Slashdot Mirror
Russians Take Ukraine's Last Land Base In Crimea
An anonymous reader writes "Firing shots in the air and using stun grenades, Russian troops captured the last Ukrainian military base in Crimea today. From the LA Times: 'Meanwhile, Ukrainian and Russian officials were carrying on talks on evacuating Ukraine's loyal servicemen and families from the peninsula, a top Ukrainian military official said during a briefing Monday in Kiev. "About 50% [of Ukraine servicemen stationed in Crimea] joined the Russian side," said Olexandr Razmazin, army deputy chief of staff, the UNIAN news agency reported. The decision has been made to carry out the evacuation, he said, "but we need to work out a legal way to do it."'"
Try hitting Konigsberg and Karafuto.
"All your base are belong to Rus'"
Although fighting for something on principle isn't always a bad thing, doing so in a hopeless situation is foolish.
Because it would have been A> futile, and B> converted this into a full-scale shooting war, which no one, but particularly Ukranians, want to see in their country. Ukraine cannot, as a practical matter, do anything about Russia.
This space for rent.
Did you mean that sarcastically? The majority of people in Crimea were loyal to Russia before any of this unrest began a few months ago. The last elected Ukranian president was a Russian loyalist. He was a deposed by a moltov-throwing mob with west-leaning sympathies, so we support them. But that doesn't change the feelings of the majority there.
Once Obama takes office, our respect and standing with the world will be restored!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
At the time Germay was "reoccupying land dominated by Germans". The League of Nations stood by and actually there were negotiated terms, the Munich Accord which spelled out what would happen.
However, Germany was emboldened by the success of expansion. And the occupation was far from the end of the aggression.
I myself have been to combat more than once.
I'm not sure how much I would like to fight a Russian MRR on the offense.
These guys use recoilles rifles (modern bazookas) to rescue children. They killed 1 out of every 13 Afghans in the Soviet-Afghan war (no shit). Look how Chechnya looked after the battles.
the internet told me so it must be true
to finer tune your point, the Ukranians stand alone and will lose even more if/when this escalates.
Because they'd get walked over. They are nothing compared to the red army.
Some of the commanders on bases were publicly BEGGING the Ukrainian leadership to give them the order to leave, because until they got that order, they were going to stand their ground ... and they knew what the result would be. They were more than willing to die for their country if that was what they were supposed to do, but not for a cause they weren't going to win.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Maybe they are following orders of the elected government, not the coup leaders.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because if Ukrainian soldiers fired a single shot on a Russian soldier, Putin would march directly to Kiev and just take all of Ukraine as new Russian territory.
It's the same reason you give your wallet to the mugger with the gun and the crazy eyes.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Well, according to the OP, about 50% joined the Russian side, so even without the outside forces you'd have most people dead, assuming equal training and weaponry (which if they're all from the same base, is pretty likely). Also, most of these guys would have served together for years, so it's likely they didn't relish the idea of killing (and being killed by) their comrades when the alternative was "pack up your shit and go home to be with your families."
Now add in the outside Russian forces, and anyone who fought back would have been quickly destroyed. Ukrainians aren't stupid, but they can be pretty pragmatic. The ones from Crimea were likely Russian heritage or at least had Russian sympathies, and the ones who were just stationed there likely didn't give much of a rat's arse about losing the peninsula after most of the people there voted to leave Ukraine. So rather than dying, they went home.
There's a lot to be said for living to fight another day, and it seems like these people "get it" in that regard. Why die for a lost cause that you may not really believe in? Why defend a peninsula that doesn't really seem to want to be defended? Russia takes what it wants, the "allies" of Ukraine have made it clear they have no intention of doing more than a bit of posturing in response, why stay and fight?
I don't get why the obviously loyal Ukrainian military didn't defend their bases with firepower against the invading Russians? Were they just too scared?
