The news that the Russian wheelchair-bound singer Yulia Samoylova has been given a three-year ban from entering Ukraine -- thus spoiling her chances of representing her country in the Eurovision -- causes me to recall the time when I first came to Russia. I confess -- with more than a little shame now -- that back then I couldn't have told you much about which country was which. I thought that Ukraine was part of Russia. Well, I am American, so what in the hell would I know? (you can read more about this in my previous post)
Anyway, I joined a dating service (I was working out of Italy at the time), posted my profile -- assuming I was doing a search for Russian women -- and ended up being contacted by a lot of ladies from Ukraine. There were two of them in Odessa that I almost went to visit before deciding on Liuba from Omsk, who has turned out to be the best wife imaginable. Otherwise, who knows, I might now even be stationed in Odessa.
When I lived in Germany, I once helped a very beautiful and talented Ukrainian girl named Nadia with her university dissertation. She was a little bit strange, and totally immersed in Protestant Christianity (the spider that can give a poisonous bite to sexual romance), but she was very brilliant and gifted at learning foreign languages. I always thought well of her.
Once firmly ensconced in Russia again, I met some Ukrainian people and thought they were OK. No prejudice there, no preconceptions, and even my Russian friends never found any particular reason to discuss Ukraine with me. Ukraine was Ukraine, and everybody had friends and relatives there. Kiev was a cool city. I went there twice on visa business.
The only strange thing I found out was that Ukrainians like to eat raw fat -- big chunks of it. I have tried it and it is Not Good. It tastes like some kind of paralytic membrane...maybe the fleshy part of somebody's hand -- that fleshy place where the thumb connects to the palm. But they love it. No problem. Some nationalities like to eat monkey brains; others prefer insects. Some will even eat dogs and cats (screw those people!).) Isn't it a wonderful world? Variety is the spice of....well;. you know the saying.
Alas, over the past several years, I have begun to view Ukrainians in a different light. This should not be taken as an indictment of the Ukrainian people; I don't mean it that way, and I do indeed see the general population as 'victims' -- but victims of the West as much as victims of Russia, maybe even more so. However, 'victims' is a nice way of putting it. I would further suggest that the powers that be in Ukraine are nothing but fools on the Europian stage. Mere pawns.and wankers. I don't even need to say "crooks" because we already know that. And these politicians are the jackasses that have banned the girl in the wheelchair. Never was the hypocrisy of Western thinking better demonstrated. What such scoundrels excoriate in Russians, they merely repeat themselves.
I remember several occasions of watching actual brawls in the Ukrainian Duma on television. I mean, really, the sight of grown men, mostly fat and out of shape, rolling around on the floor exchanging ineffectual punches, like a Saturday night fight at Komsomolskaya metro. It is funny, but also pathetic, and the only thing I can compare it to is WCW Wrestling. You know, the fake extravaganzas from America that we can see sometimes on TV late at night?. It is not that they fight. But in the DUMA ??? It is like Bill Clinton doing his thing in the OVAL OFFICE -- instead of out in some trailer park where a tryst with a slob like Monica Lewinski should have happened if it was going to happen at all…
Pussy Riot was basically a pack of Ukrainian girl-exhibitionists pushing some agenda that has never been made clear to me.. Also, we have been treated to Ukrainian feminists (I guess that is what they are) showing their tits in some form of political protest (admittedly showcased on Russian TV). Finally, on one of my visits to Kiev, I remember entering a MacDonalds only to find that the whole staff behind the counter were wearing masks -- the kind you see in the metro when people who feel they are contagious put them on to keep from spreading their germs. Admirable, but in this particular MacDonalds the sight of an entire masked staff was positively eerie -- it was as if these people had been flown in from outer space. Well, I am only saying that this is one of my memories of Ukraine...
Again, the point is not to mock or ridicule Ukrainian people, per se, but only to point out that, at least from my perspective, Ukrainians seem to lack the general restraint of Russians. This can be seen and taken either way. Some people are fond of the educated English; some prefer the wilder elements of the Irish. To me, Ukrainian people seem less rigid, less predictable, and maybe less closed-in than the Russian people I know in Moscow. If you want to say "less civilized", these would be YOUR words, not mine. Besides, a touch of unruliness is not necessarily a disgrace. Ukraine, it seems more and more, has suffered always from «second country» syndrome. Like Scotland in comparison to England. Like Chicago when it compares itself to New York. Finland to Sweden. Etc. But, hey, you can have fun anywhere.
Ukraine started to became a dubious enterprise in earnest when the "Revolution" broke out.
This was a fiasco in which the Ukrainian people allowed themselves to be manipulated by the West. It was a false revolution financed, bankrolled by Americans and NATO, exploiting Ukraine all the way, and meticulously timed to coincide with the Sochi Olympics. And look where Ukraine is now. The Outhouse of Europe. No-man's-land. Oh, but I forgot 
-- Ukraine won the Eurovision last year, didn't they???
Some song protesting Russian oppression, was it? And OF COURSE the songs entered in the competition are never allowed to be political, are they??
And now the fucked-up government there is banning a Russian girl in a wheelchair. Bravo Ukraine.
Look, we all know that in entering a woman of average talent (very average, because I have listened to her) and with a physical disability to boot, Russia was basically screwing with Ukraine -- calling Ukraine's bluff.
And Ukraine took the bait. Just as the Russian government was stupid in giving prison sentences to Pussy Riot when it should have sentenced them only to a few days of extensive public toilet cleaning instead of turning them into international stars, so Ukraine should have let the Russian girl compete. I mean, a young woman in a wheelchair -- this is an international terrorist?
But they are stupid asses, these Ukrainian officials. Nevertheless, thanks, Big thanks, guys, for giving Russia's International standing such a boost in terms of public relations. Indeed it will be interesting to see what kind of spin the West can put on this one in order to make Ukraine look good.
So who will Russia substitute in place of the terrorist in the wheelchair? Maybe a dead body with sounds coming of a box? Why not just a six-year-old child standing on the stage singing the Russian national anthem?. In the wake of Ukraine's politically motivated and mean-spirited rubbish, that idea gets my vote.
===Eric Richard Le Roy===
