Pain in the 'Kraine

Of all the angles from which to view the situation in the Ukraine, two seem to me to be the most interesting. The first is the general demeanor of the crisis. This is the Ukraine, where current President Leonid Kuchma allegedly ordered a hit on a critical journalist, which is supposed to be under the thumb of crypto-fascist Vladimir Putin, in a region of the world where political bloodshed is the rule, and the only clashes we've seen are between rival party colors (and I find orange can complement blue nicely). Despite the alleged resurgence of statist tendancies in larger ex-SSRs, the pro-Yanukovich forces have proven to be decidedly impotent in their attempts to bring about their desired election results. True, one would hope elections would be pristine the first time around (though who are we to talk), and true, one would hope clandestine operatives wouldn't poison the opposition candidate, but I for one am surprised that the parties in the election are awaiting court decisions and considering political solutions, and, perhaps the attention being paid to the electoral process in the Kraine will push Russian voters to be more demanding of their own democracy.
The second interesting issue, I believe, is the potential devolution of state power to an autonomous eastern region of the country. My pal Tim Cooper writes that the West should be concerned about such a prospect, but I'm not so sure. One's natural inclination is to try and determine what sort of devolution would occur in the Kraine. Would it be the Velvet Divorce or Kosovo? There are plenty of reasons to think any such arrangement, whether provincial autonomy or an outright national split, would never take place or never succeed, but there are also reasons why it might prove positive in this case. The primary one is that any separate western state would be a prime candidate for EU entry. As we saw with many other eastern European states, the prospect of an invitation to the lucrative European club is a powerful incentive to improve a nation's political and economic structures. Such an eastern incursion of legitimate democracy and economic health could be a powerful symbol to struggling slav nations, and could actually help ease regional tension by blurring traditional markers between "Europe" and "Russia." There are risks, to be sure, such as emergent violence between separating regions, or an Eastern Kraine much more closely aligned with, and perhaps absorbed by, Russia, but I think these tend to be overstated. Western powers tend to be extremely nervous about disturbing the Russian bear, but Russia is a power in steady and perhaps intractable decline. Faced with the prospect of a Europe of 400 million on its western border and a resurgent China of over a billion on its southern, Russia is looking marginalization directly in the eye. EU membership is at the moment, unthinkable for Russia, but will become less so in the next twenty years. I think a Ukrainian split is actually an opportunity to bring Russia closer to the European sphere, and that is an absolute good.