Because they don't want to give Russia a casus belli for a war with Ukraine. Without being directly fired upon, if Ukrainina soldiers shoot at the Russians the Russians can rightfully claim Ukraine as the agressor and invade. Also the Ukrainian soldeirs have been given express orders not to shoot except in cases of self defense. If a Ukrainian soldier shoots a Russian "peacekeeper" (where's a sarcasm tag when you need one?) Russia won't stop until they have tanks parked on the streets of Kiev.
One other thing: look at all the pictures that have been taken over the past few weeks regarding the standoff between the Russians and Ukrainians. The Russians have been posturing with armored vehicles and the Ukrainians have not been seen deploying any heavy weapons in any type of defensive fortifications. This would indicate that these troops are armed with nothing more than light weapons, with heavier weapons probably stored in depots elsewhere, if at all. No sane soldier is going to try to stand against amored vehicles with nothing heavier than a light machine gun. It's not fear. It's realism and following orders.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I don't get why the obviously loyal Ukrainian military didn't defend their bases with firepower against the invading Russians?
They didn't have the firepower necessary to hold off even an immediate attack, much win the conflict they would have started when things escalated. All they could accomplish would be to get themselves and possibly others killed. Worse, the example of Georgia has shown that the Russians will use any violent resistance as an excuse to just seize even more territory.
Some of the bases personnel essentially chose to engage in nonviolent protest, marching with flag and no guns (despite getting warning shots from the Russians). It's been a really weird conflict so far, from this distance.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Here we go again. I thought this ended when I was a kid and that when my father and his generation passed away, that WWII would finally be over as though he was a good man, the death of that generation means the end of suffering for all those who not only fought in the war ... but had to come home and live with what they had done. Fighting a war, even for 'the good guys and reasons' still means you have to do things that no civilized man should be able to do in a healthy frame of mind, and none of them come up the same as they left. The winners are still losers.
Alas it looks like Russia doesn't want it to be over and wants to rekindle its 'former glory'.
Is my son now going to have to suffer the life of a soldier like my father because of some assholes half way around the planet can't just fucking leave well enough alone with his rich life of being a political prick?
I'm beginning to wonder if my father and his cold war hate weren't that unjustified.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Better question? Why are the Russians taking known traitors into their military?
Every military will take information from traitors. But I thought they all knew to never trust them afterwards.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Germany had a decent chance at the time, having a very advanced military and being technologically superior. This is definitely not in the cards for Russia right now. Sure they have enough firepower to destroy a continent, but it's also a guaranteed mutual destruction. Sure, Putin may try to nab a few more regions here and there that are relatively low-risk, but a world conquest is out of the picture.
I think this is flame bait, but just in case...
To compare to America, I think you'd do better to look at Afghanistan or Chechnya. "Capturing" an island (peninsula?) that wants to be captured is not exactly the best example. You'd have to go back to the annexation of Texas, Hawaii, or something else in the 19th century to get a good analog on the US side.
And that is the point, the 19th century kind of sucked for all sorts of reasons, and it would be nice if Russia didn't take us back there.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is like asking why a battered wife doesn't defend herself against her abusive husband.
The Russian military is much larger than the Ukrainian military, and the Ukrainians knew they didn't stand a chance in any conflict. Additionally, having a tumultuous change of government at the same time which paralyzed decision making didn't help. The Russians, on the other hand, had been preparing for this for weeks, moving additional troops into the Crimea before the opportunity presented itself. It didn't help that Ukrainian military equipment is antiquate soviet holdovers, with very little equipment upgrades in the last 25 years.
On top of it, the majority of the Ukrainian navy was in the Crimea, which enabled the Russians to easily bottle it up. Ukrainian policy allowed servicemen to be based near their hometowns - which would have made the army more pliable to local pressures. Finally, the Ukrainians also have to worry about the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country separating at the moment.
There was very little the Ukrainians could do, and shooting back would have been a pointless loss of lives and only provided an excuse for Putin for even further aggression.
Three reasons:
1) They are basically countrymen or close to it, and probably didn't feel like shooting their own.
2) Half your brothers in arms defected to the other side, probably really don't feel like shooting them either.
3) This is the Russian armed forces who have come in strength and prepared, given situation how wise to provoke?
