Ukraine

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EmperorNapoleon said:
On the other hand, if our foreign policy motivations are solely based around some inalienable right of a people to shape their own destiny, why should we care about Russia maintaining the status quo in Crimea? Why impose the choices of the people in Kiev on an autonomous region which clearly does not want to go down the same path?
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The Crimeans may have their own governing body but the land itself was a concession to the Ukrainians for…what?

Although autonomous by home rule, if you will, the land itself belongs to Ukraine, right? I am not clear on all of the “conditions” in acceptance of the 1954 gift of the land itself from Kruschev to become Ukrainian territory. Did the existing population go along voluntarily?

I am also not clear yet on the value of actual citizenship versus the ethnic identification of the Crimean people…or which takes precedence. From news reports from both sides, Crimeans disagree.

In the US, nationality takes precedence, but the international UN would not agree if an ethnic group wants to claim a portion of any sovereign nation’s land as its own, especially with the help of a foreign (economic) super power.

I liken current Crimean-ality of Crimea to the worlds as to Sharia Court in the UK: acknowledged (ethnically, if not religious-wise) in the UK, but not binding/recognized to the larger population.

I also wonder what the world’s reaction would be to Israel intervening with with Brooklyn Hasidim should the latter be portrayed as wanting to secede as a cultural entity to a distinct nation…on American soil…(yes, I laugh at the preposterousness of that idea), but it’s the only analogy I can draw at the moment.
 
Still on the moral equivalence of Putin’s rhetoric? :rotfl:

Are we saying we are definitely more moral than him? 😉
 
saveamericafoundation.com/2013/11/29/vladimir-putin-todays-constantine/

Can President Putin unify Right-minded freedom lovers and become the Lafayette of their 2nd American Revolution?

For a man already channeling Constantine, it may be as easy as tranquilizing a tiger.

…Metropolitan Hilarion, foreign relation chief of the Russian Orthodox Church presented evidence and statistics that stated, “Every five minutes one Christian was dying for his or her faith in some part of the word.”

Christians face persecution in many nations; from church demolition in Afghanistan and bombings of churches in Iraq, to the violence against Christians taking place in rebellious towns in Syria.

After delivering the facts, Metropolitan Hilarion asked Putin to make protection and defense of Christianity around the globe a major part of his foreign policy.

And, as reported by Interfax, Putin replied, “You needn’t have any doubt that that’s the way it will be,” assuring Hilarion that Russian foreign policy would defend Christians from persecution abroad.

Leaving Crimea doesn’t fit into his plan of rebuilding the Russian Empire.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Actually, it didn’t happen that way.

Texas, north of San Antonio (and sometimes south of it) was actually “grabbed” from the Comanches and Kiowa, who had previously “grabbed” it from the Apaches. In the process, northern Mexico was saved from Comanche devastation by the Texans, who had been invited in by Mexico. Well, part of the Texas coast was “grabbed” by Texans from a cannibal Indian tribe.

California was "grabbed’ from the Russians, Brits, some Indians and from Mexico.

Utah, Nevada and Colorado were “grabbed” from various Indian tribes. Mexico didn’t rule any of that, and certainly didn’t populate it. In any event, Utah was “grabbed” first by the Mormons, who later entered the U.S. voluntarily.

Arizona was “grabbed” to a degree from Mexico, but largely from Indian tribes, including the Apaches who had been driven there by the Comanches who had previously “grabbed” Texas and part of Colorado.

In any event, Mexico “grabbed” what it had and what it only claimed to have “grabbed”, from Spain. Spain never occupied or populated much of it, any more than Mexico did.
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Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and Alta California was one of the territories of Mexico. Pio Pico was the Mexican governor of the Alta California territory for a while into 1846. The USA declared war on Mexico and annexed all of Alta California, which included the land of present day California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western Colorado and other areas. Was it right for Americans to steal this land from Mexico? The Americans had no historical claim on the area. This contrasts rather sharply with the situation in Crimea, which was controlled by the Russian empire in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Further the rulers of Ukraine have opposed a vote by the people of Crimea on granting the region more autonomy. It seems only democratic that people should be able to vote on whether they want independence or not? After all, the USA fought for independence from England, and now the plans are for Scotland to vote on a similar issue.
 
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., a co-chairman of the House of Representatives’ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, has been critical of the U.S. government’s “anemic and at times outright baffling” response to the treatment of Christians in the Mideast, according to the National Catholic Register.

“America has always been a friend to the oppressed, the persecuted, the forgotten. But, sadly, today, that allegiance is in question, as religious freedom and human-rights abuses around the globe increasingly go unaddressed and unanswered,” Wolf said last month.

bizpacreview.com/2013/08/04/shameful-even-putin-calls-to-end-christian-persecution-as-obama-is-silent-80957
 
Tomdstone said:
After all, the USA fought for independence from England, and now the plans are for Scotland to vote on a similar issue.
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Aye, there’s the rub. The US had distance from the UK and fought 200 years ago. Crimea has yet to officially vote and is a neighbor.
 
