verte76
Blue Crack Addict
Ukraine may be the next country to pull its troops out of Iraq. They are working on some deal to get their troops replaced by Iraqis. I'll probably get brickbats for this, but I can see why they are doing this. Ukraine is a very poor country, and it has a corrupt government, unfortunately. My sister went there in September 2002. She was shocked at the poverty of the place. When she came back she had all sorts of horror stories about the poverty, especially in Kiev, which was bombed during WWII and never really rebuilt. She did say that the town of Li'vov (I think I spelled that right, it's confusing because the Russians spell it one way, the Ukrainians another, and it's very nationalist so you don't use the Russian version of the name there unless you want trouble) was much nicer than Kiev was. Incidentally, the Ukrainians spell the city's name Kyiv, there are two letters in the Ukrainian alphabet for the same sound. Do I speak the language? Heavens, no. I read the Ukrainian press, the English language publications of course, when she was there. There were allegations of corruption in the government, which was getting increasingly more repressive, and also demonstrations in Kiev against the government. The demonstrators claimed that the government was corrupt. The place seems to be quite a mess. No offense to any Ukrainian Interlanders! I hope this doesn't offend anyone. If it does, I apologize, it's not supposed to.