To my mind this is a lot like Canada and Quebec relations.
It would be like Canada deciding Trade options between France and England, where it is likely that Canada might decide to go with England. France with a lot to lose might invade Quebec. Within Quebec there are those that identify with one or the other, but most with France and are French speaking. Quebec has also talked about independence in the past, and also had its own referendum which much of Canada called into question its validity. The Canadian Armed Forces stationed in Quebec might be put in a similar situation. Odds are they are not going to want to fight their brothers in arms.
The difference with Ukraine which would make it even harder to do so, is close physical location with Russian counterparts, in that it is just across the border, not across an entire ocean. Also while Ukraine has a storied history, it was part of the Soviet Union along with Russia in the very recent past (comparatively speaking). I don't think being a coward really enters into it.
Many are probably like "Fsck it, let the politicians figure it the hell out, I'm going home."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... At the time Germay was "reoccupying land dominated by Germans". The League of Nations stood by and actually there were negotiated terms, the Munich Accord which spelled out what would happen.
However, Germany was emboldened by the success of expansion. And the occupation was far from the end of the aggression.
I have found it the height of irony that Putin has been essentially mirroring the beginning of a conflict that killed millions of Russians (not to mention millions of people from other countries as well) in the name of protecting "Russians". Putin is playing a very dangerous game, especially when you consider that, for the last few weeks, whether or not Russia and Ukraine went to war was essentially dependent on some panicked soldiers not giving in to fear or uncertainty and pulling the trigger.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
1) The Russians never let facts get in the way of propaganda.
2) Russians can not rightfully claim anything if they are already inside Ukraine, threatening a base, and being fired upon within Ukraine. That is utter bullshit.
This is just a situation of Ukraine not being in a position to defend their own sovereignty and the last thing they want is to make the crisis worse.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Ukraine cannot, as a practical matter, do anything about Russia.
The Ukrainians also remember what happed to them the last time Moscow was really unhappy with them. And oddly enough Putin is a former career KGB secret police officer.
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
It's the same reason you give your wallet to the mugger with the gun and the crazy eyes.
And this is exactly what it is. Putin is a mugger with a gun and crazy eyes. Too bad he also has nuclear weapons so nobody can do anything about. The only thing that can be done is to isolate Russia the same way as we isolate North Korea. Nazdrovje!
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Unfortunately we are in the very dangerous point of really needing lots of people to die to stop Putin. I am sure he knows this and knows that until he encounters a country
a) willing to commit to the loss of lives
and
b) expecting to be able to "win" should a) occur
Putin is going to be able to do whatever he wants.
After the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistian it is clear that the west is highly resistant to (a) and is uncertain if (b) is even possible. With those massive levels of innertia Putin is going to be able to march all over the Ukraine and likely several other "Soviet" regions as well.
That's all part of NATO now. Russia won't do anything to Germany or Poland or Lithuania.
Ukraine's goof was in voting to not seek Nato membership a few years back. While that was partly Russian influence, oh well.
Other remaining, non-NATO former Soviet bloc countries might wanna step on the gas.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There is, of course, the fact that whatever the legal status of the Iraq invasion, Iraq was not annexed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's why Ukrainian Khrushchev became the number one in USSR and gave Crimea to his Ukrainian wife in 1954.
Every military will take information from traitors. But I thought they all knew to never trust them afterwards.
You think the military trusts privates? No more than they trust unstable high explosives. Like explosives, you compartmentalize them, you treat them with appropriate caution, and then you point THIS END TOWARDS ENEMY before you release them.
No more than a handful of the defectors, those they have some reason to trust, will ever be able to advance significantly. But all of them are available for use as cannon fodder, something Russia knows more about than perhaps any other nation on the planet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where on earth did Russia get the idea they could stir up political descent with spys, attack a countries network infrastructure then invade after there was a coup and have the people hold questionable votes for a new government that violate that sovereign nations constitution all while at gunpoint? Oh wait... that's right, we did. Shit.
