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Russian Army Spetsnaz Units Arrested Operating In Ukraine
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Examiner: "The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confirmed March 16 the arrest of a group of Russians in the Zaporizhzhia (Zaporozhye) region of Ukraine. The men were armed with firearms, explosives and unspecified 'special technical means'. This follows the March 14 arrest ... of several Russians dressed black uniforms with no insignia, armed with AKS-74 assault rifles and in possession of numerous ID cards under various names. One of which was an ID card of Military Intelligence Directorate of the Russian armed forces; commonly known as 'Spetsnaz'. ... Spetsnaz commandos operating in eastern Ukraine would have the missions encompassing general ground reconnaissance of Ukrainian army units ... missions they may perform preparatory to a Russian invasion would be planting explosives at key communications choke points to hinder movement of Ukrainian forces; seizing control of roads, rail heads, bridges and ports for use by arriving Russian combat troops; and possibly capturing or assassinating Ukrainian generals or politicians in key positions ... Spetsnaz also infiltrate themselves into local populations ... Once in place they begin 'stirring the pot' of ethnic and political strife with the goal of creating violent clashes usually involving firearms and destabilizing local authority."
The submitter adds links to more at Forbes, The Daily Beast, and The New Republic.
How about we stay the fuck out of things for once and fix some problems back home.
These clearly are local volunteer defense units. Russia is only trying to protect its citizens in Crimea. It's not setting for a larger invasion and take over of Ukraine. And I, personally, think that $1700 is a very reasonable asking price for such a historic landmark as Brooklyn Bridge.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The summary is over-hyping this story, which is a day or two old, and not given anything like this much play in the mainstream media. The link to Forbes is actually just to a third-party renting space on the Forbes site, and the New Republic piece is opinion, not news coverage. Not that I am in any way denying or condoning Putin’s invasion, but overreacting doesn’t help.
The US has a treaty with Ukraine and Russia that Russia is violating, so we need to step up. It would likely be best to send a small to medium detachment and put them temporarily under the control of the Ukraine government. Also plenty of intelligence officers. We don't need to direct them ourselves and generate more strife than needed.
The thing is that even though Russia may not be the old USSR with command of virtually every single continent except for North America (like they had until the late 1980s), they have a very, VERY good propaganda machine. They can tell people to go to hell, and the people told will be gladly packing their suitcases one minute later.
The problem right now is that Russia has nobody interested in stopping them. Both US parties are hell-bent at attacking each other. Even with that in mind, both the US and Europe have way too many Chamberlains and no Churchills. With the way things stand now, tanks could be rolling through Poland and sitting at Germany's eastern border before people acknowledge the Russian threat.
I do say their intel is quite good. Six months of Snowden's handler owning the world press and weakening ties between the US and Europe (something the Russians tried for DECADES), an olympics, and now a military action. Russians are playing chess while the rest of the world is playing Pogs.
If true, under the Geneva Convention these soldiers would be considered unlawful combatants and subject to Ukranian law.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Strange, I don't see anything specific to technology in Slashdot's header/manifesto. I believe it's "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that Matters". I'm sure there are plenty of history nerds on here to whom this matters
Heck, this is even under the appropriate category (The Military).
Perhaps you should restrict the article categories to only include Hardware and a few other sections you like, rather than imposing what you think the site should be about on everyone else.
How about we stay the fuck out of things for once and fix some problems back home.
1. A pity the Russians aren't saying that.
2. Ignoring problems seldom makes them go away. In fact we seem to be seeing that ignoring the Russians means they come to stay.
3. What "problems back home" do you think are going to turn out any different if the US and Western Europe turns a blind eye to Russian aggression?
4. On whose behalf are you speaking?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Oh, and what, may I ask, happened to these fine words?
But, if you must have a cold reason for helping this particular liberty, let me remind you, that Ukraine was a nuclear power — until it agreed to give up its nukes in exchange for guarantees given jointly by Russia, US, and UK... The guarantors promised to ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
No one ever believed Russia's word, but if US and UK fail to keep theirs too, what sort of message will that send to Iran and others developing their own nuclear weapons? A very clear one: you do need these weapons to be taken seriously, and no foreign guarantees are worth the paper they are soiling...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
For the hundredth time, please recall that the USA did not enter WW2 until the Axis powers declared war on it (or attacked it in the case of Japan). Hitler personally declared war on the USA while the latter was STILL mulling its options several days after Pearl Harbor.
The obvious moral of that particular period of history is that the USA is always willing to beat up weaker nations, but maintains a prudent neutrality in the face of anyone of its own size.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You want to know what happened to these fine words:
They were lies spoken by a politician. What is new? They were lies then, they are lies now. The people in charge of the American regieme do not actually approve of liberty for anyone but themselves and seldom ever have.
How does alliance with Saudi Arabia assure the survival and the success of liberty? Is it in the way they stone women to death for being seen in public with men who are not their husbands that does it?
How does the drug war, which has justified raids on private homes, the militarization of police, and the erosion of fair trial rights through the use of "Parallell construction" assure the survival of liberty? (and what liberty? The liberty to do as you are told? The liberty to choose not to use drugs?)
Lies is all they ever were, why do you cling to such crap?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You mean to the one where the US sent in troops without any insignia with the goal of annexing Iraq as the 51st state?
