Ukraine

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Just in from the Telegraph:
21.49 Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin is giving a furious, defiant, denunciation of Western actions in the Ukraine, accusing the West of “spurring on continuation of confrontation” and provoking the uprising.
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, replied to the Russian tirade by saying that “actions speak louder than words”, that the US was “deeply disturbed” by Russian deployment, adding “it is time for intervention to end”.
Ambassador Power then accused Russia of staging dangerous provocations in Ukraine, and announcing that the US was working to stand up an international mediation mission to Ukraine.
Mark Lyall Grant, the UK ambassador, added that the “UK is deeply concerned by the escalation of tension in the Crimean peninsular” and has demanded a “full explanation” from the Russians over what it is doing in Crimea.
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Here is the full statement from Putin’s office on his call with Obama.

In response to the concern shown by Obama about the plans for the possible use of Russia’s armed forces on the territory of Ukraine, Putin drew attention to the provocative, criminal actions by ultra-nationalists, in essence encouraged by the current authorities in Kiev,” the statement said.

The Russian President underlined that there are real threats to the life and health of Russian citizens and compatriots on Ukrainian territory. Vladimir Putin stressed that if violence spread further in the eastern regions of Ukraine and in Crimea, Russia reserves the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers living there.
 
I just watched the ITV news there and the reporter said that diplomats in different Western capitals had been comparing the situation to the 1930s. I never thought I would actually hear such a thing said on the news. He carried on, just as I did above, by saying that he was not suggesting Putin was like Hitler but rather drawing attention to the fact there is an uncanny resemblance between both men’s use of minorities i their foreign policy programs.
 
Russia is in Crimea not the rest of Ukraine.

Crimea is semi-autonomous and asked Russia for help.

Crimea will just end up like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I think it will just die down after a while.
 
Nelka said:
Russia is in Crimea not the rest of Ukraine.

Crimea is semi-autonomous and asked Russia for help.

Crimea will just end up like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I think it will just die down after a while.
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Oh quite probably. But then Putin will strike again in a different post-Soviet Republic with a significant Russian minority sometime in the future.

He is a man on a mission to create a Russian dominated Eurasian Union and his success here will only embolden him further.
 
Nelka said:
Russia is in Crimea not the rest of Ukraine.

Crimea is semi-autonomous and asked Russia for help.

Crimea will just end up like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I think it will just die down after a while.
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Just to be clear, what the Russian parliament gave Putin was permission to go into Ukraine, not just the Crimea. The ousted president of the Ukraine asked Russia for help to take back the Ukraine, not just the Crimea. Putin doesn’t recognize the new government of the Ukraine.

Will it die down, who knows. But if it does, it means Russia has annexed -]the Sudetenland /-]Croatia.
 
There’s a few options there. Obama claims Putin is breaking international law. Condemned I think he said He’s right about de escalating tension. Eastern Ukraine is still a concern ultra-nationalists, and Russia isn’t limited to Crimea. Doesn’t seem to be any constructive dialogue, blaming the West and then bringing in the military is aggressive. I can’t see this helping business in the future.

cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-crisis-u-s-tells-russia-to-withdraw-forces-1.2556228,
 
GaryTaylor said:
There’s a few options there. Obama claims Putin is breaking international law. Condemned I think he said He’s right about de escalating tension. Eastern Ukraine is still a concern ultra-nationalists, and Russia isn’t limited to Crimea. Doesn’t seem to be any constructive dialogue, blaming the West and then bringing in the military is aggressive. I can’t see this helping business in the future.

cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-crisis-u-s-tells-russia-to-withdraw-forces-1.2556228,
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Here’s a good read on Russia’s logic
newrepublic.com/article/116810/putin-declares-war-ukraine-and-us-or-nato-wont-do-much

Game Changer? White House: US to stop taking part in preparatory meetings for G8 summit in Sochi in light of Russia’s actions -
 
