Ukraine is not a playground!

Ukraine is not a playground!

The shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over Eastern Ukraine should be a wake-up call for the EU, the US and not least Russia.

At stake is not only the well-being of the Ukrainian people, but also of the world, with the risk of negative consequences for cooperation  and economic development.

The EU and the US should stop accepting everything the central government in Kiev does. Attacking cities with hundreds of thousands of civilians is unacceptable. It is wrong to see and treat the amateurs in Kiev as responsible politicians.

Russia should stop supporting crazy people n the East. If it can be confirmed that the Malaysian plane was shot down by people connected to the insurrection against the Kiev government, then this just further underlines what already seemed and now even more seems clear, not least in view of their behavior on the crash scene: that parts - though not all - of the pro-Russian fighters are unorganized, uncivilized bandits. Thus it is a pattern like the ones already seen in similar situations after the breaking up of the USSR, like in Transdnjestr (even though the situation here has improved since).

But Ukraine is not Moldova. Donetsk is not Tiraspol. A country of this size and this population can not be treated like a banana republic. Uncontrollable unpredictable bandits are the wrong people for giving the Russian-oriented part of the population freedom and influence. Instead they have damaged the perception of both the separatists and Russia in the public opinion.

In cooperation with the amateurs in Kiev they create division, violence and suffering. And they affect the relations between East and West negatively. 

As stated earlier I have a lot of understanding for the Russian points of view of the turning west of Ukraine and for the worries of the people in Eastern Ukraine. That a Western oriented part of a large heterogenous country tries to turn the whole country in a direction not wanted by half the population is unquestionably wrong. Besides Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. But it would be wiser for Russia and better for both its influence and the cause of the Russian-speakers to give moral and economic support for POLITICAL opponents of Kiev like the Party of Regions. Time, economy and culture would work for such forces.

And it can be in nobody's interest to let the future for the relations between the great powers be decided by unpredictable desperadoes. The destiny of the world for decades could be affected. On a more general level: the last phase of many modernities have been very violent or at least filled with harmful conflicts. We should do everything to prevent this from happening in our case. God does not play dice with the World. Neither should the big powers of today!