Am I the only one who notices a weird similarity between events in Ukraine and earlier events in Egypt? In both cases a president is accused of being authoritarian and draconian. In both cases large public protests lead to the overthrew of the government. In both cases the government just thrown out by protest was the elected government. Most importantly in both cases the successful overthrow of an elected government is met with general applause from the leaders of the West and from the established media. And the reasons are similar too.
The president of Ukraine had to go for the same reason the Egyptian president had to go. They did not represent Western interests. Morsi in Egypt was an Islamist and worse still had got to power peacefully; that was an example to the Middle east that could not be allowed to survive. Yanukovych was too close to Putin; blocking the EU's eastern expansion was the nail in his coffin.
It will be interesting to see if Ukraine continues to follow the path taken after the Egyptian coup. Egypt is now almost completely dysfunctional, split between a westernised urban elite that support the new regime and the poor and rural supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is on the verge of civil war. In Ukraine the western media have carefully avoided the E word (ethnic). The protestors and their leaders are carefully described as "pro-western" or from "western ukraine". The actual fact is that ethnic Ukrainians support the protests while ethnic Russians within Ukraine support the government. Will Ukraine follow Egypt into a quiet civil war? How quiet would it be with Putin on one side and the Ukrainian neo-nazi parties like Svoboda on the other?
The president of Ukraine had to go for the same reason the Egyptian president had to go. They did not represent Western interests. Morsi in Egypt was an Islamist and worse still had got to power peacefully; that was an example to the Middle east that could not be allowed to survive. Yanukovych was too close to Putin; blocking the EU's eastern expansion was the nail in his coffin.
It will be interesting to see if Ukraine continues to follow the path taken after the Egyptian coup. Egypt is now almost completely dysfunctional, split between a westernised urban elite that support the new regime and the poor and rural supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is on the verge of civil war. In Ukraine the western media have carefully avoided the E word (ethnic). The protestors and their leaders are carefully described as "pro-western" or from "western ukraine". The actual fact is that ethnic Ukrainians support the protests while ethnic Russians within Ukraine support the government. Will Ukraine follow Egypt into a quiet civil war? How quiet would it be with Putin on one side and the Ukrainian neo-nazi parties like Svoboda on the other?
