The end-game may really be in Ukraine

I have been very busy on real-world misery to light-heart post on this personal blog; but have done some economic and political stuff on our work blog: http://www.mmdblog.com/. My Twitter feed, however, on the right-hand of this desktop, captures the daily, bi-polar pendulum I curently experience in my life: between slightly unreal, expat whimsy and deep despair at the state of Russia's/Eurasia's economy and my increasingly shitty place in it...

I wanted here though to record my admiration of a post from a work-mate, which I think gets the essence of what is happening now in Ukraine.

As I wrote on my facebook posts for friends:

"My occasionally, breathtaking-brilliant, if absurdly young, colleague in Ukraine - Mykhaylo Petechuk - flashed a snap-note to clients today which we repeated on our blog.There is no better distillation of the gap in 'Western' and Russian thinking than attitudes to Ukraine.

Western politicians admire the 'plucky little democracy, holding out against an increasigly evil (sic) empire'.

Russia sees political juvenalia - egged on by its old Cold War adversaries (too cowardly to take on Russia except by proxy) whose toddler-fractiousness would be amusing, save for the 'big boys' toys' NATO promises Ukraine.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Ukraine as a place and as a people. I abhore its corruption - *much* worse than Russia's - gangsta politics and a political class that real democrats would rightly treat with contempt.

Headlines in the west today suggest the IMF has saved Ukraine. As Mykhaylo writes, that is far from true. Russia is right, the west wrong, on Ukraine"