Patriarch Kirill added that it is the Orthodox religion that creates genuine unity between Slavic peoples. “Our ancestors adopted the Christian faith and, together with it, a system of values and morals…that no historical upheavals were able to destroy,” he said. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians have a shared spiritual foundation that unites them more than their national boundaries divide them.

Patriarch Kirill said of the same-sex “marriage” fad sweeping the Western world, “This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything so that sin is never validated by the laws of the state in the lands of Holy Rus, because this would mean that the people are starting on the path of self-destruction.”

lifesitenews.com/news/world-leaders-should-unite-to-end-anti-christian-persecution-vladimir-putin

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_I_of_Kiev
 
My assessment of the situation:

Agitators in the US and EU backed protests by the Ukrainians in order to remove the pro-Russian President Yanukovych from power. This in turn would set Ukraine on a path closer to the Europe than Russia which was the course Yanukovych had for Ukraine. The West may claim the Cold War is over, but they are the ones that act like it isn’t moreso than Russia, although more covertly. The battle isn’t about Western Democracy vs Communism anymore, it’s about Imperial Progressivism vs National Traditionalism; much of the West (our leadership anyway) represents the former, and Russia that latter.

Putin is not a communist, he is a center-right nationalist, seeking to cultivate Russian identity after decades of Soviet rule that obscured the meaning of being Russian. This explains Putin’s pro Russian family policies, anti-abortion efforts, support for the Russian Orthodox Church, etc.

America and Western Europe are moving in an opposite direction, religion is being drowned in secularism, traditions are scorned, the family is seen as obsolete, patriotism and affinity for our ethnic traditions are considered quaint notions. The civil religion of “progress” is the unofficial state religion of our leaders, the absurd notion that we can reach this harmonious destination as a society apart from God.

How does this relate? The West is trying to pull Ukraine into the latter trajectory, Russia into the former, and I’m not saying Putin has noble reasons, he is no angel, and his reasons could be entirely selfish by just wanting Ukraine as a buffer between Russia and Europe.
**
As it stands, Yanukovych was illegitimately removed from office. The February 21st agreement meant that Yanukovych could stay in office until the elections that were to take place no later than December 2014. Shortly after, Yanukovych was “removed” in violation of both this agreement and the Ukrainian Constitution which prescribed a specific method for the removal of the president, involving, among other things, an investigation and conviction of a treason or another crime meriting his removal, and that the case be reviewed by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. None of this happened; Yanukovych was tossed out illegally in a coup, his removal is tantamount to Congress voting Obama out of office and not following the method of impeachment which calls for a trial and actual charges of a high crime or misdemeanor. I don’t see how anyone can consider the government in Kiev resulting from this coup to be legitimate. **

Furthermore, I don’t think Russia should be in Crimea, but this is a predictable response to the meddling of people like John McCain who still think it is 1980 in many respects. This whole crisis could have been avoided if Obama declared his support for legitimacy of Yanukovych’s presidency and urged the protesters to be peaceful and voice their displeasure through lawful means, using the ballot box to have their voice heard. Instead, the West has gotten greedy, tried to support the ousting of a pro-Russian leader illegally and opened the door to Russian retaliation.
 
GaryTaylor said:
Rep. Frank Wolf,…“America has always been a friend to the oppressed, the persecuted, the forgotten…
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Let’s see how far you get telling that to the American Indian. The American murder and genocide of the American Indian, together with the theft and annexation of his land, is unparalleled in history.
 
Barricade said:
**
As it stands, Yanukovych was illegitimately removed from office. The February 21st agreement meant that Yanukovych could stay in office until the elections that were to take place no later than December 2014. **.
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This agreement was signed by the opposition and witnessed by several observers.
 
Tomdstone said:
This agreement was signed by the opposition and witnessed by several observers.
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Indeed, and they violated the agreement by trying to oust Yanukovych before the election was to take place, and they didn’t even do so properly. They “removed” him in the way a slightly sophisticated mob would.
 
A video has went viral in Ukraine which I will link to at the end of this post. Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea, locked up basically like animals in cages for days by armed Russian forces in the thousands who have surrounded their bases illegally and who wear no insignia, finally attempted to do their job. In today’s paranoid press conference by Putin, Putin claimed there are no Russian armed men in Crimea doing this but self-defense units who could simply buy army wear by themselves. (This of course is not true). These Russian forces have bazookas, machine guns, matching uniforms, masks. They may be Russian paratroopers, though Putin knows who they are for sure For over a week now Putin has been lying about threats to ethnic Russians in Ukraine, even staging fake scenes ostensibly showing such violence.
This article is informative:
Putin’s Crimea Propaganda Machine
To justify its invasion of Crimea, the Kremlin and state-run media went into full fabrication mode this weekend. Here are the lies that Russia is telling its viewers back home.
thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/03/putin-s-crimea-propaganda-machine.html

