Update on Ukraine.

The stand-off in Ukraine is still very much going on. However I've not been providing regular updates because the situation has rather ground to a halt meaning that it still poses more questions then it provides answers.

Although I genuinely doubt that the US had a plan for Ukraine beyond causing problems for Russia there does seem to have been a hope that once the government had been overthrown the European Union (EU) would resume the long process of accepting Ukraine as a member. A large part of this process would involve grinding the rough edges of an opposition that are simply incapable of running a nation. Members of Yulia Tymoshenko's main Fatherland party such as Oleksander Turchynov who has assumed to role of President in Kiev and Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has assumed the role of Prime Minister in Kiev are hopelessly corrupt and inept while the views and methods of Neo-Nazi parties such as Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) are simply not acceptable within or even on the borders of the EU.

Even this vague plan has been hit by a couple of major problems though. The first of these has been the continuation of the US' Rihanna plan which has been going on at the same time. On a moral level this operation is simply repellent meaning that it automatically meets with a degree of opposition and people simply don't want to be associated with it. However the operation is also very transparent with everyone in the EU fully aware that it is being undertaken in order to allow the US to bully it's way into influence over the internal affairs of the EU. Faced with this sort of hostility and aggression there are currently very few people with in the EU who are in any mood to do the US any favours - especially when the cost of those favours runs into the tens of billions of dollars.

The second large problem has been the referendum in Crimea and it's subsequent re-absorption into Russia. While the US and the spectacularly naive government in Kiev have been loudly proclaiming this to be the work of some Russian conspiracy I think that the situation is more complicated then that. Although there was a degree of consultation between Russia and the Crimean government over the referendum the fact that it took place on the day of the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter para-Olympics should have been a clue that it was the Crimeans rather then the Russians who were giving the orders. Also the referendum offered voters two choices; to rejoin Russia or to become an independent state.

I think that the Russians would have preferred Crimeans to choose independence because that way it could become used in negotiations with the Kiev government and the EU to help draw up a federal and representative government that would allow the nation to stay united while still protecting the rights of all citizens including the Russian Slavs who have the best historical claim to the area but are deeply despised by supporters of Right Sector and the UIA. Unfortunately voters chose to rejoin Russia which forced the Russians to honour their wishes. This of course caused the US to further ratchet up the rhetoric further entrenching everyone's positions and also presented Russia with a big problem because Crimea is unsustainable to the point that it doesn't even have its own supply of fresh, drinking water. As a result if the confrontation between Kiev and Russia is going to continue then Russia will have to act to secure further areas of eastern Ukraine in order to protect residents and sustain Crimea.

Today the US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels in Belgium on Ukraine. This should be interesting because it is quite clear everyone is looking towards the US for leadership on how to proceed.

14:00 on 1/4/14 (UK date).