War again in the bloodlands

Timothy Snyder described the territory between Hitler and Stalin, today's Poland Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states as Bloodlands. This vast stretch of lands is steeped in blood, in murder by starvation, by shooting, by gas, by slaughter of every kind. After sixty years of peace war returned to Ukraine. Reading the newspapers it is hard to work out what is going on. The story is that some ruffian rebels in Eastern Ukraine are waging war against the legitimate, and pro-Western, pro-EU and Nato peace loving Ukraine. They are backed by the evil spirit of Vladimir Putin. But this simple narrative is hardly the full story. Since the Orange Revolution ten years ago one corrupt Ukrainian government and head of state followed another. And because of inefficiency and kleptocracy Ukraine is broke. At least Russia under Putin has a stable if autocratic government, and is relatively prosperous. The ethnic divide in Ukraine goes back to the death by starvation of over three million Ukrainians under Stalin and the transfer of Ukrainians, some described as kulaks, to the east, to Siberia, while Russians were settled in their place to ensure that the land remained cultivated. Large industrial complexes were created, largely staffed by Russians. The recently established Ukrainian state grappled, unsatisfactorily, at integrating its Russian population. Perhaps this narrative is not the full story either. There is no doubt that underlying the tension, which has evolved now into a civil war, there is the economic conflict between the two economic power blocks, the EU and Russia, and perhaps beyond that, the opportunities for kleptocratic oligarchs to fleece the system. I wish my daily newspaper and weekly magazines would do more to inform me and enlighten me.