A Reply to Julia's Letter on Ukraine

My problem with Julia's analysis is that it repeats the standard line that is being repeated throughout the press regardless of political point of view. I think there are two main problems with this party line.

1) It ignores the fact that, like several of the African and Middle Eastern countries in which similar uprisings are occurring, Ukraine is an artificial state. A creation  of colonial powers which ignored the national, ethnic, and cultural differences of the subject peoples, or more often exploited those differences in their own interests. Ukraine is in fact two countries. The Russian speaking southeast and the Ukrainian speaking northwest. That Yanukovich publicly ignores this fact while exploiting the differences for his own purposes does not excuse the fact that his pro-EU predecessors did the same in the interest of the pro-western sentiments of their followers. The organizers of the protest movement, like their predecessors in the Orange Revolution are just as dependent, politically and economically,  on the colonial powers of the west as Yanukovich is on Putin.

2) The most important fact about the EU proposal which in the reports of the western media is mentioned, if at all, in paragraph fifteen floating amongst the lingerie ads is that it was tied to an IMF austerity program. Given this fact to compare the Ukrainian movement, in a footnote, with that taking place in Greece is pure demagogy.