 Welcome to Radio Mises, the 12th episode, which is a special today. It will be done in English, and we have a special guest, Roman Skasky, who will talk to us about Ukraine. Hello, Roman. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you just fine. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on on such short notice. We have many of our readers and listeners are asking us about Ukraine and how to look on Ukraine from a libertarian point of view. We have the pro-EU and pro-US and the pro-Russia view, but we're missing the libertarian position here, and we're glad to have you here with us today. Would you mind telling us just a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm an American of Ukrainian descent. I grew up in New York City, kind of like a little bit participating in the Ukrainian community there. I was in the United States Army for six years, and I wrote a lot about those experiences for Mises.org and for other libertarian websites. I spoke at the Property and Freedom Society conference one year, and about two years ago I decided that it'd be good to have a second home away from the United States, and I moved to Ukraine. And I developed software here, and I write. Good. So, where in Ukraine do you live? I live in Lviv in western Ukraine. It's the sort of part of the nationalist Ukrainian movement, like the protests are. So, I think the sort of emotional center of the protests. How far away is that from Kiev? It's about 300 miles or 500 kilometers overnight train ride. Okay. So, Lviv is Lviv Mises hometown, right? It sure is. I was, in fact, involved in trying to pinpoint his childhood home a couple years ago, and we did eventually find it. And I was already gone by the time they figured it out, and they put up a nice little plaque. Yesterday I walked through Lviv. There were some government buildings that were ransacked by protesters. And I took a video of a couple of the buildings, and I had to walk past the plaque, and I put that on the video as well. My YouTube channel is Roman's Book Report, so you can watch that video there. The link to that in the podcast. So, was it hard to find his home? It was. It was quite easy to find where his great-grandfather lived, and where his great-uncle had a house. They were right in the center, one facing the sort of central square, and the other on a street that's now called Old Jewish Street, Stato Ebrejska. And we were looking for proof that that's where Lviv Mises' father lived, and we couldn't find it. And we were eventually surprised to discover that he lived kind of in a little bit of a less beautiful part of town. It's not very far, but it's not nearly as dramatic and grandiose as the building of his great-grandfather. But nevertheless, he was there, and so he assumed that that's where he spent his earliest childhood. Must have been exciting to find that. Yes. Okay, would you mind just giving us a little bit of background, history, and what we need to know about Ukraine to understand the whole situation? Well, in which century would you like me to start? I could start with the 13th century sacking of K. E. Bruce by the Mongols, and Ukrainian history has been pretty sad since then. But the protests started in December, and they escalated remarkably slowly. For about two months, it was just people standing in the street singing, and it escalated to stone throwing, and the construction of these enormous barricades. The protesters occupied the central part of Kiev, and it escalated to Molotov cocktails. There were five protesters killed last month, and then in this latest flare-up, which started just two days ago, there were 60 protesters and 13 police killed. And there was also deaths in other cities. One lady was killed in Shchetomyr, which is kind of halfway between Lviv and Kiev. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking back on all this. I'm trying not to take it all for granted. I've been thinking about it for so long that I forget everything's not common knowledge. So the protests started when the president delayed his decision to join the EU. Not to join the EU, but to sign an EU accession agreement. Nobody here thinks that the Ukraine will join the EU because the country is kind of a basket case. But it was an EU accession agreement, and a lot of Ukrainians consider that like their ticket to a normal life. Just a life with better property rights, opportunity to travel. It really hurts Ukrainians' pride that they're like closed off from Europe. They're not allowed to travel, job opportunities. So they thought it was there. A EU accession agreement would have been a ticket to all that. And it started as a protest against that. Had a kind of a lukewarm reception. I angered many of my Ukrainian friends by writing an essay about how stupid the EU was, and how the EU was completely contrary to the history of Europe, which is a history not of political unity, but of political disparity. But then when the protest started, when there was a little bit of police aggression against the protest, there was one particular incident. I forget what night it was. I think it might have been November 28th. There was a particular incident