(Open Democracy) As Leo Tolstoy famously quipped, had Napoleon’s cold on the day of the battle of Borodino really affected the course of war then the valet who failed to bring him his waterproof boots should have been the saviour of Russia. There are few saviours in Wilson’s book (partially because the battle for Ukraine is not over), but plenty of attention to quirks of history and the idiosyncrasies of individual actors.
For Wilson, two men – Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych – bear the main brunt of responsibility for Ukraine’s crisis. Yanukovych set the stage by violating all the formal and informal rules of Ukrainian politics in his efforts to maximise personal power and wealth. He single-handedly dismantled constitutional checks on his formal powers, jailed his political opponents and built a mafia-style system based on Don Corleone’s rules. Wilson details all the corrupt schemes meant to benefit Yanukovych’s family, and contrasts it with a more decentralised corruption under his predecessors when each oligarch could expect his ‘fair share.’ It was his personal greed above anything else that, for Wilson, explains his self-defeating policies.
The second man emerged into the limelight in the next act of Ukraine’s drama, although Wilson clearly believes Putin had long been standing in the shadows and preparing to make his move. […]
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