speakers addressed the role of the United States and European countries, the inability of the international legal system to cope with the situation, and the impact of the crisis on Russian foreign policy and domestic politics.

Keywords::

• Crimea
• economic crisis
• egoism of elites
• European Union
• failed state
• political instability
• revolution
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Ukrainian nationalism
• United States

This article is the republished version of:

What Is Happening in Ukraine and What Kind of Future Awaits It?

Notes

^* A recognized leader of the movement for the rights of the indigenous Crimean Tatars; in 1991–2013 chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People.—Trans.

^* A reference to the massacre of an estimated 60,000–100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–45 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.—Trans.

^* This refers to a massacre of protestors in this city by Uzbek police and security troops on May 13, 2005.—Trans.

^* In 1999 the Kazakhstani authorities arrested twenty-two people in East Kazakhstan (formerly Ust-Kamenogorsk) oblast on charges of trying to overthrow the oblast government and turn the oblast into an ethnically Russian “Altai Republic.”—Trans.

^** The original Pugachev led a Cossack rebellion in 1773–75.—Trans.

^* Shuttle traders (chelnoki) are people who make a living by traveling to neighboring countries—in this case to Turkey, for instance—and carrying back consumer goods for resale.—Trans.