where the protesters were stationary. It was four in the morning. They weren't moving. And just the police just rushed out and beat a whole bunch of them up, broke bones, kidnapped a few of them. They were missing for weeks. And that was really a turning point where the protest stopped being about the EU and started being about just toppling a hideously corrupt regime. Now, I think most of the coverage in the West really wants the protest to be about joining the EU. I mean, the EU was like the perfect storm for the EU. There's anti-EU parties popping up all over Europe. There's countries teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. So for them, they were facing the perfect storm. And then, lo and behold, all these Ukrainians are out in the streets, braving danger. Please let us join the EU. For Brussels, it couldn't be anything better. But I think contrary to their desires, the protests are more about toppling the Yanukovych regime than joining the EU. How's that for a background? That's a good background. How is life in Ukraine? I mean, how are Ukrainians' lives limited? Are they not even allowed to leave the country? Or they can't enter the EU? Or they need a visa? There's a very difficult visa process that, you know, it's not impossible, but it's very hard. The standard of living by official numbers is extraordinarily low. I think average annual income by official numbers is like $4,000. But between 50% to 80% of economic activity is in the black market. So my impression is that it's a lot poorer than even the poorest EU countries, but it's a lot better than the official numbers show. So there's that, and there's also a sort of like a historical legacy of not being Russia, of the desire to get away from Russia, which isn't universal throughout the country. There's a lot of ethnic Russians, some there historically like Odessa, some there that were brought in by Stalin after the Great Famine. But there is this big desire, like Ukrainian identity was suppressed under the Soviet Union. Like the flag, the flag was illegal. Like if you got caught with a flag, that was going to be a big problem for you. So like the expression. So Ukrainians kind of started defining themselves in opposition to Russia and the Soviet Union. And then after the Soviet Union collapsed came this sort of criminal government, this kleptocracy of Russian oligarchs supported by the Kremlin. So Ukrainians kind of just, a lot of them don't view it as legitimate despite the elections. That happens. So if the Ukrainian wants to leave the country, is that a problem? Or is the problem of getting entry into another country? Oh, leaving is okay. Getting entry into the West is difficult. Ukrainians vacation to Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, India, but they can't go to Europe without great difficulty or do America or Canada. Did the President go back on the promise that he had made of approaching the EU? So this was a surprise? I believe it was a surprise. And it wasn't joining the EU, it was signing an accession agreement, which is a ridiculously long process that I don't think anyone had any optimism about it succeeding. But nevertheless they just wanted to sign that something was going to change and they didn't get it. And that brought a modest number of people out into the streets. Not a lot, but some. And people had expected that he would sign this accession agreement? Yeah, to be honest, I kind of liked the game that he was playing. The President strikes me as not very intelligent and just he's a thug doing what he knows best, which is making himself rich. His son recently became the richest man in Ukraine. But they're not the ideologues that you find in the West, they're just thugs. So I kind of felt like I understood him. No complicated ideology behind it. Right, right, just thugs. He had a criminal record even from a young age. He was imprisoned for like stealing little petty crimes. He just grew up a criminal and then he's the President of Ukraine. But I think Ukrainians are tired of being embarrassed by their government. I try to reassure them. All good people are embarrassed by their government. But nevertheless. That's right. Where's the Mankin said? All honest people are ashamed of their government. Yes, that's exactly HL Mankin. So how was the view on the EU? You said people had kind of a romantic, at least the West Ukrainians had kind of a romantic view of the EU. Expecting that to be some kind of liberation. Yeah, it still exists. Even today, even now that it's mostly about toppling the government, the romantic notion of the EU exists. I think it's correct for Ukrainians to romanticize Europe because Europe did achieve something that's like a miracle. You know, the high trust society, rule of law, modern civilization, property rights. So I certainly like to think that that is what Ukrainians are romanticizing. And they're just making the mistake that the EU represents that instead of, you know, they're mistaking the parasite for the treasure, or they're confusing the treasure for the parasite that's devouring the treasure. Yeah, that's a common mistake people make. They see something good in the