The actual beginning of the end for the League of Nations as a meaningful quantity was when it stood by and let Italy seize Abyssinia without question. Once it became clear to Hitler that there were no real repercussions to forced annexations, he felt quite free to begin plotting his own.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There were many reasons for Finland's relative success that don't apply today to this conflict, and if you don't understand that you are in the realm of magical thinking. I will also point out that as glorious as Finland's resistance was, Finland actually lost that war and had some of its territory taken by the Soviet Union and added to the Russian Soviet Republic.
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
Comparing the overthrow of a far inferior professional force by a far superior professional force is very different than dealing with an ongoing insurgent war. Ukraine did not have ongoing tribal warfare where everyone is happy to shoot anyone not of their tribe. In Ukraine combatant can be identified by being in uniform. In Iraq anyone could be a combatant. In the Ukraine all combatants were on military bases. In Iraq combatants could be anywhere. In the Ukraine the soldiers knew that they would be killed if they resisted and for no good. In Iraq death in battle means martyrdom and a place in paradise. In Ukraine both sides are professional. In Iraq only one side was professional. It takes two sides to fight and the Ukrainians did not because they knew it was futile. The Iraqis have been fighting and dying for decades. The Ukraine and Iraq are very different situations.
I dont like racist reasoning. Thats like saying most of America should belong to Africa/South&Central America. With your reasoning you can basically start WWIII if you look around the worlds demographics.
Germany is a member of NATO. While everyone may sit around dithering about what to do about a former Russian satellite being carved up, to invade Germany would enact NATO's mutual assistance clauses (ie. an attack on one member is an attack on all members). No matter what Russian demagogues may say, Russia does not have the military capacity to invade Germany, which still hosts US nukes.
Putin is bold, but not insane.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
By stolen, you mean liberated from genocidal fascists...
And Kosovo was not annexed either, but became a sovereign state.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Traitors? How? To whom? Those who led the coup are the traitors...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You mean there's no oil left in Iraq?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Canada burnt down the White House. Your point?
Finland was united. A large percentage of Ukraine would rather the Russians win, as evidenced by the 50% defection rate here.
This space intentionally left blank
It would be the perfect excuse for Russia to let the war escalate to the rest of Ukraine.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Could you refresh me about which conflict it was that the US invaded a peaceful neighbor and annexed some of its territory to itself by force of arms? I can't think of any examples.
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
they have proven they are far more professional.
Professionalism has little to do with it.
The difference is that in Iraq we thought we'd be greeted with flowers as liberators.
In Crimea, Russia was greeted with flowers as liberators.
If they tried this on Iraq the result probably would be the same.
These "traitors" will no doubt say they're loyal to the constitutional president of Ukraine who was deposed in a coup and himself went to Russia. Why wouldn't Russia like that? I'm sure if protests overthrow Putin they'll be happy to have soldiers who stay loyal to Putin.
This space intentionally left blank
Yes I guess the Ukranians should have added "no backsies" to the 1994 Belgium memorandum. But I guess that piece of international law was "more like guidlines".
I guess we should watch out for Mexico reclaiming parts of Texas real soon now because "it is Mexican". After all they over 60% are Mexican and they speak "Mexican" and a scant 160 years ago they did rule the place.
Hell why we are at the Russians should take back Alaska too. After all what are borders when Russians get bored of the current borders. Never mind that the reason that the Crimea is mostly russian is that only 25% of the Tatars repatriated after Stalin kicked them out. And also that Russian soldiers were given free apartments and cars when they "decided" to retire to Yalta.
Russia is not getting isolated. That would mean tens of millions of Poles and Germans getting very cold next winter.
The big question is whether giving up Sudetenland^WCrimea will be enough to placate the dictator.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Neither do the Americans, and increasingly, no other country on Earth.
Tell us again why Iraq was invaded in 2003?
Ahhh, but in the world of political double speak -- they were in Crimea, which belongs to them and the Ukranian guys were there illegally.
International politics is so much bullshit as to be impossible to make sense of. Us here on Slashdot can try all we want to explain it in a nice, neat way. But that's about as far removed from reality as you'll ever get.
