Ukraine

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“Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close” the Michigan Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’ve been running circles around us. And I believe it’s the naïve position on the National Security Council and the president’s advisers that, if we just keep giving things to Russia, they’ll wake up and say, ‘the United States is not that bad.’ That is completely missing the motivations of why Russia does what Russia does.”

Putin intends to expand Russia’s “buffer zones,” as it has in Ukraine, Rogers said, predicting the next former Soviet republic to see a Russian invasion will be Moldova.
“It is in their interest to continue to push out that buffer zone,” Rogers said. “And, by the way, the big one that started this was the absolute retreat on our missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia, caused us huge problems for our allies and emboldened the Russians and it really has been a downhill slide.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, on Fox News Sunday
 
This part of the article was interesting:
Some analysts explicitly compare events in Crimea with Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking Sudetenland, followed months later by the rest of the country and the next year by Poland, sparking the Second World War.
The important thing now, they argue, is to make sure Russia understands which lines - such as those around NATO Baltic members - really cannot be crossed.
In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the Ukrainian conflict could accelerate Warsaw’s efforts to modernize the army and gain energy independence.
 
No one has been able to answer me:
Are the ethnic Russians who “need protection” Russian or Ukrainian citizens?

I know that Russia stocked the Ukrainian pond many years ago with its own people, and instituted laws to suppress Ukrainian language and culture.

I’m ambivalent. If these ethnic Russians are Russian citizens, can or should they be deported to Russia? Can Ukraine use existing national borders to expel the non citizens?

You want your people so badly, take 'em home.

Or, is sending in protection for ethnic Russians in a soverign nation akin to a jihad, like the Bosniacs calling for help from the middle east in the 90s? (Not comparing the Balkan war to this, but the call for warriors to help.)
 
No one has been able to answer me:
Are the ethnic Russians who “need protection” Russian or Ukrainian citizens?
Ukrainian, well until recently. Putin has been handing out Russian passports to any Russian speaking person who asks for one.

Damon Wilson writing for the Atlantic Council think tank says: “The classic Putin playbook is now on display: fuel separatist sentiments, justify military action by asserting the need to protect ethnic Russians (or at least passport holders), and then “maintain the peace” by stationing Russian forces permanently. In effect, dismember your weak neighbors.”
 
16:20: Damon Wilson writing for the Atlantic Council think tank says: “The classic Putin playbook is now on display: fuel separatist sentiments, justify military action by asserting the need to protect ethnic Russians (or at least passport holders), and then “maintain the peace” by stationing Russian forces permanently. In effect, dismember your weak neighbors.”
bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26405082
 
My only question in this is why is it in Putin’s interest to separate Ukraine. Right now he has a huge population there that wants current closer ties with Russia, if Ukraine breaks there will be nothing stopping Western Ukraine from going to Moscow.
Did you mean stopping Western Ukraine from going to Poland or Europe? Sorry, I don’t understand this sentence.
 
BBC Monitoring reports: The Ukrainian State Border Service’s regional HQ in Simferopol has been stormed and captured by “unidentified armed men”, the service says in a statement circulated by UNIAN news agency. The headquarters of the Simferopol border detachment has also been taken.

According to the report, the attack was started by a group of plain-clothed men wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets, who were later joined by members of the Russian military.
 
No one has been able to answer me:
Are the ethnic Russians who “need protection” Russian or Ukrainian citizens?

I know that Russia stocked the Ukrainian pond many years ago with its own people, and instituted laws to suppress Ukrainian language and culture.

I’m ambivalent. If these ethnic Russians are Russian citizens, can or should they be deported to Russia? Can Ukraine use existing national borders to expel the non citizens?

You want your people so badly, take 'em home.

Or, is sending in protection for ethnic Russians in a soverign nation akin to a jihad, like the Bosniacs calling for help from the middle east in the 90s? (Not comparing the Balkan war to this, but the call for warriors to help.)
In general, I think they want to protect both Russian citizens and Russian speakers from people who have the attitudes you expressed in your post.
 
Maxim Tucker ‏Media lead on Amnesty International’s Global Campaigns & UN work stationed in Kiev reports: Russia invasion of Crimea has Kyivans volunteering for Ukraine armed forces in their droves - friends, their husbands and their fathers.
Long queues at Ukraine army recruitment posts. Sergeant tells volunteers 3 million signed up in 24 hours, eager to fight Russia in Crimea
 
In general, I think they want to protect both Russian citizens and Russian speakers from people who have the attitudes you expressed in your post.
OK, let’s get this straight. There are no international agreements that say that one country has the right to protect people who speak a certain language from the internal affairs of another nation. In other words, the UK does not have a right to invade France to protect English speaking Frenchmen.

Russia is invading the Ukraine on the same pretense Germany invaded the Sudetenland. It was illegal then, and it is illegal now.
 
OK, let’s get this straight. There are no international agreements that say that one country has the right to protect people who speak a certain language from the internal affairs of another nation. In other words, the UK does not have a right to invade France to protect English speaking Frenchmen.

Russia is invading the Ukraine on the same pretense Germany invaded the Sudetenland. It was illegal then, and it is illegal now.
Amen to that. Why certain others are incapable of recognising this basic premise of international law is quite beyond me.
 
The Ukrainian Navy seems now to be on the side of the Crimean people.

rt.com/news/ukraine-military-russia-resign-437/

“Newly appointed Navy Chief rear admiral Denis Berezovsky has sworn allegiance to the people of Crimea, the news agency reported.”
Berezovsky is part of the “new Crimea government” which was created last week and has pledged loyalty to Russia, not the Ukraine. In the US we would tall them traitors.
 
The latest fallout tells me that Ukraine really doesn’t have enough people to defend itself, and not enough strength to express solidarity. Without a unified front, Ukraine is sunk.

As long as Ukrainian right wingers take it upon themselves to conduct identification checks in private homes, acting as rogues and vigilantes and not being subject to the Ukrainian interim government, there is no unified Ukraine.

Ironic how the Soviet Union’s fall allowed states to war among themselves, and the attempt to expel the Russian government from Ukraine seemed to have fractured Ukraine, leaving its people to fight amongst themselves.

It’s a damned if you do, dammed of you don’t situation.
 
OK, let’s get this straight. There are no international agreements that say that one country has the right to protect people who speak a certain language from the internal affairs of another nation. In other words, the UK does not have a right to invade France to protect English speaking Frenchmen.

Russia is invading the Ukraine on the same pretense Germany invaded the Sudetenland. It was illegal then, and it is illegal now.
And, let’s get this straight. Germany did not randomly invade the Sudetenland in a manner similar to what is going on right now in Crimea.

Germany invaded Sudetenland and annexed it after the UK and France very foolishly told Hitler it would be acceptable for him to do so.

Putin/Russia is sending more troops into a province that they already have a military presence in, because the autonomous province is in a serious dispute with a new and perhaps illegitimate national government days after it was installed, and does not have adequate forces to protect themselves from an assault from said government.

Those are two very different situations.
 
Amen to that. Why certain others are incapable of recognising this basic premise of international law is quite beyond me.
As long as the pro sovereign Ukraine people continue to splinter into radical factions, the better Putin looks.

If only the new government could channel the hardliners and their energies to the border…taking a page from the Soviet playbook under the chapter called “conscription.”
 
OK, let’s get this straight. There are no international agreements that say that one country has the right to protect people who speak a certain language from the internal affairs of another nation. In other words, the UK does not have a right to invade France to protect English speaking Frenchmen.

Russia is invading the Ukraine on the same pretense Germany invaded the Sudetenland. It was illegal then, and it is illegal now.
It’s covered under the UN’s Office of The Special. Adviser on The Prevention of Genocide, and we all know how effective that is.
 
And, let’s get this straight. Germany did not randomly invade the Sudetenland in a manner similar to what is going on right now in Crimea.

Germany invaded Sudetenland and annexed it after the UK and France very foolishly told Hitler it would be acceptable for him to do so.

Putin/Russia is sending more troops into a province that they already have a military presence in, because the autonomous province is in a serious dispute with a new and perhaps illegitimate national government days after it was installed, and does not have adequate forces to protect themselves from an assault from said government.

Those are two very different situations.
Not quite. On September 12th 1938 Hitler encouraged Konrad Henlein, leader of the Sudeten German Nazi Party, to rise up against the Prague government and split the Sudetenland off from Czechoslovakia to join the Reich.

In response, the Czech government imposed martial law and Hitler, having already planned a full invasion of the Sudetenland, threatened to declare war.

Knowing a war was going to break out, the Western powers try to “mediate” by appeasing Germany by saying that they can have the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia so long as they don’t go to war with the country and invade the rest of it.

Without Czech presence, the great powers all agreed to this. Hitler then marches into the Sudetenland and is greeted as a liberator from the Sudeten Germans.

In March next year, he occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia and dismembers the country in violation of the Munich Agreement, splitting it up into two protectorates under German control: Czech lands and Slovakia.

Then, in September 1939 he forces his new puppet state of Slovakia to invade Poland along with him so as to liberate yet another German minority in Danzig, allegedly persecuted like the Sudetens.

This time, it is a stretch too far for Britain and France.
 
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