CaliGuy
Banned
A promise that its borders wouldn't be breached and possibly some Western economic aid as well.I have a question? What did Ukraine get in exchange for giving back the Russian Nukes?
A promise that its borders wouldn't be breached and possibly some Western economic aid as well.I have a question? What did Ukraine get in exchange for giving back the Russian Nukes?
I agree that cutting economic ties with Russia is suicidal for Ukraine; indeed, this appears to have been one of the mistakes of Ukraine's post-Maidan government(s).
Also, though, in terms of territory, Ukraine is the successor of the Ukrainian SSR; however, all of the SSR leaders were essentially Moscow's puppets until at least the late 1980s.
Arguing about just how much autonomy the SSRs had or did not have is not something I can dedicated much time to at the moment. For those that only speak English, there is this interesting article which features Stanislav Shushkevich's account of events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR and how the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian republics would deal with one another.Yes there was local management, but policy was largely set in Moscow for the Soviet SSRs.
And I suppose you think the government of the Ukrainian SSRs wasn't made up of "locals".The history of institutional bureaucracy and independence from Moscow was larger in Poland than Ukraine. Also not all of the Polish government fled, there was plenty of locals with institutional knowledge of governance that stayed and either joined the Home Army or were involved in the German administration on a local level and got coopted into the post-WW2 Communist government.
By the time communism fell Ukraine was more developed than Poland. It's years of aforementioned "shitty governance" in Kiev that changed that.Ukraine was relatively underdeveloped in a lot of areas and western businesses didn't want to work there due to the shitty governance.
Again, the idea that joining "NATO and the EU" is a prerequisite for being "successful" is ... rather dumb. Look at, say, Kazakhstan: a landlocked country with no hope of joining E.U. or N.A.T.O., small population, corruption and even more of a "geographical" dependants on Russia than any of the E. European states and is governed by a long-time dictator/"Moscow puppet". Yet it has a GDP PPP similar to that of Singapore, health investment from nations like China and South Korea & despite supposedly being a "Russian puppet" the Kazakh government offered the US basing rights in the country, has regularly criticised Russia and colonialism in Central Asia, refuses to recognise Crimea as Russian territory, trades with Europe & Ukraine, etc.Russian money is as good as anyone else's and trading with neighbors is great, but Russian money comes with Russian influenced in politics and the economy, which kept Ukraine out of NATO and the EU, which would have helped diversify them and help create less of a dependence on placating Russia.
They did:I have a question? What did Ukraine get in exchange for giving back the Russian Nukes? Could they have gotten economic assistance in exchange or am I not thinking things through?
By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid...
Arguing about just how much autonomy the SSRs had or did not have is not something I can dedicated much time to at the moment. For those that only speak English, there is this interesting article which features Stanislav Shushkevich's account of events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR and how the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian republics would deal with one another.
And I suppose you think the government of the Ukrainian SSRs wasn't made up of "locals".
By the time communism fell Ukraine was more developed than Poland. It's years of aforementioned "shitty governance" in Kiev that changed that.
Again, the idea that joining "NATO and the EU" is a prerequisite for being "successful" is ... rather dumb. Look at, say, Kazakhstan: a landlocked country with no hope of joining E.U. or N.A.T.O., small population, corruption and even more of a "geographical" dependants on Russia than any of the E. European states and is governed by a long-time dictator/"Moscow puppet". Yet it has a GDP PPP similar to that of Singapore, health investment from nations like China and South Korea & despite supposedly being a "Russian puppet" the Kazakh government offered the US basing rights in the country, has regularly criticised Russia and colonialism in Central Asia, refuses to recognise Crimea as Russian territory, trades with Europe & Ukraine, etc.
They did.
If by "Muscovite puppets" you mean "communists" than yes. wiking claimed that "local" Pols were rolled up into the Soviet-era Polish government -- I doubt that these Pols were anti-communists.Yes--specifically locals who were Muscovite puppets.
I could just as easily bring up other -stans or Belarus.Kazakhstan has a lot of oil and a good leader, though.![]()