This recent news about Russian military forces in Ukraine is deeply concerning to me. I really hope there won’t be a war there soon.
 
gilliam said:
Here’s a good read on Russia’s logic
newrepublic.com/article/116810/putin-declares-war-ukraine-and-us-or-nato-wont-do-much

Game Changer? White House: US to stop taking part in preparatory meetings for G8 summit in Sochi in light of Russia’s actions -
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Thanks for the article by Julia Ioffe. She writes:

“Russia manufactured this crisis to create a pretext for a land-grab. There are now protests swinging Russian flags and hailing Russia’s glory not just in Crimea but all over the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. I was just in Donetsk, Yanukovich’s hometown, on Monday. It was calm, calmer than calm. There were a couple dozen people guarding the Lenin statue in the center of the city from vandals, but that was it. A muckety-muck in the city’s administration told me, “If they send new people in to replace us, we’ll leave peacefully, we won’t try to hang on.” The same was the case in Simferopol, in Crimea. And then, out of nowhere, men with unmarked uniforms were taking over government buildings and airports, and huge demonstrations were pumping on town squares all over the regions. The Kremlin often refers to “a well-organized informational war” when their enemies broadcast something they don’t like on repeat. And now, looking at the alarmist, blanket coverage on Russian television….”

This is true. Folks have to understand that unlike in democracies, Putin and his siloviki friends control the TV media, and I mean completely. No critical stories about Putin; criticism only of the Kremlin’s enemies. And into Kremlin’s enemies falls the new Ukrainian government. Crimea is bombarded with Russian news stories (propaganda) from Russia about Ukrainian bandits coming down and threatening them in Crimea. Repeat. Repeat. The same is true for TV viewers in places in Eastern Ukraine like Kharkiv where apart from the Kremlin run Russian TV, the corrupt pro-Yanukovych Kharkiv governor Dobkin ran the local news. So again, repeat negative stories about threats to Russians, etc. Repeat. (Things will hopefully change now with Yanukovych gone and journalists not having to fear being beaten up).

It’s interesting because ethnic Russians have not been beaten up on the Maidan, or Kyiv, or Lviv. If anything there are provocations in areas like Crimea which are now in the hands of the, let’s be clear, Russian military who, as Miserrisima stated, won’t even wear any insignia. There have already been provocative moves in Crimea to tarnish the pro-Ukrainian supporters. khpg.org/en/

There’s a picture on the net of a Ukrainian soldier taking his shirt off, unarmed in front of several of these masked armed Russian military men in Crimea to show there is no threat to them.
theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/01/crimea-crisis-deepens-as-russia-and-ukraine-ready-forces-live-updates
No, Kremlin Russian TV repeats the Ukrainian threat. (And the CBC and CNN reporters on the field in Crimea actually got these masked military guys to admit they were from Russia).

The Poles have pointed out that Russian Military Intelligence (GRU)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Intelligence_Directorate_%28Russia%29
has long been active in Crimea. If anything, they helped coordinate this invasion by masked Russian military, helicopters, armoured vehicles onto Ukrainian territory in Crimea.

There is also another angle. Putin despises the right to freedom of assembly or any political opposition (unless it is political opposition he can control like Zhirinovsky’s Russian radical-nationalists or the Russian Communist party under Zyuganov). After Yanukovych left Ukraine, people got to see the obscene wealth he lived in. If anything, Putin’s wealth accumulated by himself and his siloviki and judo buddies in the billions would make Yanukovych’s and his gang’s mansions look like trailers, in my opinion. It must be thoroughly unsettling for an autocrat who has mansions of his own to see the autocrat next door fleeing his country and leaving all that immorally accumulated wealth behind for all the ex-subjects to see.

gilliam, you asked game changer? I think the countries of the G7 + 1 (as Stephen Harper called it) should begin the paper work on ejecting Putin’s autocracy from the G8, but this won’t be a game changer. For Putin, I believe, the question now is how much instability and/or deaths is he willing to start or provoke, and it is a view shared by many Ukrainians.
 
