The British Guardian reports today that pro-Russian activists in Ukraine's
industrial centre of Donetsk have proclaimed their independence from
Kiev and pledged to hold a referendum in the next month, provoking fears
that Moscow could be orchestrating a second Crimea scenario in Ukraine's east.
"Seeking to create a popular, legitimate, sovereign state, I proclaim the creation of the sovereign state of the people's republic of Donetsk," said a man into a loudspeaker outside the seized regional administration building to a cheering crowd.
The protesters said they would hold a referendum no later than 11 May on the region's status, and also asked Russia to ready "peacekeeping troops", in a scenario reminiscent of the events that led to the annexation of Crimea last month.
In Kiev, the interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said events in the east were being carried out according to a script written in Moscow.
But is this "storm in a cup of soup" really important to the US or to Europe for that matter? The Washington post recently reported: "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 also 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."
"Seeking to create a popular, legitimate, sovereign state, I proclaim the creation of the sovereign state of the people's republic of Donetsk," said a man into a loudspeaker outside the seized regional administration building to a cheering crowd.
The protesters said they would hold a referendum no later than 11 May on the region's status, and also asked Russia to ready "peacekeeping troops", in a scenario reminiscent of the events that led to the annexation of Crimea last month.
In Kiev, the interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said events in the east were being carried out according to a script written in Moscow.
But is this "storm in a cup of soup" really important to the US or to Europe for that matter? The Washington post recently reported: "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 also 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."
