When Ukraine celebrated Christmas two weeks ago, there were ample reasons for pessimism about that long-suffering country’s future.
The national parliament is often dysfunctional, even by Washington standards. Corruption remains rampant throughout society and government. The Russian Anschluss of Crimea is, for the moment, a fait accompli, and Russian troops and their local hoodlum proxies continue to occupy significant parts of eastern Ukraine. The economy is a mess, real purchasing-power is down, fuel prices are up, and the oligarchs who control much of Ukraine’s wealth have not shown themselves overly enthusiastic about economic and political reform. Ukraine has absorbed 1.5 millions displaced persons fleeing Crimea or the war-zones of the Donbas – the rough equivalent of the United States being suddenly confronted with about 12.4 million internal refugees. The West has been largely supine in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine; the West remains helpless in the face of the barrage of lies and propaganda the Russian media and Russian-paid internet trolls spew around the world.
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