country and they believe it's because of the state. They see something good in Europe and believe it's because of the EU. It's a common. Although I will say if you compare post-Soviet countries that joined the EU to post-Soviet countries that stayed in Russia's sphere of influence. So mostly I'm talking about the Baltics, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, compare them to Belarus and Ukraine. Much better off in the EU. So who are the, is there anything else in the history of you? I mean, what kind of country is Ukraine anyway? Where does it come from? It's been part of a whole bunch of empires. Yeah, really peculiar part of the Ukrainian sort of identity is this perceived need to prove that you exist. Russians used to call Ukrainians little Russians and Poles called Ukrainians Eastern Poles. After World War II, a lot of Ukrainian refugees were forcibly repatriated. You can look up Operation Kiel Hall for this tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees were sent back to Stalin and either executed or deported to Siberia. And that was kind of enabled by just no realization that Ukrainians existed as a separate people. And there are many examples in history. Ukrainians regard themselves as the inheritors of the Kiev Rus Empire that was sacked by the Mongols in 1241, if I'm not mistaken. Russia also claims that legacy of the Kiev Rus Empire. Ukrainians kind of consider Russians their overgrown little brothers because in the chaos that emerged after the Mongols, that's when the Kingdom of Moscow sort of rose to prominence. In my opinion, Ukrainian is a culture trying to find legitimacy by establishing a state and they don't know what they're doing. They're trying to imitate the EU, they're trying to imitate other states without having an underlying philosophy. So, because a culture looking for a state, I think Russia, by contrast, Russia has over a hundred different ethnicities. They're a state looking for a culture. They don't know whether to kick the Muslims out or wage war on Chechnya to keep them from seceding. Interesting. So, they believe that to be a people you have to have a state. Well, I think they're trying to find legitimacy that way, yeah. Don't they have any local or regional cultureous tradition that they can be happy about? I mean, do they need this big country anyway? Yeah, yeah, of course. And a federalized Ukraine, which I would love to see, would completely take all the pressure off these differences, Russian Ukrainian tensions that exist. I would love to see that. I think the reason that that's unlikely is because all the players, like Russia wants a centralized Ukraine that it can control and the Western powers are trying to keep Ukraine centralized so they could just very carefully pick a new president that's under the EU influence. So, I think both of the players on this grand chessboard are trying to keep Ukraine centralized. When, to me, it seems so obvious that a federalized Ukraine would just be such a perfect solution. Yeah, I mean, it's always interesting for foreign powers to have a centralized counterpart to work with, right? It's much easier to manage. How would you, what are the forces inside Ukraine? What sort of groupings, parties, people's interests do we have? What are the major groups? Oh, that's a really interesting, that's a really good question. Okay, well, you have like the nationalist Ukrainians, which kind of, they're the strongest in Western Ukraine, and then get weaker as you move east and south. You have a small amount of Russian nationalism in Odessa and Crimea. You have these like, Russified Ukrainians, and I know because my girlfriend's one of them, and they're just totally apolitical. Like, it's kind of hard to imagine, but somehow in that part of the world, they just, like, whoever is in charge of you, that's just none of your business. It's really a mentality that I find a little bit disturbing. Oh, so they don't care, they don't care who rules them. Somehow they just consider it beyond their ability to affect, and they just go about their days. Oh, so they think it's nothing they can change otherwise. Yeah, maybe it's something like that. I don't quite understand that mentality, but that's prevalent in the far eastern parts of Ukraine. There are some Russian speakers that are Ukrainian nationalists. Okay, so that's sort of like the societal breakdown. Then the big players are the government. It's the Yanukovych governments. A lot of them are ethnically Russian. They're certainly propped up by Putin. I think the nationalists are often mistaken to see them as like the same enemy as Russia or the same opponent as Russia because they're not. There are times when the Yanukovych regime has defied Russia in gas deals and stuff like that. Remember, these are just gangsters. They don't have that much ideological allegiance. They're allegiances to themselves. But there is this Yanukovych clan. His son just became the richest person in Ukraine recently. So there's that clan. Then there's the oligarchs, a few of whom are ethnically Ukrainian. A lot of them are ethnically Russian or Jewish or Tartar. And they're this view of the oligarchs who