Your argument is flawed in that it assumes people are rational and make logical decisions.
The comparison of Crimea with Iraq is utterly moronic. Iraq didn't have a 65% American population, with a good half of the remaining 35% also expressing support for US.
The WWII treaty says the eastern part is Russia's.
The WWII treaty has long been concluded, with Russia (well, USSR) signature among others.
That worked out well in Sudetenland, eh? God let's hope it doesn't come to that...
Loading...
To further this argument it only took 1 month for the US to defeat the Iraqi army. April 19 to March 20th. It was the unconventional insurgent war that caused so many casualties.
> I guess we should watch out for Mexico reclaiming parts of Texas real soon now because "it is Mexican". After all they over 60% are Mexican and they speak "Mexican" and a scant 160 years ago they did rule the place.
You should wait until Russia stages a coup in Mexico and installs some pathetic local chumps as the new rulers. Oh, and when you do invade, try not to kill anyone. It's possible, even though you're not used to it.
Well, this is what I see forwarded to me from a Russian friend here in the West:
http://maidantranslations.com/...
If this is true, the takeovers are being done in such a manner that a) it generates a lot of bad publicity for the Ukranians if they resist ("They're shooting civilians!") and giving Russia a pretext to take away the Eastern part of the country, which is mixed Ukranian and Russian.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
During the War of 1812, more than 50 years before the country of Canada was created, British forces raided Washington DC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Britain at the time was the naval superpower and had just helped defeat Napoleon so had some free troops to play with which made this attack possible. To say that "Canada" burnt down the White House is silly.
As Latvian, I not give two potato about situation in Crimea.
I give one potato, but only because is very important issue.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
BTW, before you knock it as a strategy... it worked for getting the United States to abandon Vietnam to serfdom to the Russian Mob (whether it's pretending to be 'communist' or not this week). Not to mention many other conflicts around the globe, up until the present day.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
2) Russians can not rightfully claim anything if they are already inside Ukraine, threatening a base, and being fired upon within Ukraine. That is utter bullshit.
Well you see, those aren't Russian forces attacking the bases, they're Crimean Self Defense, and if Ukrainians start shooting, Russia would have to step in to protect the ethnically Russian population from the Nazi Ukrainian threat. This is more or less literally what I heard some Kremlin shill say in an interview yesterday.
I'm not sure how much I would like to fight a Russian MRR on the offense.
Depending on the country you live in there may not be an option in the not too distant future. That is assuming Russia needs more than Spetsnaz and airborne forces to seize control.
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
The last elected Ukranian president was a Russian loyalist.
Perhaps he should have been loyal to Ukraine.
Well, unfortunately Ukraine forgets what happened to them when Moscow was happy with them. Like giving the whole Donbass to the Ukrainian SSR in 1919, Novorossiya in 1922, parts of western Ukraine in 1939 and Crimea in 1954. Without all this generosity, Ukraine would be much smaller today.
Oddly enough, both Khrushchov and Brezhnev were Ukrainians.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Because Saddam Hussein made open threats against the west, repeatedly defied the United Nations, refused nuclear weapon inspections, and ultimately defied UN resolution 1441. This is why Iraq was invaded by a coalition made of mostly the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Poland, Portugal, and Denmark with 33 other countries providing some form of troop support.
The fact that Saddam Hussein himself escalated the events leading up to the war and that it was a multilateral invasion seems to be forgotten. I assume for some type of political advantage by the progressives and the participating countries who rather the US be held fully accountable.
Wow. Insightful
a very clean and professional job.
Mr Pink sends his regards
I guess you are throwing the right of self determination out of the window dude. What sort of international law are you talking about? It's funny because in Kosovo, there was no referendum at all, it became independent just by bombing. The alaska thing is straw man, it was sold to the US.
I heard it too. Of course there is a big difference between making those claims and having people finding those claims credible.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Contrary to your propaganda Ukrainian people were pissed enough with their Russia-backed overlords like Yanukovytch to finally kick their asses.
