▶ Rival rallies over Ukraine future | Journal – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

” . . . so that Moscow does not walk all over us.”

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EU halts deal talks: EU senior official suspends Ukraine trade talks – YouTube – Posted 12/15/2013.

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KIEV, Ukraine — The European Union on Sunday broke off talks with Ukraine on the far-reaching trade deal that protesters here have been demanding for weeks, and a top official issued a stinging, angry statement all but accusing Ukraine’s president of dissembling.

European Union Suspends Talks With Ukraine Over Trade Deal – NYTimes.com – 12/15/2013.

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“Words & deeds of President [Viktor Yanukovych] & government regarding the Association Agreement are further & further apart. Their arguments have no grounds in reality,” he twitted on Sunday.

EU suspending work with Ukrainian govt on Association Agreement – Fule – 12/15/2013.

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While the European Union insists that the door is still open for Ukraine to join the EU, President Viktor Yanukovych is walking the tightrope between appeasing the wishes of his people and keeping Russian President Vladimir Putin happy.

Yanukovych needs to hear pleas of his people | GulfNews.com – 12/15/2013

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Mr Yanukovych had already sent his skullcrackers in once to Independence Square in Kiev, centre of the protests that erupted in November after he rejected an association agreement with the European Union, in favour of an opaque economic deal with Russia. That needless brutality brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.

Crackdown in Ukraine: Goodbye, Putin | The Economist – 12/14/2013.

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All of the conflicts BackChannels has been watching have to do with the despotic versus the democratic.

In some instances, the despotic force is sufficient to repress and silence the latent organizations and personalities arrayed against it; in others, there’s yet opportunity to assert a popular will on behalf of human dignity and human rights against mafia-style state-based machinations and privilege.

Ukrainians, of course, have just found The Bear once again climbing aboard their own back.

The “new nobility” not only have their hands in the gushing revenue stream associated with Russia’s energy industry, but they may have also their hands on the spigot, and with winter yet to begin — hard to believe this year that ice and snow have arrived so early everywhere in the northern latitudes — the same could give them the cold treatment.

A glance at the reading tells me Ukrainians owe Moscow some money too for energy already consumed.  That will give Moscow some whining room in the coming negotiations.

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Joseph Stalin’s decision in 1928 to seize privately held agricultural land and transform it into collective farms caused massive hardship for all Soviet peasants. When authorities expropriated peasant grain stocks and farm animals, hunger broke out in much of the USSR. In Ukraine, where close to a million peasants actively rebelled against collectivization, such expropriations were especially severe, leading to widespread starvation that the state both refused to alleviate and purposely aggravated until millions had died and a massive crackdown on Ukrainian political, cultural, and religious elites had been completed. At the height of the Holodomor, 25,000 Ukrainians starved per day; cannibalism was rampant.

Remembering the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide | World Affairs Journal – 12/13/2013.

Ukrainians know well the Soviet part of the post-Soviet Russian story, and one would think it doubtful the same should now entertain a return to all of that, especially absent the cover of socialist concern that accompanied the theft.

Related: Oleh Tyahnybok – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most”[11] / and / “They were not afraid and we should not be afraid. They took their automatic guns on their necks and went into the woods, and fought against the Moskali, Germans, Kikes and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.”[10]

Next Ukrainian headache: resurgent anti-Semitic eastern European nationalism.

How is it that the potentially despotic engaging the established despotic cannot recognize in themselves the same idiotic malignant ambitions?

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BBC News – Kasparov: Stop calling Putin a democrat – 9/12/2013.

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BBC HARDtalk – Garry Kasparov (12/9/13) – YouTube – Posted 9/14/2013;  BBC News – Kasparov: Stop calling Putin a democrat – 9/12/2013.

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“. . . Putin is “powerful” abroad because West has been so weak confronting him. This influence is their gift & he takes it.”

Kasparov on Ukraine, Putin and EU (with tweets) · TeamKasparov · Storify – Tweeted 12/1/2013.

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Yanukovych backed off the agreement on the grounds that the EU was not providing adequate compensation to his economically struggling nation for potential trades losses with Russia. Russia, which for centuries controlled or exerted heavy influence on Ukraine, wants the country to join a customs union, analogous to the EU, which also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The opposition says that union would effectively reconstitute the Soviet Union and remain suspicious that Yanukovych might agree to it when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Ukrainian opposition presses with massive rally – 12/15/2013.

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Earlier this month:

Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said it agreed with Russian gas giant Gazprom to defer payments for winter gas supplies until early 2014. With Ukraine embroiled in protests, and Europe making headway on energy diversification strategies, the move signals a tilt by Kiev back to its former Kremlin patrons.

Amid Ukraine protests, energy sector tilts toward Russia – CSMonitor.com – 12/5/2013.

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