Ukraine On Verge Of Civil War?

Obviously everybody here in Poland is looking at what is happening on our eastern border.
'Ukraine On Verge Of 'Civil War,' Ex-President Kravchuk Warns', Agence France Presse 29th Jan, 2014

Ukraine is on the brink of "civil war" as a result of the standoff between authorities and protesters across the country, its first post-independence president Leonid Kravchuk told parliament Wednesday. "All the world acknowledges and Ukraine acknowledges that the state is on the verge of civil war," Kravchuk, Ukraine's president from 1991-1994, told parliament in an emotional address. [...] His successors as president Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) and Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010) were also present in parliament, in a sign to lawmakers of the importance of the session.

I was talking by Skype to some friends of ours in the rural area in the SW of the country, and the feeling there is that this is indeed the case. All sorts of rumours are flying about. While the rumours are of doubtful authenticity, they are real for the people who hear them and repeat them, and do not bode well. Our friends have a young son conscripted to the army, his term of service ends in April, and we are all hoping that he will not be on the front line of whatever is coming.

Meanwhile whatever is going to happen, it cannot be without effect on the illicit movements of cultural property out of eastern Europe. I really find it hard to understand why Suzie Thomas of the Glasgow project is giving such importance to the Helsinki route ('Baltic connections: an investigation into the trafficking of cultural property through North Eastern Europe'). As far as dugup collectable antiquities go, the stuff from looting of cemeteries in the Ladoga area is more likely to be reaching western markets through the Baltic states (which seems to be suggested by the nature of the objects (also from cemetery looting) it arrives on western markets mixed up with. There seem to be two routes, a northern (Estonian and Latvian material) and a (larger?) southern one bringing material of probable Lithuanian origin onto the market.

The other major route is connected with material from the ("Gothic") cemeteries of Crimea and the Greek colonies on the Pontic coast. Occasionally one sees material of different dates from the steppes and forest steppes. This could be entering the EU through Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria (though only rarely appears in the offerings of those sellers in the global market who seem to have got most of their stuff from those areas). I think more of the latter stuff probably comes through the SE tip of Poland. I also think there is a larger central Ukrainian 'pool' collecting antiquities from both the south of the country as well as from Russia itself (icons mostly) and then passing that through the eastern border crossings of Poland. Certainly some of it is turning up in Warsaw and Poznan (the latter being where some of the routes from the east and southeastern Europe cross). It seems at the supply has been steadily drying up due to over-exploitation. A year ago I saw here on the Warsaw 'grey market' the first (the first I recognized) fake Gothic blechfibeln, nicely done - but fake. The circulation of antiquities in more western regions of Poland already has connections with the German markets. There are a few dealers who have various things going on which suggests to me that they are outliers of the Munich system, and one guy pushing out some very deceptive fakes. Obviously what is coming in through Poland is probably ending up mostly on the German markets, Munich, Leipzig.  So why Helsinki is of such "interest" is beyond me, but anyway, let us see what MS Thomas comes up with. 

If there is prolonged civil unrest in Ukraine, I suspect it will generate many more loose antiquities and cultural property items in general which will - one way or another - get onto illegal internal markets and then the foreign markets.