And the huge difference is that 150 years ago Crimea was vast majority Tatar - it became 60% Russian after Russia-backed migration of ethnic Russians from Russia, ethnic cleansing/killing of the Tatars, sending Tatars to Siberia and scaring them away to Turkey.
If Russia is so for referenda - why Tatars or Chechens can not have ones? Only Russians.
Sadly I suspect that a sufficient proportion of Russians would eat it up, and what everyone else thinks doesn't matter because nobody's going to lift a finger over Crimea/Ukraine.
I wasn't aware MAD doctrine had actually been abandoned and the US was now willing to sell its own territory out of fear of a nation whose military capabilities are inferior to its own.
The whole point of nukes is to never use them, and that means having them where an enemy might attack to prevent even a conventional war.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It did not legally belong to Russia at all. At a time when it was legally owned by the USSR an internal transfer was made from one region to another.
A referendum with two alternatives, both of which were the same.
Wrong. Independence wasn't either of the options. They were both "join Russia".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Germans too.
Yes, that is what I wrote.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
According to CNN, it looks like the US and the other members of the G8 voted to kick Russia out. Russia's response to that should be interesting.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Desperately yes. The Nord Stream pipeline somehow got misrouted to Russia instead of to the US. But yes yes yes. Any gas you have, please send it our way.
Alas, that is not going to happen. New LNG production facilities are difficult to justify and slow to come online, and most of current capacity is needed to supply Japan.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
That defection rate applies to Crimea, which has a lot of Russians due to Stalin deporting people (largely Tatars) for looking at him in a funny way.
Crimea is not representative of Ukraine as a whole.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I assume that the Supreme Soviet approved those actions.
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
I haven't been keeping up with the close, at least closely.
Is the problem that though the majority of Crimerians voted to merge with Russia, some people believe that vote was coerced with the threat of violence ( Russian troops on the border )?
Agreed, now switch it to "England burnt down the white house"
Get my point?
Russians Take Ukraine's Last Land Base
The only entities recognizing it are with Russia. The rest of the world sees it for what it is, Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> There's a lot to be said for living to fight another day, and it seems like these people "get it" in that
> regard. Why die for a lost cause that you may not really believe in?
What I think a lot of people miss is also, even if you do believe in it...there is a difference between believing in the cause, and believing that a particular action that is likely to bring about your death will further the cause.
I mean, if you come to my house and stick a gun in my face, and force me to give up my money, I will give it to you. I will firmly believe I have every right to defend myself and kill you. I will firmly believe you have no right to that money. However, getting myself killed will not prevent me from unfairly losing what is mine....so how is my death preferable to living through a robbery? These things don't logically follow at all; except in the minds of people trying to make arguments nearly entirely based on claiming others don't really believe what they are saying because they are not reckless and suicidal.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Fare more useful than nukes is Russia's veto capabilities, which prevents any meaningful punishment on a large scale.
> Ukrainian people were pissed enough with their Russia-backed overlords like Yanukovytch to finally kick their asses.
Having had his ass kicked, Yanukovych backed down, agreed to an early election, and reached as good a settlement as he could with the opposition. But suddenly some mysterious snipers conveniently came out of the blue, and it all went to hell. You know the story, "a growing understanding" and all that.
are sitting in Odessa, discussing what is going on in Ukraine.
Man 1: I stopped speaking Russian.
Man 2: Why? Afraid the Ukranians will beat you?
Man 1: No, that Russians will come to protect me.
He was pro-Russia, but not pro-give-up-Crimea-for-free-pro-Russia. For instance a deal Yanukovitch would have taken would be 'Russia gets Crimea, Ukraine gets lots of money and gas for many years, and permanent leases for military bases in Crimea, just as Russia had the reverse when it was Ukrainian."
Right now, he has FSB following him everywhere. He is now Putin's bitch.
Assuming the translation on CNN was correct, Putin himself said it. He was waffling on about the civil war in the 1920s and going off on all kinds of tangents, the silly Modigliani faced cunt. He sounded deranged to me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Better question? Why are the Russians taking known traitors into their military?
