Timothy Snyder ponders the future of Ukraine . There aren’t many good results. The protests can’t force the issue, since there is no election on the horizon. An attempted no confidence vote has failed. It’s not clear that the police and military will be able to keep the protests under control, and therein lies a particularly grim prospect: First martial law, then the Russians:
“If Yanukovych decides to declare martial law he will almost certainly fail to control the country. The riot police of Berkut can be counted on to beat protesters a few more times, but the behavior of the regular police, and the Ukrainian army, is far less predictable. Some reports have already indicated that policemen have supported the protesters, at least in the western part of the country. If Yanukovych tries force and fails, then Putin might claim that Russian military intervention is needed to restore order . . . .
“This would be the worst of all possible outcomesfor Ukraine of course, but perhaps above all for Russia. The absorption of Ukrainian lands by the USSR involved almost unbelievable levels of violence over the course of decades. Another Russian armed adventure in Ukraine now would likely fail, for all kinds of reasons. Russian soldiers cannot have much stomach for invading a land whose people speak their mother tongue and who, they are told, are brother slavs. Ukraine, for all of its visible political divisions, is a single country with a big army whose people generally believe in sovereignty. A Russian military intervention would bring bloodshed on a scale that people of the region know all too well.”
He worries that two fantasies will drive events: The Ukrainian fantasy that they can play a critical role in Europe as the mediators between East and West, and the Russian fantasy of annexing Ukraine.Snyder thinks that there may be a constitutional solution, if the parliament can be convinced to weaken the presidency. That sounds like a long shot, and for the moment Ukraine is poised on the edge, with few good prospects in sight.
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