CFR Daily News Brief Violence in Odessa Latest Blow to Kiev’s Authority

Daily News Brief May 5, 2014

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Top of the Agenda

Violence in Odessa Latest Blow to Kiev’s Authority

Kiev's authority over eastern Ukraine appeared increasingly tenuous on Sunday after a mob stormed a police station in Odessa and freed sixty-seven pro-Russian militants from detention. The events overshadowed interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's visit to the Black Sea port city, where he had arrived to express condolences for the dozens killed in street fighting and a fire that engulfed a trade union building on Friday, and instead cast blame on the local police (WaPo). The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine called for an investigation into Friday's violence, saying there was no evidence of direct links to the Kremlin while alleging Moscow's influence (WSJ). Ukraine, meanwhile, is struggling to break free from the Russian state-owned firm Gazprom's grip over natural gas in dealing with Slovakia—a technically simple but politically fraught arrangement (NYT).

Analysis

"It's easy to understand why Putin would covet and wish to annex Odessa and other southeast Ukrainian cities, but calling them Russian cities evokes a history that never was. In the 1920s, when Vladimir Lenin made the region officially a part of Ukraine and granted the Ukrainian Socialist Republic a veneer of autonomy, he said he was doing so 'to avoid Great Russian imperialism and chauvinism.' Vladimir Putin clearly sees nothing wrong with these traits," wries Patricia Herlihy in the Los Angeles Times.

"We call this phenomenon the unbalanced globalization of oil-rich states. It matters because it leaves the world with a set of countries on which most others countries are highly dependent but who are not well integrated into the world's political and legal institutional infrastructure. This underscores the complex dilemma that Obama faces in imposing costs on Russia. How can you penalize a government that sits on top of such extraordinary wealth – and can prosper while thumbing its nose at international institutions?" write Michael Ross and Erik Voeten for the Monkey Cage.

"Each situation is different, but in the echo-chamber of global politics they reinforce each other. The Asians note that in 1994, in exchange for surrendering nuclear weapons, Ukraine received a guarantee from Russia, America and Britain that its borders were safe. The Baltic countries remember the red lines crossed in Syria. Arab princes and Chinese ambassadors count the Republican senators embracing isolationism. Together, these retreats plant a nagging suspicion among friends and foes that on the big day America simply might not turn up," writes the Economist.