Vouthon said:
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-live-Crimea-leader-appeals-to-Putin-to-help-as-Obama-warns-of-costs-to-Moscow.html

There is very little, most grievously, that the West can do to halt this incredibly blatant land-grabbing from a much smaller, weaker country after a pro-Western revolution. It is horrible to see this. Ukraine is incredibly vulnerable at the moment.

I don’t like the pattern emerging here though. If Putin gets away with it scot-free again, which I think he will, then nothing is stopping him from applying the same logic to countless other post-Soviet republics with significant Russian minorities.
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Unless the West is willing to put boots on the ground, there is nothing to be done. Look at Turkey occupying part of a *European Union country * and ignoring all the resolutions for her to remove her troops. Kuwaitis were lucky they had Westerners willing to die for her liberation. But the Kuwaitis paid her Western servants a LOT of money. Even today in Kuwait, you will hear them talk about the “blonde slaves” who they paid and ordered to fight for them. Crimea is more like northern Cyprus.
 
Vouthon said:
Putinism is one of the most complex, and for analysts, bewildering movements of the 21st century. It has affinities with Fascism (Ie autarky, a strongman in the mould of Mussolini, centralization, a personality cult) yet where the Italian fascists dealt lethal blows to the mafia, Putin’s Russia is by contrast effectively run by criminal gangs in turn bankrolled by corrupt oligarchs who gained power from the aborted experiment in capitalism and democracy under Yeltsin in the 1990s.

On the same token, Putin is obsessed with the Soviet Union. Stalin is treated as a slightly harsh but necessary national hero in Russian school textbooks. A historian in Russia was sent to a Siberian prison a few years back for daring to call Stalin a genocidal dictator. Putin regards the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989-91 as the 20th century’s greatest disaster.

Add all that together and you get a strange concoction of all the most unattractive elements of Russia’s recent history from the Tsars to Breshnev.

What is “Putinism”? I really don’t know. I think only historians in hindsight will be able to piece it together sometime in the future.

One thing I know it, it is heavily autocratic and rests on a sham democracy in which there is a parliament with seemingly multi-party representation (although any real opposition parties are censored or disbanded) but with a government in the Kremlin that dominates the parliament and is not answerable to the people of the country, as was made clear when many Russians protested against Putin’s re-election in 2011 and were crushed by armed force. In this respect, it shares similarities with other autocratic regimes that had powerless parliaments such as Imperial Germany under the Kaiser.

Putin’s Russia is not yet fascist or totalitarian. It is an autocratic mafia state with a quasi-personality cult around Putin.

As its economy worsens over the next few years however, the regime could become more belligerent and move towards a true totalitarianism, or so some experts have argued.

Putin’s aggressive foreign policy and the fact that the media is now government controlled, will only help to further consolidate his already thirteen years or so long rule.
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THIS IS A VERY GOOD POST VOUTHON

Some would call Putinism Chekism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism

And don’t forget the xenophobic youth groups that Putin has created to indoctrinate the young, all with full state and Kremlin support:

**Nashi **which some wags call the PutinJugend and which Pro-Kremlin youth group has been accused of plagiarising Goebbels in its Commandments:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_%28youth_movement%29#Criticism
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8134688/Pro-Kremlin-youth-group-accused-of-plagiarising-Goebbels.html
Nashi actually has “political commissars” in its groups.

Molodaya Gvardiya which organization has in its leadership the Russian spy Anna Chapman whose claim to fame is sleeping around with men in the West to gain information for Putin’s Russia and whom Putin regards as a role model for Russia’s youth as seen by him promoting her to the youth wing leadership of his political party:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Guard_of_United_Russia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman

Putin is not some saint. His hero is Yuri Andropov of the KGB.
 
I think Putin dislikes some assembly if he feels the goal is to overthrow governments.

