Why is anybody surprised that Joseph Muscat’s government is to receive Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych?
Ukraine’s Yanukovych and Russia’s Putin
Come on, so he’s under siege at home, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protesting in streets and squares, calling for revolution and trying to force his resignation. But Joseph Muscat and his sidekicks – Louis Grech, Edward Scicluna, George Vella, all that lot – don’t think Yanukovych has done anything wrong. They think he’s right, and that’s why they will be receiving him when he comes calling on an official visit.
The mass rallies and angry protests have been provoked by Yanukovych’s refusal to sign a political and economic agreement with the European Union. So, do you see what I mean? The word that the international news agencies are using to describe his behaviour is ‘frozen’. Yanukovych has ‘frozen’ his country’s incipient agreement with the EU.
No wonder Joseph Muscat and George Vella approve. When Prime Minister Alfred Sant ‘froze’ Malta’s application to join the European Union, back in 1996, Joseph Muscat was his lapdog, flirting madly with him and stroking his ego to win his position as the palace favourite. And George Vella, then as now our foreign minister, was the very one who ‘froze’ it.
So why exactly does anyone imagine that Vella is going to be disapproving of Yanukovych’s behaviour?
It is most unlikely, too, that anybody in the Labour Party is going to disapprove of the violent dispersal of protestors in Kiev. After all, look at what they did in their day. “Louis Grech would disapprove!” I hear some naïve or gullible innocents say. Oh, would he? Well, that would be very hypocritical and false of him. After all, he supported the Mintoffian government and voted for it in 1976 and 1981 and worse than that – now this really is a reflection on his character, supposed intelligence and judgement – he voted for KMB in 1987 (yes, isn’t that awful?) and again in 1992.
The Opposition leader, Simon Busuttil, has taken the correct position. He is going to meet Yanukovych briefly to convey his disapproval, and he is going to stay away from the state banquet and concert to be held in the Ukrainian president’s honour.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-12-02/news/anti-government-mass-rally-in-ukraine-turns-violent-3355049984/
Would be very interesting to see which minister will be assigned to take the dictator round Malta.
Tghid mhux in-Nuxellina – she markets herself on the internet as a hostess, so presumably has all the qualifications for that job.
“The Opposition leader, Simon Busuttil, has taken the correct position. He is going to meet Yanukovych briefly to convey his disapproval, and he is going to stay away from the state banquet and concert to be held in the Ukrainian president’s honour”.
He has just earned my full respect for that.
Hear, hear.
Simon Busuttil’s position may be correct from a formal diplomatic point of view but I – and many others – would have supported a public show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/q71/1385370_539821059441835_1550685722_n.jpg
We know what it’s like to have a rabidly anti-EU government. We are experiencing what it’s like when a government ignores the overwhelming wish of the people. And, above all, we know what it’s like to have peaceful meetings put down in blood by police violence.
In our own small way we have been where the Ukrainians are now.
No we haven’t. Please let’s not fight our own stupid government with stupid assertions. Ukraine is an an artificial construct and a relic of Stalinist policy, where national entities were divided among the Soviet republics so no one would think of breaking away from the USSR.
Half its citizens are ethnic Russians and would rather form a union with their historic and cultural home rather than the EU. The other half is Ukrainian and everything else, including a sizeable Hungarian minority. Of course they’d rather be in the EU than in Russia’s sphere of influence.
Is Malta any of this? No it isn’t. In a way it could be, with a minority of cultural Europeans and a majority of troglodytic, Mintoff-worshipping cultural North Africans. But let’s not split hairs. We’ve never been where the Ukrainians are now. They’ve had five centuries of mishaps. We’ve had five centuries of someone else providing for us, and fifty years of nationalistic masturbation that has been the ruin of us.
Your last sentence cracked me up, brother.
One must also not underestimate that Yanukovych’s decision to freeze the relationship between his country and the EU opens a huge market in the Ukraine for the sale of Maltese citizenship and passports.
Joseph Muscat and his “foreign policy” Minister Eyebrows Vella would be eyeing those opportunities with great interest.
And I’ve just heard George Vella (our Foreign Minister), who is attending some ‘summit’ in Ukraine, saying the atmosphere (t)here is tranquil, serene, no violence, a normal place … except for a few young protesters demonstrating peacefully — apparently referring to protesters, shown on the video accompanying TVM’s news item,holding placards (‘stop the massacre’ or something to that effect) in front of the entrance to the conference hall.
Unbelievable!
Truly unbelievable. Tranquil my foot. Russia is bullying Ukraine and Yanukovych is just a puppet in Putin’s hands.
Away from the demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people, I have first hand knowledge that Russia has been pressuring Ukraine to stay away from the trade agreement with the EU for quite some time now, starting by tightening import/exports between the two countries to give the people a (false) taste of what they stand to lose if they move closer to Europe.
In all fairness Dr. Gonzi visited Gaddaffi only a few weeks (correct me if i’m wrong) before the revolution began in Libya.
Whilst on the subject of Libya I must say that it was MUCH MUCH better off under Gaddaffi as was Egypt under Mubarak and Iraq under Saddam.
I strongly disagree with dictatorship but in the case of these 3 particular countries the very recent history has proven that under a dictatorship Islamists (and all the Sharia crap) was kept repressed. There were no daily terrorist bombings and anarchy as there is today especially in the case of Libya and Iraq.