are not the Yanukovych family. Their view is interesting because they kind of defy this east-west paradigm through which most people are considering Ukraine because they don't like the EU. They don't want the scrutiny of the EU. They don't like the Ukrainian nationalists because they're not Ukrainian themselves, most of them. And yet they fear Moscow. Right now, they have their own little kingdom. They use Ukraine like it's a giant ATM machine by seizing national resources or even seizing businesses, plucking businesses out of their hands of their owners. So they have their own little gangland in which they're the rulers. And they're happy with that. They don't want that to change. So that's interesting. And then there's the opposition politicians. There's three of them. Heavyweight boxing champion Vladimir Klitschko. There's the nationalist firebrand Oleg Chakhnebok, who's a perpetual source of embarrassment for the protesters. They've actually gained some standing, I think, in the last couple years because they make some very high visibility protests. When I first came to Ukraine a couple years ago, people seemed more dismissive of Chakhnebok and his nationalist Wobodaw party. Everyone said that, oh, they're just, everyone claimed that they were supported by the Yanukovych regime to radicalize the opposition. Everyone, let me say that again. Everyone said that the nationalist party was supported by the party of regions, the ruling party to radicalize the opposition. Two years ago, but in the past couple years, they seem to have gained some standing. And there's a third opposition guy, Yatsenyuk, a very uncharismatic guy, lawyer. Nobody really knows where he came from and not too many people trust him. So what you have with the opposition is the EU and America trying to hold these guys up like these guys are the solution. And then at the same time, they have very little standing with the protesters. Vitaly Klitschko, who's probably the least mistrusted of the opposition guys, in other words, the most liked. He was sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher when he went to talk to the protesters. So I would love to see the protesters resist both the opposition and the regime and just fight for federalization. I don't think it's going to happen. I think the EU is going to just keep pushing those opposition candidates as a solution, and I think they're eventually going to succeed. I also think that that will help Ukraine, you know, just as joining the EU was better than staying in Russia's sphere of influence. But I think it would help Ukraine even more if they could avoid both masters and just make a federalized country introduce gun ownership, introduce competing currencies. But that's an awful lot to hope for. Yeah, do people have this ideological insights or maturity to sort of work for federalization rather than joining the EU? The conversation seems to be getting louder by the day, by the week. So the conversation is increasing. I saw reports. I saw reports from three Western news agencies, including Zero Hedge, that the place that I am, my province, declared independence. But I haven't heard anything about that from any of my Ukrainian friends or any Ukrainian news source. Or I haven't, you know, when I go down to the Lviv Center Square where there's like a 24-7 rally happening, no discussion of it there. That's kind of a strange thing. I encountered this Western Ukrainian secession in a couple of Western media sources, but nothing here where it's supposedly happening. So to summarize the political situation, you have the government with the thugs and you have the oligarchs, which are sort of a separate deliver on lines. Separate group of thugs, yeah, rival thugs. And then you have three opposition parties of varying degrees of popularity. Yes, yes. And the protesters, they don't really care for any of these groups or do they have any kind of affiliation or preference? No, like I said, there are some internet mimes emerging that portraying the three opposition candidates as clowns. I told you how Klitschko got sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher. But I think that the protesters would stop protesting if the regime stepped down. I think their goal is narrowly focused on regime change. And whoever they can get that, they'll accept it. Okay, so the protesters, they just want to get the president away. Yeah. And the party of Russians out of power. And that's his party, right, the president? Yeah. Yeah. And then they would expect the EU to come in and help them pick a successor, one of the three. See, I'm not aware of any consensus in that regard. Usually the conversation stops just overthrow the president. I fear that what will happen next is way too much EU influence. And I feel like that that's what Putin fears. So he's going to use all his influence to prevent that. I think it's very reasonable of the Russian government to not want Ukraine under control of NATO. They don't want NATO armies here in Ukraine. You know, I feel almost like neither side wants Ukraine. They just want the other guy not to have it. Like, yes, yes, Russia wants to restore its empire. They still