I don’t particularly find Protests that over throw elected governments, no matter how to bad said government to be. To be a symbol of law and order. All kinds of power vacuums can occur when you do this. What happens is only those screaming get a say.

The interim government, one of its first actions was to get rid of a law that cancelled minority languages right to become official language in Ukraine.

The Russians have been playing up some of the far right groups participation in the protests, but that right there was the perfect thing the Russians were able to use to scare a lot of ethnic Russian in Ukraine.
 
Hhmmm… Putin is not ruling out intervention in Ukraine in areas beyond Crimea, I think.
Does that mean he is going to do it, or is it a threat to make other countries shut up about Crimea?

In case violence spreads to Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Russia has right to defend its interests - Putin to Obama
Putin said to President Obama that in case if the violence in Ukraine and Crimea spreads, the Russian Federation reserves the right to protect its interests and the interests of the Russian-speaking citizens. In a statement posted online, the Kremlin said Obama had expressed concern about the possibility of Russian military intervention in Ukraine…
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Just unbelievable. I cannot believe there are people here who are falling for the lies the Progressive media is feeding them about “evil” Putin “invading” Ukraine. I don’t suppose you are gonna admit that European and American NGO’s financed the neo-nazi’s which are currently running Kiev are you? No of course not, you will be good little sheep and obey the media which tells you to hate that “anti-gay” Putin and his “radical Christian” country.

And I am also amused at the Repubs saying “Obama is weak, he isn’t standing up”. So basically you guys wanna attack Russia and start WW3 right? OK fine, next election, despite the fact I hate their economics, despite the fact I hate their gun control policy, despite the fact I hate their social policy, I am definitely voting for a Democratic president. Why? Because every Republican politician, commentator online and pundit have all admitted they wanna attack and start a nuclear holocaust. So at this point I am voting for LITERALLY my survival of me, my friends and family, and for every animal on this planet! Every other issue is moot when there will be no humans left around…
 
GraceSofia said:
Hhmmm… Putin is not ruling out intervention in Ukraine in areas beyond Crimea, I think.
Does that mean he is going to do it, or is it a threat to make other countries shut up about Crimea?
Click to expand...
Looks likely. I can’t imagine Putin wanting Nato on his border.
 
tinyurl.com/lbzblll

Ukraine Interim Govt Tries to Spin Crimea Chaos as Russian Invasion

"Interim President Oleksandr Turchinov insisted Russia has carried out an “armed invasion” of the Crimea, claiming it was “fully analogous” with the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, “when having initiated a military conflict, they started to annex the territory.”

Turchinov’s history is more than a bit off on the 2008 war, as Georgian troops actually attacked the Russian troops deployed in South Ossetia first, sparking a brief armed conflict in which Russian troops quickly moved in to the secessionist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia didn’t annex either territory, however, and simply recognized their independence, which was already de facto before the war, as official."

tinyurl.com/lf7nbtz

"While US politicians have also ratcheted up the rhetoric, US officials concede that Russia’s troops in Crimea are setting up defensive positions and are in a “self-defense posture only.”

Reports from Crimea’s government say they’ve got Russian troops helping them protect government buildings in anticipation of the referendum, and with a sense that will easily back secession and re-accession into the Russian federation, it seems that Russia doesn’t need to “invade” at all, but simply needs to keep the interim government at bay until Crimean voters affirm the switch."

CNN JUST IN – U.S. assessment is the arrival of
Russian military forces was uncontested by
population of Crimea -@BarbaraStarrCNN

Admin officials tell CNN’s Barbara Starr this
is an “uncontested arrival” not necessarily
“an invasion” and that this distinction is “key.”

Neo-fascist anti-Semitic Svoboda party has four top posts in Ukrainian coup “government”: they control the police, agriculture & “ecology”

Ukraine Liveblog: Synagogue in Simferopol, Crimea, defaced with Nazi grafitti last night
twitter.com/MillerMENA/status/439464222011830272/photo/1
 
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