No, instead there were hundreds, probably thousands, of innocent people exploited, kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered at the whim of said dictators.
Only the rest of the world never got to know, so it was OK then. Right?
There were public lynchings, torture, and savage repression, Chris. Maybe you should ask those who were disfigured by the experience whether they’d prefer to gave Gaddafi back.
You forget that what triggered the Libyan revolution was the public reaction to the Abu Saleem massacre – families of the dead and disappeared loudly refused attempts to buy their silence.
Dictatorship is not to be agreed or disagreed with. It should be roundly condemned and rejected, not least by governments and people who claim to be democratic.
The PM declared he would convey the EU’s position to the Ukrainian President. How can he do that with any credibility when he advocated so strongly for the same position adopted by Yanukovytch less than a decade ago?
Martin Scicluna is probably surprised.
I enjoyed reading his latest column in Times of Malta, in which he tried hard to saddle all Maltese with his lack of foresight and his catastrophic inability to smell the coffee and realise that Muscat and his gang of sorts were never an alternative to the PN administration.
It’s not surprising at all – Muscat is probably gagging for the opportunity to flog him a passport if the situation turns sour.
Yes Chris they keep them at bay by sponsoring their activity held somewhere else.
I’m not sticking up for our evil government here, but the situation in Ukraine is rather more nuanced than it’s been made out to be.
Putin has been pushing for an economic union with some of the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine.
An association agreement with the EU would make that impossible. So he could well respond in kind, by cutting off Ukraine’s gas supply, which Russia has done in the past.
In mid-winter, in those parts, it means people freezing to death. So Yanukovych has opted to wait and see. The EU read that as a no, the non-Russian half of the population started protesting, the other half, the ethnic Russians, just kept mum, and we all know the rest of it.
So you mean that it is better to freeze the process of integration with Europe rather than have the population freezing during the Winter.
But there seems to be something more than this going on here.
While Russia and the EU are engaged in a tug of war about the Ukraine, China has sneaked in through the back door with some of its manouvring to attain global power.
Why would the Ukrainian President travel to China when the situation at home is so delicate?
The explanation for this probably lies in the Silk Road Economic Belt – a new concept to me, I have to admit.
See the headline here:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-12/06/content_17155343.htm
“China welcomes Ukraine to participate in the building of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”” under which the two countries would “deepen bilateral ties.”
Is this yet another attempt to sway the Ukraine away from the EU?
To me it almost seems that the real issue here is not Russia, but China.
Now this leaves me with an important question in my mind: why is Yanukovych putting Malta on the same trip to China?
Is there any connection between Malta and the Silk Road Economic Belt? Does Joseph Muscat know anything about this? Maybe another idea of Shiv Nair? Or maybe another item in the Memorandum of Understanding signed in China in 2010?
No. I think I’m saying that the EU didn’t understand jack when the Soviet Union collapsed and still looks at Russia through the lens of the Cold War. The EU is a mercantilist union of boring clerks back home, but acts like a political giant in places which aren’t hers. Russia seeks to become another pole in a multipolar world. The EU is happy to have the Gulf petrodictatorships and the dictatorship China as poles alongside a weakened us, but it won’t have Russia at any price.
The Russians have long memories. They are still pissed off that the EU poached the Baltic countries off them. And that the EU sided with the corrupt, warmongering oppressor of freedom Saakashvili.
The Baxxterian solution would be to redraw the map, forget the borders set up by Stalin and put each nation where it belongs. Ukraine’s Russians are Russian. Its Hungarians are Hungarian. And let me note here how utterly idiotic some of our commentators were when they compared Malta’s sale of citizenships to the granting of Hungarian passports to Hungarians outside Hungary. That part of the world has seen borders shift and peoples torn apart and then we wade in with our simplistic worldview which we got from Reader’s Digest or (even worse) The EU Observer and declare that we welcome Ukraine to the EU with open arms. Which Ukraine are we welcoming? The Ukrainians? The Bessarabian Bulgarians? The Hungarians? The Russians? The Poles?
We’re all Ashton’s stormtroopers, aren’t we?
Here’s an idea for Ashton. Declare diplomatic war on the Gulf States, cut off all trade with them, be it oil or finance, call Putin and ask to negotiate for oil and gas supplies to the EU, grant Schengen access to Russian citizens, and THEN, only then, talk about the status of Ukraine.
Baxxter, redrawing the map is not very different from separatism. That’s one of the “three evil forces” (terrorism and extremism being the other two).
Now read this:
“Around 10:30 a.m. local time, Xi Jinping, accompanied by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, stepped into the conference hall.
Amid warm applause, Xi Jinping made an important speech.”
It sounds like an extract from a Baxxter novel.
Instead, it is an extract from the article below, and it probably heralds the beginning of China’s advance towards the West.
http://www.china.org.cn/travel/revitalize_the_silk_road_in_Shaanxi/2013-11/01/content_30468580.htm
What beginning? China has already won game, set and match in its advance towards the West.
But to get back to the point, with all the respect that is due to a fellow reader of this blog, I deny you the right to put words into my mouth. This isn’t separatism. It’s re-uniting divided peoples. In any case, not every redrawing of the map is good, as we’ve seen in Kosovo, and as we’re about to see in Scotland, the silliest of silly separatisms.
History isn’t some dead letter in Eastern Europe. Before we pass judgement on Ukraine or Russia we must understand their history.