Anybody look at Ukraine lately?

[LMNO]

A quick phone call will clear that up...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/europe/putin-calls-obama-on-Ukraine.html?referrer=

[Cain]

There's an interesting undertone to that NYT article re: Crimea.  If I'd woken up from a coma yesterday and read that article first, I'd have no idea there was a referendum in the peninsula and it voted overwhelmingly to join.  I mean, sure, we can quibble about the exact amount of fraud, intimidation, propaganda, the rush and overall political atmosphere, the Tatar boycott...but even so, high numbers were all for it.  And it's not like we've hailed elections held under similar conditions as proof of our commitment to Whiskey Sexy Democracy (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya).

[East Coast Hustle]

I've heard noise about Russian troops massing on the border of Transdneistria, another region that would probably vote to join Russia if given the opportunity to do so.

Anything to that? And if so, what does it reveal about Putin's larger intentions/ambitions?

[Cain]

Yeah, that's one which worries me.

NATO Command are responsible for putting that particular story out there.  While it wouldn't surprise me if it were true, I know from a careful reading of what the intelligence community were telling Obama before the Crimea crisis that America doesn't have the assets in that part of the world to determine what the Russian military is doing - especially when it makes lightning fast moves.

So it would seem all that is certain for the moment is that there is a buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border.  And there are a number of good reasons for that, not least if the Ukrainians decide they'd like their lost province back, or civil war actually kicks off.  We also haven't heard much about refugees, but I would expect there to some, given the economic conditions in Ukraine if nothing else. 

Russians also have forces in Transnistria already.  Not much, a garrison a bit shy of 2000 troops, but I suspect strongly this is probably better armed than anything Moldova, or Transnistria itself could muster, if a straight out invasion/annexation were on the cards.

It is also my understanding the new Ukrainian government, possibly due to being high on gas or something, have been stepping up the blockade that the previous government agreed to, in conjunction with Moldova, since 2006.  This blockade was mentioned as a key concern by Putin, in his talk with Obama. 

Maybe, and this is just speculation, but it would be consistent with the behaviour of a lot of small states lately, Moldova is hoping to use the current crisis to build support for a venture to bring Transnistria back under control.  At the very least, by putting the squeeze on their wayward province they cause them to go squealing to the Russians, and when the Russians predictably rattle their sabres, Moldova can turn around to Europe and America and say "we're being threatened!  Give money for military upgrades plox"  Moldova's not eligible for NATO membership due to its ongoing border disputes and its official neutrality clause in the state constitution, but the former was also the case for Georgia, and it seems pretty clear Moldova knows where its bread is buttered.  Namely, in Brussels and DC. 

[Cain]

Looks like there has been a partial withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian border by the Russian Army.

Good news, that.

[Junkenstein]

Gas price shenanigans afoot. The economic side of this just got serious again.

[Cain]

Well, NATO are denying Russian troops are pulling away from the border.

Nato is not seeing a Russian troop pullout from the border with Ukraine, the military alliance's chief has said.

Speaking ahead of a Nato summit, Anders Fogh Rasmussen again stressed that the best way to solve the crisis was through "a political dialogue".

Again though, we have some evidence that "NATO"'s intelligence - read as "the NSA and GCHQ" - are having some problems in that part of the world.  Some people believe this is because Snowden, willingly or unwillingly gave information which allowed the FSB and GRU to undertake countersurveillance measures...I doubt that is the case, the thing to remember about Russia is that as a former great power it is both technically advanced and Not Stupid, not to mention Russia was a counterintelligence state long before all the cool kids were doing it.

Although, NATO should have spy satellites focusing on the border.  It's been long enough.

Meanwhile, Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasing the price it charges Ukraine for gas from Tuesday.

Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller said the price of Russian gas for Ukraine had gone up to $385.5 (£231) per 1,000 cubic metres in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous rate of $268.5.

Mr Miller added that Ukraine's unpaid gas bills to Russia stood at $1.7bn.

Fun times.  Ukraine's gotta pay those debts, but I somehow doubt it's top of their "to do" list right now.

Ukraine's also having problems disarming its "illegal armed groups".  Right Sector are kinda pissed right now, by way of example.

[Junkenstein]

Quote
Meanwhile, Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasing the price it charges Ukraine for gas from Tuesday.

Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller said the price of Russian gas for Ukraine had gone up to $385.5 (£231) per 1,000 cubic metres in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous rate of $268.5.

Mr Miller added that Ukraine's unpaid gas bills to Russia stood at $1.7bn.

Fun times.  Ukraine's gotta pay those debts, but I somehow doubt it's top of their "to do" list right now.

No doubt. Which leaves some potentially very interesting situations further down the line. The austerity measures that will get imposed in order for any kind of aid to be provided will probably ensure shitty times for years ahead.

I bet the Crimea is looking very attractive to some right now.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Just a heads up to anyone researching Ukraine, keep your Adobe software updated:

Now, once again the MiniDuke virus is spreading in wild via an innocent looking but fake PDF documents related to Ukraine, while the researcher at F-Secure were browsing the set of extracted decoy documents from a large batch of potential MiniDuke Samples.

http://thehackernews.com/2014/04/miniduke-malware-spreads-via-fake.html

We don't know where the attacker got this decoy file from. We don't know who was targeted by these attacks. We don't know who's behind these attacks.

What we do know is that all these attacks used the CVE-2013-0640 vulnerability and dropped the same backdoor (compilation date 2013-02-21).

We detect the PDF as Exploit:W32/MiniDuke.C (SHA1: 77a62f51649388e8da9939d5c467f56102269eb1) and the backdoor as Gen:Variant.MiniDuke.1 (SHA1: b14a6f948a0dc263fad538668f6dadef9c296df2).

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002688.html

[Cain]

Thanks.  I don't use Adobe, but it's worth knowing regardless.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Thanks.  I don't use Adobe, but it's worth knowing regardless.

No problem.

[Cain]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26919928

Pro-Russian activists in eastern Ukraine have seized state security buildings in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukrainian officials say.

Reports say that in Luhansk the protesters have raided the arsenal in the security building. Police have reacted by blocking roads into Luhansk.

On Sunday protesters broke into the regional government buildings in the two cities and also Kharkiv.

Ukraine's acting president has called an emergency security meeting.

Fun and games.

[Junkenstein]

The leadership of these protesters seems a lot shakier than previous months. Looking at the barricade construction, tyres seem to feature quite heavily. While the attempt may be respectable, their choice of building materials is questionable at best. Tyres burn for one thing, and the shitty bits of barbed wire on top will do precisely fuck all if the base is on fire.

Is there a chance of the various regions slowly going the way of the Crimea? From the descriptions of the regions a slow rolling annexation program sounds possible if not likely?

[Cain]

No surprises here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/

Since Russian troops first entered the Crimean peninsula in early March, a series of media polling outlets have asked Americans how they want the U.S. to respond to the ongoing situation.  Although two-thirds of Americans have reported following the situation at least "somewhat closely," most Americans actually know very little about events on the ground — or even where the ground is.

On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force.

[Cain]

I'm also exceedingly amused at how anti-government protestors seizing buildings and taking control of cities is being treated as horrifying mob action Russian terrorism by the western press.

Um, do you even remember two months ago?