have this imperial ambition. But mostly they just want a buffer. They want NATO armies to not be in Ukraine. Similarly, yes, we all know the world bankers want to, you know, expand their influence. But Ukraine is such a poor country. There's not much here for them. They're just using Ukraine as a foil against Russia. So nobody wants us. They just want the other guy not to have us. And I can't help but fantasize that somehow in this like middle ground Ukraine means borderland. I can't stop fantasizing that somehow like as the borderland we can just, we can just, you know, not ally with either side, keep playing both sides and get guns, get competing currencies, get a federally as local and federated system as possible. Yeah, wouldn't that be the best solution to not be affiliated with either of these two sides and just be around and hope. Let's hope that people will realize that. How do you see, how is EU exerting its influence here? What are they doing? What is the US doing? How is Putin doing it? Well, you know, I actually just finished writing a scathing criticism of libertarian coverage of the Ukraine protest. Because I think websites which I loved for the past decade, Lou Rockwell boiling frogs, they're just getting it wrong. They're just adopting Kremlin propaganda hook line and sinker. They think the enemy of their enemy is their friend. It's like, it's like how libertarians feel when Republicans say, you know, I'm a Republican and I support the Iraq war because I hate Obamacare. Or how liberals say, yeah, I'm liberal and we're going to have Obamacare. Why? Because I'm against Bush's war. Like, yes, the other side is lying, but that doesn't mean their opponents are right. Both sides are full of lies and treachery. And I feel like so many guys who I look up to as libertarian icons, Paul Craig Roberts, are just getting it completely, completely wrong. So let me take this opportunity to set it straight. Yeah, I just read Paul Craig Roberts today and I thought it was a bit unbalanced. Yeah. So okay. So how is the EU exerting their influence? Mostly by diplomacy and declarations. Yes, there were reports in that Paul Craig, Paul Craig Roberts article of protesters getting paid, I think $35 a day. All right. I developed software here. You know, my lead programmer, he's a genius software developer. He has an SUV. He has a three story house, a wife and two children. We go skiing together. He is part of Ukraine's tiny middle class. All right. Soon as these protests started, he was off to the protest. He was off the Kiev. He's on my done now. He was in my done yesterday when all that crazy stuff was happening. You know, this is not a guy who's going to be motivated by $35 a day. You know, if you read the bios of some of the protesters that were killed, you know, they're university professors, scientists. You know, these are not like, these are not just people that the West has bought off. You could also take this historical context. After World War II, the West loved Stalin. Uncle Joe, they called him, right? He had explicit support. Obviously, there was no paid resistance to Stalin. And yet in Ukraine, there was armed resistance to the Soviet Union for a full 10 years after World War II ended. Armed resistance to the Soviet Union didn't end until 1955. And that was completely homegrown. And Ukrainians consider themselves the inheritors of that legacy. So contrary to what you might read on lurockwell.com, this protest is not orchestrated by the West. It is, however, trying to be co-opted by the West and trying to be steered by the West. And there's no doubt in my mind about that. So it's a genuine popular uprising. Yes, very much so. And yes, you can and you should like, you should criticize that the U.S. is involved here because they shouldn't be involved here. But at the same time, like, there's completely explicit reports, not even explicit reports like the hooligans talk about this themselves. There's live video, raw footage of the, a lot of the hooligans who come to beat up the protesters. They're also hired by either the party of regions or by Russia. Like it's happening on both sides. There was a recent article by a Daniel McAdams talks about logistics support to the protesters. You know, they're using freaking catapults. They're using catapults and bricks and Molotov cocktails. I actually, I visited my Don about a week and a half ago. You can see the video on my on my YouTube channel, Roman's book report. I don't see evidence of any serious logistical support. The support is diplomatic. And, you know, I'm sure that they're paying somebody to maintain the presence. But, you know, if you see the passion that's here, and if you know the types of people that are going to these protests, it's it's home from 100%. Okay. So the EU and the US, they like to support the protesters by diplomacy. Yes. Where do the Russians come in? Oh, well, I mean, like, you know, Ukraine shares a gigantic border with Russia. Like, like it or not, Ukrainians and Russians are going to have a very closely related history. So, you know, a lot, a lot of the ministers, a lot of the ministers in the Ukrainian government are probably Russian agents. There's sort of a battle over World War Two history. Those partisans that gave the that gave the Soviets so much trouble. Okay, here's an example. The minister of education, he removed from the history books stories that the partisans also fought the Nazis. So the Soviets like saying that the partisans were only Nazi collaborators, you know, you know, and anyone who resisted the Soviet Union was a Nazi collaborator. But, but there were examples of the partisans also fighting the Nazis. I know an actual distant relative of mine was fighting with the partisans and was killed in a battle with the Nazis. His name was Yaroslav Skosky. He has a Russian language with the pediapage, no English language with the pediapage. It's a partisan commander. So we know the battles happen, but that's an example of like the sort of the fight over World War Two history that's still underway. And it's totally highlighted by the, you know, the the Russian, the Russian interpretation of the of the Ukrainian partisans. So yeah, okay, go on. Oh, I mean, the Russian influence is everywhere. And it's not going to go away. And it's fairly obvious too. And when you criticize, I would love to see, you know, criticism of that, you know, hand in hand with criticism of the American propaganda. And how do the Russians assist? They are, are they helping out helping the president, the government or to these agents somehow? Oh, somebody is hiring these thugs called Titushke to come and beat up protesters. The the the regime was propped up with Russian support during the election always. Because even though even though he's just a, you know, a local gangster, the Russians considered him vastly preferable to like Yulia Tomoshenko. That that beautiful woman who probably one of the prettiest heads of state in the world, because she would have, she would have just gone to the EU very quickly. And like I said, the Russians at least want a buffer state if they can't restore their empire, which is very reasonable in my opinion. That's how empires reason. That's how they think. Yeah. So how is the democracy of Ukraine? I mean, the last election and the election before that, how do people look at these things? Do they take it seriously? Do they take it a lot less seriously than they used to the 2000? Okay, here's a here's a nice example of sort of like callousness with which political corruption happens here. So in 2004, that was the last time we saw mass protests. They weren't violent like these, but they were mass protests in 2004. And the those protests denied there was big election fraud, bringing Yanukovych to power, and instead a sort of more Ukrainian nationalist pro-western guy, Yushchenko came to power. All right. Soon as he came to power, they made a constitutional reform that made the presidential powers much weaker. Okay. So like the so this is the constitutional 2004 people are talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So so the the non-Russian guy comes to power. The non-Russian guy comes to power. Presidential powers are reduced by constitutional referendum. Surprise, surprise, the, you know, the orange revolution politicians were all corrupt and ineffective. And in when was it 2010 or was it earlier? And eventually the villain of the orange revolution becomes president. That's the current president. He was the villain of the orange revolution, but he becomes president. So immediately, Julia was in between. Julia was the prime minister among the orange guys. Yeah. And there was a lot of infighting between them. But so okay. So the villain of the orange revolution, Yanukovych becomes president. And then the government decides that those constitutional reforms were like invalid for some legal reason. So now that the Russian guys in charge again, he has all the presidential power back. Just completely callous like that. I think the 2010 reelection of Yanukovych where he ran against Julia. It was I think it was officially declared just barely legitimate. There was a lot of election fraud. You could tell by the exit polls of prisons and hospitals, like people were, you know, where you couldn't observe the election. Like prisons and hospitals gave all like 99% support to Yanukovych in some regions. But it was declared just barely, barely in his favor. But I think Ukrainians are getting tired of democracy. What was Julia doing these days? He was in prison for a while. Is she still in prison? She's still in prison. And that seems to be a much bigger deal among Europeans than it is among Ukrainians. The Ukrainian interpretation I hear is that Julia and Yanukovych were both criminals and whoever won the election, the other was going to jail. Yanukovych won the election, so Julia went to jail. And there's very little sympathy for her. My impression is that Yanukovych was the man of the Russian intelligence agencies. Julia was the woman of the Western intelligence agencies. That's why Julia's like president, Julia's imprisonment is such big news in Europe. And it's not that big news in Ukraine. Most Ukrainians think she deserved it. Here's an example of very likely EU support. So there was a little part right next to where the protest camps are. There's like a little free Julia camp, like a bunch of tents and banners and signs. And that's been there for like a year on the sidewalk, like a long one city block, like this free Julia protest. And the people sitting there are just like, they're all like, you know, pensioners. And they keep like the tents are probably empty half the time, but they keep just a couple people there. So, you know, I have no evidence backing this up. But my very strong hunch is that that whole free Julia permanent protest camp is funded by the West. I have no doubt. And what about the sort of the pro-Western pro-EU protesters aren't they sympathetic to her either? Not the ones that I talked to, but that's that's not and she's not on their minds right now. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if Western coverage was hitting the issue a little harder. But here the protests are joining the EU and opposing the regime. Interesting. I mean, our part of the world that Julia is, she's the hero, the woman with the braids. Really? You're getting that? Not so much now, but a while ago, you know, when she was in prison was a really big thing. Yeah, it's a bigger thing in the EU than in Ukraine, strangely. Interesting. How these Ukrainian nationalists, what do they want? They want to get rid of the regime and join the EU. So they're the sort of heart of the protests, the heart and soul of the protests. The protests have spread to Eastern, almost nearly 100% Russian speaking cities. For example, today, or I guess yesterday, there was a headline that in Nipropetrovs, it's a Russian industrial city built by Stalin, all Russians there. They built barricades to prevent a brigade of paratroopers from leaving their barracks and reinforcing Kiev. And amazingly, they succeeded. They were cutting down trees and dropping them on the road and doing all this stuff. In Donetsk, there was a small and short-lived protest against the Tutschke. A lot of those government hired hooligans came from that. They were poor coal miners who get paid a little bit of money to go and beat up protesters. People sympathizing with Russia, or even Russians. Ukrainian nationalists are trying to help the protesters. Am I getting this right or wrong? Well, okay. There's Ukrainians, there's Russified Ukrainians and there's Russians. And there's sympathy for the protests among all those groups. You could find YouTube videos of guys that came to join the protests from Moscow. Russians from Moscow came to join the protests because I think they recognize it much better than those writers on theluerockwell.com recognize it. They see just the horrible oppression. Yes, the protests got violent. The riot police got violent first with that November 28th raid. They see it all. So there's a lot of sympathy for the protests. Where the Russian nationalism exists, a little bit in Crimea, a little bit in Odessa, it's kind of muted. And where people, like in the Eastern industrial towns like Donetsk, Nipropetrov, Zaporizhia, there are a mix of Russified Ukrainians and Russians. But they're more apolitical and a little bit supporting the protests. Yeah. So are there any groups that are against the protests at all? Or it's just government people who are against it? To me, it honestly seems like it's just government people that are against it. There's a Communist Party of Ukraine. And I'm actually subscribed to their YouTube channel. And they made videos of like in Sevastopol. Some people interviewed in the street saying that the protests are all Nazis and stuff like that. And we shouldn't support them. There's a little bit of like that Russian-Sarist pride in Odessa in Sevastopol. So I think there you'll see opposition to the protests that's genuine. But it's very, very muted. Right now it seems to me like it's government thugs, government hired people. It's people who are on the payroll versus the protesters. Okay, just a couple more questions that I'll let you go. It's late for you or early, however you want to look at it. Just the relationship between Russia or Russians, I should say, and Ukrainians. You say there are Russified Ukrainians or Russians and Ukrainians. I mean, going back in history, Stalin, the great Holodomor, the famine. And the whole Soviet thing. What is the relationship between people on the streets, Russians, Ukrainians? Commerce happens without any problem. And the people get along fine. But, you know, politicians always grab at those divisions. And it seems like everywhere other than politics, it's not an issue. In politics, it's an issue. Well, I mean, that's the whole idea of politics to put groups against each other. But the parts of Ukraine that are like, there's some guy, the Washington Post article, this map tells you everything you need to know about Ukraine. They'll show the voting pattern. And the east of the country will all have voted for the current president, the south and east, the north and west will all have voted for, you know, the opposition. They'll show that pattern. But in those blue parts of the map, the parts of the map that voted for the president, he does not have their support anymore. It doesn't seem that way to me. My girlfriends from that part of the country, it seems like they're either apolitical or supporting the protests. One big example is what happened in Nipropetrovsk yesterday. They blockaded that reinforcement from a military reinforcement. So what's your feeling? How much support does the protests have from the population? Oh, it's huge. I mean, yeah, it's huge for most of the country. Yeah, I don't know. Like, where I live, it's 99%. It's everybody here in Western Ukraine. If you go to the east, I think, I don't know, I think most people wouldn't tell you. My good friend is a truck driver, and he tried to gauge people's opinion. And when that's a few days ago, and he said, like, people are scared to tell their opinion. They don't know who you are. It's a really weird mentality when you get out there. And then I think in Crimea and in Odessa, you'll get genuine, like, people who are sort of have that monarchical, Tsarist pride, and they're like, they want a restored Russian empire. And for that reason, they impose the protests. So I think the way of restoring Russian empire is by keeping the flags in place and Russian influence through them. Yeah, I think it'd be pretty easy to poke holes in their worldview. Yeah, it seems a bit contradictory, but I guess it's... You want to hear a joke? Yeah, sure. Okay, so there was this Russian woman walking through ankle-deep mud carrying buckets of water because she had no sanitation in her house. And she was doing this herself because her husband was killed in the war. One of her sons was sent to Siberia, and her other son died of a famine. So she was all alone carrying these buckets of water through ankle-deep mud. And suddenly a Russian fighter jet flies over her, and the sonic boom knocks her over. So she falls in this mud, and the buckets, you know, the water spills out, so she's left to take the walk again. And she looks up at this fighter jet, and she thinks, wow, I'm so big and strong. Oh, there you go. Very good. Okay, let's see. I think I'm pretty much... So how would you... Just the last two questions then to round off. Your ideal solution here. Question number one, what do you think will happen? Question number one, my ideal solution, local autonomy, whether it's a federated system by Oblast or renewing the Magdeburg Rite, which did exist in Ukraine. Local autonomy, competing currencies, gun ownership. And I'm doing what little I can to spread that message. I was on television a couple of times. How many regions are there to sort of federalize the country into? I think they're embarrassing me because I don't know the answer. It's 20 something, like 25. Okay, what do I think will happen? This is such a tough question. I was just telling my friend today, I can't imagine... I can't imagine Ukraine splitting up, and I can't imagine Ukraine not splitting up. Maybe Crimea. You know, when Ukraine voted for independence, every region voted for independence 80-something percent, except Crimea. They voted to join independent Ukraine just 55 percent. Crimea has a very strategically important port for the Russian Navy. So, okay, here's a prediction. Crimea will break off. Maybe one of the eastern regions will break off as well. Galicia, Western Ukraine will become its own independent country and join the EU. The rest of Ukraine will get a new president and will inherit that corrupt bureaucracy. And 10 years from now, Galicia, which will have the most autonomy, despite, not because of, but despite joining the EU, Galicia will become such a bright example for the rest of Ukraine that the rest of Ukraine is going to start looking at it and imitating it and following in its ways. Well, let's hope for that. Except for the EU membership. Except for the EU membership. I wish it wasn't, it wouldn't happen, but I think it probably would. A lot of things can happen in the EU over the next few years, too. Yeah, that's true. Anything I missed, do you think? Anything you'd like to tell us and our listeners? Well, if you don't mind my plugging my own blog, I've been blogging pretty aggressively on RomanInUkraine.com and if you want me to give you a 40-minute tour of Lviv, including the Ranset government buildings, then check out my YouTube channel, Roman's Book Report. Great, I will do that. We'll put links up to that. Like you said, it's spread all over Ukraine now. Many cities have protests like this, but not as violent as in Kiev, but still. Oh, yeah, I mean, even last month, I think about a dozen of the oblast centers, like of the regional administration centers were captured by protesters. Some of them were then recaptured by government, but now it started again. So this is not isolated to Maidan. There's stuff happening all over the country. The deputy mayor of Odessa, the one Tsarist city, the most Tsarist city he resigned today, he resigned in opposition to the crackdown to the violence. Do you feel safe yourself or do you feel the heat? I feel safe, yeah. That's good. Well, thank you very much. It's been very instructive and I've learned a lot. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, let's hope we can talk again some other time. Anytime. Alright, thanks a lot.