People are pointing out the obvious in saying that old KGB colonel Putin is now listening to FSB yes-men to fortify him in his delusions that Russians are under attack in Ukraine, which has been and would be his pretext for launching an invasion. He is even shipping in Russian citizens into Ukraine to tear down Ukrainian flags and raise Russian ones. This story, one among many along these lines, from CNN by a photographer who herself half-Russian:

I just talked to my friends in Crimea.
Yuri in Simferopol told me that it’s a handful of pro-Russian extremists in the streets trying to make a scene for Russian video cameras – they are showing that these are the Russians who request protection!
Meanwhile, the rest of the city is terrified by the presence of Russian military forces and are evacuating their families to central or western Ukraine.
I got a similar report from Luda in Kharkov. She said that a large group of Russians were brought across the border by buses, and they were the ones inspiring and instigating unrest that resulted in putting a Russian flag on a municipal building.
The amount of propaganda Russia has poured onto Ukraine is hard to comprehend. Putting troops on Ukrainian land is going to bring the very opposite result from what Putin expected: I believe it’s uniting Ukraine.
edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/world/europe/ukraine-divided-opinion-irpt/index.html

Here is the video from the BBC showing the video I mentioned at the beginning. Brave young Ukrainian soldiers march out of their base to fulfill their job. They are singing the Ukrainian national anthem carrying a blue and yellow Ukrainian national flag, along with a Soviet flag with hammer and sickle which they hope will deter the Russians. The Russian military without insignia start firing in the air, and then one real rough-looking Russian says he’ll shoot at their legs next. The first shots fired in Crimea have been by Russian forces, not Ukrainian who marched unarmed. To the Russian claim that this is a provocation, the Ukrainians reply we’re unarmed!

Putin is itching for a fight. This really could have turned fatal quite easily. The Ukrainian soldiers then played football, until some real mean-looking Russians showed up.

These boys’ moms and wives and girlfriends are worried about them. They are there legally. The Russian forces are there illegally and they have now used lethal weapons. The threat to Ukraine’s peace comes from Putin, not Ukrainians. Some of these Russian military were asked point blank who was giving them their orders “Sergei Aksyonov?” (the man who only got 4% of the vote in the last Crimean election but whom the Russians have made PM in Crimea and who Putin relies on as being the man who asked Russia for help). “Whose Aksyonov?”, the Russian military replied.

Here is the video of the event the BBC took (I’ll find more if need be). It’s gone viral in Ukraine and really united people.
Russian troops fire into air as Ukrainians march on Crimean airbase
bbc.com/news/world-europe-26443227
 
Tomdstone said:
This agreement was signed by the opposition and witnessed by several observers.
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The man is conflicted.

“Later, at a reception in Kiev, Putin and Patriarch Kirill took part in a prayer service with Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. He urged the leaders of Ukraine to turn towards a greater unity with Russia, and away from its overtures to the European Union, citing a natural cultural and spiritual relationship that is not present with the heavily secularist EU.”

They disagree with the US moral equivalence. Its really that simple. And as you see when you are talking orthodoxy, the only gauge for morality is Jesus Christ “aka” the Church.

And for sure the Olympics were an insult from Obama towards Putin. It certainly didn’t help. You don’t get to insult your host. Where in the world is that moral ideal taught?

I mean is it really any wonder???
 
Barricade said:
Indeed, and they violated the agreement by trying to oust Yanukovych before the election was to take place, and they didn’t even do so properly. They “removed” him in the way a slightly sophisticated mob would.
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I’ve been out for several hours, but I’m back in-----------

AFAIK, all that Yanukovych’s ouster accomplished was to have the Constitution go back to 2004 specifications-----------so basically, they went “by the book,” so to speak.

Not that I necessarily agree with the ouster--------

But that is what I understand of what went down.

Just saying.
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
I’ve been out for several hours, but I’m back in-----------

AFAIK, all that Yanukovych’s ouster accomplished was to have the Constitution go back to 2004 specifications-----------so basically, they went “by the book,” so to speak.

Not that I necessarily agree with the ouster--------

But that is what I understand of what went down.

Just saying.
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The Russians are going back to that one agreement Feb. 21 but even their rep. didn’t sign it on Putin’s orders and now Putin is claiming it legitimate. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski told the Ukrainian opposition sign it or you will be dead. Yanukovych is a crook who shot at his own people. He lost his legitimacy after he committed several impeachable offenses which I went through much earlier in this thread. He arrested all his political opposition, coerced the courts, and falsified the parliamentary elections of 2012. He couldn’t have been impeached properly because he had paid millions to transfer representatives to his party, against the Constitution.

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, ousted him in any event. He stole billions from the Ukrainian people. Billions upon billions, he and his sons. The American people and Congress would not tolerate such a leader, neither should have Ukrainians.
 
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