Ukraine is a unique country, in many ways.  It has beautiful rolling mountains in the west, great for climbing, skiing, hiking and camping.  The south has the most beautiful beaches, with shear cliff faces just a kilometer away from the beach, presenting the most stunning views.  Tourist cities such as Odessa provide a great summer alternative, with beautiful beaches, open air clubs, fine dining and countless activities.  The capital, Kiev, is stunning in numerous ways.  The beautiful architecture which at times is over 1000 years old.  The winding streets, the beautiful people and countless sites such as museums, theaters and river beaches.

The most unique feature of all, however, is the government.  The fact that every government position, outside of president, has a publicly known price tag isn't enough.  We also have to touch on the blatant corruption throughout the Police, Tax Departments, Ports and every other institution that has money making potential.  African nations, such as Zimbabwe, need to take lessons from Ukraine when it comes to robbing the people of money.

As the world's Financial Crisis devastates the world, civilised countries are doing everything in their power to help the people, by lowering taxes in places and providing aid in others.  Ukraine takes a different approach.  First, they quickly raise taxes in almost every jurisdiction ... if there is no taxable income, how can they steal more money?  When it was calculated that this wasn't enough, they raised the tariffs on small businesses, claiming that the budget is empty.  Of course, they don't care that these businesses will now be forced to go out of business, they logically deduced that they will go under anyway, so the government is doing them a favor by pushing them out now ... but first, businesses need to pay a little extra to ensure the officials can steal just a little more.  To make sure the people aren't living too well either, they raised all traffic fines to levels not seen yet in Europe.  For a third world country to have higher fines than most civilised European nations would require a psycho in office ... or a large teams of psychopaths.

To lay blame is easy because there are technically only two people running the country.  President Yushchenko simply make a mockery of the Presidency.  He hasn't fulfilled a single promise, but has made sure that his children, and his ex-CIA wife, live extremely well.  With a wife in the CIA, and the USA funding the Orange Revolution, it is hard to understand why anti-USA sentiment is so common in Ukraine.  Tymoshenko is another prize.  This woman is extremely intelligent, but evil in ways that make the Devil shudder.  When it comes to Corruption, Tymoshenko takes the prize.  She has done so much good for Ukraine that you could fit it all in the dot for this "i".  Tymoshenko's goal was to discredit Yushchenko, and she did so at the expense of Ukraine.  One thing is for sure, she was extremely effective at discrediting him.

This leads me to the Natural Gas crisis with Russia.  Lets be fair here, this entire crisis started with Ukraine not willing to pay back $2.5 Billion in debt.  Where will you find a business willing to continue to fund a product to a client that isn't willing to pay off its debt?  Especially when said business is not only financing the product, but also subsidising the product to help its clients.  When a client is so ungrateful that they not only refuse to pay off their debt, but demand more product, this client needs to be cutoff.  Unfortunately, this is not an option for Russia.  Since cutting off Ukraine could in turn cause millions of deaths, Russia can not afford such negative press.  However, Russia is fully justified in protecting its investment. 

When Ukraine and Russia couldn't agree to terms for Ukrainian Gas exports, Russia shut of Ukraine's pipes.  Since most of Russia's gas bound for Europe runs through pipes on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine was in a good position to quietly steal gas from Russia.  The amount of gas stolen can be questioned, because Russia's political system isn't a great deal better than Ukraine's.  However, the fact that ample gas was stolen is beyond a doubt for any Ukrainian citizen, or anyone that knows how Ukraine operates.

Russia couldn't tolerate this kind of theft, so the pipes were shut off.  This, of course, caused a panic throughout Europe which is going on to this day.  So, what is to be done?  Russia and the EU have already agreed on terms for how to get Natural Gas to the EU.  Ukraine, however, doesn't like Russia's choice of pipes (most likely difficult to steal from those).  After Russia turned on the Gas, Ukraine blocked it.  This battle has gone on long enough, and should end.

The biggest problem is the Anti-Russia sentiment throughout this conflict.  The fact that Russia is being blamed for this conflict, with claims that Russia is using its resources to try and control the world.  These are ludicrous statements, and can only be justified by one thing ... the Ukraine is pushing away from Russia and pushing towards the West.  Regardless of how wrong Ukraine is in this situation, the fact that Russia is known as the Soviet Enemy will not go away.  People refuse to acknowledge that Russia has done no wrong, and is simply protecting its interests.  Russia physically can not send Natural Gas to Europe because Ukraine is stealing it all.

Now, Ukraine is demanding that Russia give Ukraine free Natural Gas in order to guarantee delivery to Europe.  This is even more ridiculous than the hand written addendum to the Russian, European, Ukrainian contract agreement for transit.  Russia Today managed to get a copy of the letter.  They have a translated version on their site.  It is interesting to see to what ends Ukrainian officials will go at the expense of their western neighbors.

Ukraine's inability to play by the rules and to be civil in deciding on an outcome to this crisis will be her downfall.  The most unfortunate thing of all is that the leaders will not suffer, they will always have heat and will always eat black caviar.  Its the people of Ukraine that are suffering and will suffer.  Ukraine needs a new revolution, one that will benefit the people ... not the USA.