Why is Ukraine in Crisis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embarrassed to Ask

Why have Ukraini­ans been protest­ing since Novem­ber? It’s a ques­tion you might feel strange ask­ing in Feb­ru­ary. But not to wor­ry, The Wash­ing­ton Post has put togeth­er a help­ful video that explains the cri­sis in two min­utes (above), along with a relat­ed primer: 9 ques­tions about Ukraine you were too embar­rassed to ask. A deep­er analy­sis can be found in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

For the lat­est news on what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, you can get live video and social media updates at The New York Times.


by | Permalink | Comments (4) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (4)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Baba Olokonla says:

    You omit­ted a small his­tor­i­cal fact that Moscow, the present day Cap­i­tal of Rus­sia, was first set­tled by Ukrain­ian war­lords.

  • Olha says:

    They for­got to say that the divi­sion of Ukraine is most­ly arti­fi­cial. Peo­ple in the east are being con­stant­ly brain­washed by Russ­ian TV chan­nels. They have a wrong pic­ture of what is going on in the coun­try. The protests are absolute­ly NOT about the Russ­ian or Ukrain­ian lan­guage, NOT about the Euro­pean or Russ­ian “choice” of Ukraine – all those things are polit­i­cal instru­men­tal­iza­tion. Although the EU agree­ment served as a trig­ger, but all this would hap­pen soon­er or lat­er with­out it, because the coun­try is occu­pied by crim­i­nals. Peo­ple are killed and tor­tured; they are starv­ing, because the state bud­get is stolen by the offi­cials, they work and die in hor­ri­ble con­di­tions in the mines. These are crimes against human­i­ty. And the mas­sacre that the Donet­sk ban­dits orga­nized togeth­er with Krem­lin these days is the agony of that mafia (you may watch with your own eyes how they killed the unarmed pro­test­ers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSvj8F_Br4M&feature=youtube_gdata_player). That’s the real prob­lem, not the “divid­ed” Ukraine. I appeal to all peo­ple in the West: Please don’t lis­ten to those false reports! Please protest in case if some­one will be going to inter­vene: be it Rus­sia or the US! Sup­port the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, who fight for their true free­dom and the true inde­pen­dence of Ukraine right now sac­ri­fic­ing their lives for our future.
    Слава Україні!

  • Pasha Yerbanaut says:

    Yeah, the fact is that the first Russ­ian state was called “Kievan Rus’ â€ť and had a cap­i­tal in Kiev. So the prob­lem with Ukrain­ian iden­ti­ty real­ly goes deep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

  • Shelly says:

    Thanks! The arti­cle just con­firms how you can’t believe the media. Like none of us have fam­i­ly there and we don’t com­mu­ni­cate with them.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.