What was illegal about it? The invasion of Iraq in 1991 was sanctioned by the UN. Hostilities were suspended (not ended) on the condition that Saddam complied with a number of conditions. He violated some of those conditions. His violations included firing on UN sponsored forces - aircraft in the no-fly zone, obstructing weapons inspectors among other thing. So the US invaded. In my view the invasion was unnecessary and a waste of US resources and lives, but it wasn't illegal. The final verdict of the legality/illegality of this invasion was decided in what court? Did said court have jurisdiction?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Aaaand what "treaty" would that be? (hint: there isn't one).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
which is a memorandum contingent upon Ukraine signing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Although the memorandum is not a treaty, but a mere political agreement, "The memorandum bundled together a set of assurances that Ukraine already held from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) Final Act, United Nations Charter and Non-Proliferation Treaty." So there are treaties in place that should prevent what Russia is doing. Russia just doesn't care.
Doesn't look like that to me, to be honest.
They have voted for Kuchma for two times. Then they have ousted Yanukovich in 2008 and voted for Yushenko, but gave Yushenko only 5% of their votes in 2012, chosing Yanukovich instead (in free and fair elections by the way).
Then they ousted Yanukovich again without waiting for real elections.
I personally think, Ukrainians don't really know what they want and they don't really want democracy when they have Maidan. They have inherited the best agriculture and the best industry from the USSR and what have they done with it? Absolutely nothing. For fuck's sake, even Belarus has twice the GDP per capita PPP. Even worse, Kosovo of all countries is better off.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The USA messed up it's abusive relationship with Europe; it's not Snowden's fault he reported the USA for beating the wife.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I have relatives in Ukraine living in Odessa oblast, Novoukrainka, Kiev and in Lviv, and friends in Crimea. Those listening to Russian news, are saying that ultra-nationalists are shooting Russians in the street in Lviv. Panicked, we called our relatives, and found they are absolutely fine, and the streets are quiet. A percentage of the population believes whatever the Russian media tells them; a form of information bias. Unfortunately, Russian media has past Ukraine in a pretty negative light, and have now resorted to telling outright lies, in what looks like an attempt to soften up Russian sympathetic Ukrainians to invasion; dividing and conquering within with an information war..
Hitler once said -- if you're going to tell a lie, don't tell a little one, tell a big one. Ukraine is a poor country. They just had to deal with the most corrupt leader they had ever experienced. Russia has somehow convinced it's citizens that ultra-nationalists have taken over the country. In reality closer ties with the EU require tolerance for minorities.
The elections are due at the end of May. All Russia would have to do to insure that a Russian sympathetic government is elected is to continue with an information war. It was/is unnecessary to send in the army, other than to carve out pieces of Ukraine.
It has a moral obligation to protect nations that it said it would protect. When you tell a country you'll defend it against aggressors if it gives up it's nuclear weapons, you had better follow through if ever need be. That is if you want to be taken seriously in the world and seen as a driving force for good.
Crimea has been autonomous within the Ukraine precisely because it is more ethnically Russian than Ukrainian,
How Russians Became Crimea's Largest Ethnic Group, In One Haunting Chart
Crimea may have a majority Russian population today, but it hasn't always been that way.
The peninsula's dark history of ethnic cleansing is visible in the following chart from Reuters.
The chart shows a collapse in the population of native Crimean Tatars from 34.1% in 1897 to zero in 1959, marking brutal harassment leading up to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's forcible deportation of the entire population in 1944, with nearly half dying in the process. It took decades for the population to climb back to 12% by 2001.
While the population of Ukrainians and especially Russians rose, the percentage of the population falling into an unlisted category also fell from more than 20% in 1921 to around 5% in 1959. This was a consequence of the deportation of Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and other groups.
Who are the Crimean Tatars, and why are they important?
Whatever the Tatar grievances against the Ukrainian state may be, when faced with the choice of being under either Russian or Ukrainian control, the Crimean Tatar leadership has consistently and unequivocally chosen Ukraine. Since the Soviet period, attempts to split the Crimean Tatar movement and persuade some of the Tatars to support a pro-Soviet, and later pro-Russian, agenda has not borne fruit.
Crimean Tatars fret over Russian domination again
Crimean Tatars living in Turkey said Monday they worry of a return to the terrible oppression they suffered in the Ukraine province the last time it belonged to Russia and the Soviet Union.
"We've seen this movie before and we don't want to see it again," said Celal Icten, 59, head of Crimean Tatar Association of Istanbul, whose parents were born in Istanbul and Romania but both draw direct lines to the ancient city of Bakhchisaray, the pre-Tsarist capital of Crimea.
Once Victims Of Stalin, Ukraine's Tatars Reassert Themselves
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Errr....
I know that many Americans are quite myopic about the US, mostly due to their media, but this is a bit much.
If you think Bush and his evil cartoon sidekick Cheney (who looked exactly like The Penguin!) are not the same then you are WAAAAYYY off base:
- The unilateral invading of countries while claiming "support" from small island nations depending on financial aid.
- The "Mission Accomplished" sign
- The "fancy dress" outfits Bush would wear with a straight face: e.g. "The Cowboy" & "Air-force Pilot"
- The corporate rorts (e.g. the company Cheney was a CEO of) and millions in money that went missing in Iraq
- The tortured prisoners and gulag that is Guantanamo
- Cheney shooting someone IN THE FACE
- Palestine and Israel anyone?!
Bush was a complete joke around the world. And while I know many Americans thought he was a joke too, he was a two term president there.
If you think that the US's foreign policy is not directly related to why Putin thinks he can get away with this you are simply mistaken. That is why he uses the word hypocrite and that is why he scoffs every time the US tries to tell him off.
Not to mention the fact that the UN security council is an even bigger joke which he has veto powers at which all the super powers have used around the world constantly to shoot down any attempt at doing anything productive in any major conflict.
None of the super powers are bastions of goodness and almost all are the complete opposite.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely....