The Ukraine has been in the midst of political upheaval due to President Yanukovych's refusal to sign a deal with the EU in favor of a deal with Russia over natural gas prices. The protests have grown largely into citizens' demands to change the constitution and the entire power structure of the country. Regular citizens want more power placed in the parliament than the presidency. The Ukraine is supposedly often caught politically between Russia, and the EU and the West and it is an issue that has divided the population for many years.
The situation now, however, has turned bloody. Around 100 people have died in protest-related violence and the "truce" between the government and the protesters lasted hardly a day.
How does the rest of the world play into this? Hopefully not much at all. The United States certainly has absolutely no roll to play in the growing conflict. The Ukraine is in the middle of civil unrest quickly turning to civil war. Supporting either side militarily would be ridiculous considering it would only serve to heighten the conflict and quite frankly there is no stable, morally correct, or politically trustworthy "side" in this situation. Any third party military intervention would probably do the same thing as US intervention. Say the EU decides to send troops or maybe the UN decides to go on another "peace keeping" campaign. The outcome would be the same. More war. More unnecessarily dead people. It's one country against itself and every death racks up the same statistic. There's no reason to spur it on. I'm surprised some people actually think that military involvement is actually an option.
So what's left to do? Negotiate. And ultimately, that is up to the Ukraine within itself primarily, Russia and the EU. Want to start a political riot? I love it. Sure, go ahead, but they better finish what they started. What would be rad to see, is the Ukrainian people transform their country for the better and actually come out on top. Overthrow is only the first step of a very, very, very long process of reconstruction and hopefully this time they don't reelect a president who puts his competitors in jail.
I was tempted to criticize the people of Ukraine for democratically electing such a horrible leader but then I remembered what country I live in and what voters are capable of.
Moving on, I essentially believe that this issue belongs to the Ukraine. You could say Russia had some role to play but it was their leader's decision to do deals with the Russians. It was that decision which sparked the anger because it wasn't what the people wanted. Sounds familiar. In the end, the rest of the world will probably just watch and stare until the Ukraine has a new gang of political cronies to talk to. Most of us will probably forget about this story by the end of the year anyway if the political upheaval stops anywhere short of full-on civil war which to me is the more concerning part of stories like this.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/18/world/europe/ukraine-protests-explainer/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/world/europe/ukraine-protests/index.html?iref=allsearch
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