Because they aren't viewed as traitors by the side that's taking them. Think of them like Confederate soldiers who crossed the line to join the Union because they were put the nation before their home state. The Confederates would consider them traitors; the Union would consider them loyalists.
It's actually a lot like that time period, because the people in Ukraine consider themselves more loyal to their factional groups than to the country as a whole. Imagine how bad partisanship would be in America if both parties represented groups that literally did not speak the same language and that had the backing of different, foreign powers upon who their prosperity depended.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Oh wow... Hindsight is 4/Insightful?
Crimey
Finland dished out an awesomely disproportionate asskicking, but in the end, who won? Do you think Stalin missed all the guys Russia lost? Think Finland's equally failed to mourn their fallen?
Regardless of whatever Ukraine could do, they're thinking about what they should do, and a lot of their people getting killed, doesn't rank high on the list. Even if you can kill a bunch of Russians, sometimes your death isn't worth it.
BTW, to anyone who thinks the Crimean referendum was a sham election, you need to talk to an American Republican to get the right perspective. Keeping dissenters away from the polls wasn't a rights violation; it was all about preventing election fraud. ;-)
The alaska thing is straw man, it was sold to the US.
Russia keeps the receipts and has an expansive view on return policies.
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
Perhaps he was.
Living next to Russia is like being locked in a cage with a bear possessed by Satan. It demands your life (war) or your soul (puppet government). You can't sell your soul, because then you're a slave to the fine upstanding leaders Russia tends to produce, but you also can't just refuse, because then you're bear food. Your only hope is to let the monster think you'll cave in any second now, so it better focus it's attention elsewhere rather than waste it on an already-secured catch. Or you could join the hunting club (Nato) for mutual protection, but that might provoke the bear into attacking, and if it does, you're mauled, whether or not the other hunters would really risk a Doom II -scenario to avenge you.
The countries unlucky enough to be caught in this real-life horror movie have to walk a balancing act on a razor's edge to survive. It's entirely possible the former Ukraine president was told the country would be attacked if it continued flirting with the EU. Or it could be that he realized Russia was preparing to annex Crimea and did a last desperate attempt to grovel. Either way, he failed, and now it's a question of whether the rest of Ukraine will be attacked right away, or allowed another chance to agree to a deal it can't refuse.
tl;dr: http://satwcomic.com/the-boogeyman-comes-at-night
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Maybe they are following orders of the elected government, not the coup leaders.
You mean the governments in Moscow, both Russian, and the former government of Ukraine that was removed by Ukraine's parliament. (Why do you think they fled to Moscow on the eve of a Russian invasion?)
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
It does not matter whether there is a majority population of russian-speaking people in Crimea. Russia / USSR gave Crimea to Ukraine, they cannot take it back just like that. A civilized approach would have been to approach the Ukrainian government, asked them for it and offered a pile of money for it (e.g. free gas for 50 years or something like that...) and then had a discussion as civilsed persons. This never happened, and as the Russian logic goes at the moment, we can also argue that:
- St:Petersburg is built on occupied Swedish territory and should be handed back to Sweden.
- Karelia is Finnish (ok Finland is actually Swedish), and should be handed back to Finland.
- Kalingrad should be handed over to Germany, after all it was the center of Prussia, the most german of the german states...
- The Åland islands (who actually had a referendum about joining Sweden, voting 95 % for joining) and is part of Finland should be handed over to Sweden immediately.
- Anschluss was morally justified as the territories that Adolf annexed was "ethnic german".
- Ireland is english-speaking, so England has claim...
- US is English speaking and the Spanish speaking are "oppressing" the English speaking and the UK has moral justification to protect "the English" in the US.
- There are Dutch-speaking people in Belgium, so the NL should invade, they are oppressed by the French-speaking Belgians.
- Three are Flemmish-speaking people in the Netherlands, so Belgium should invade NL to protect the Flemmish/Dutch speaking people from the Frisians.
Where do you draw the line?
The fact is also that Russia signed an agreement leading to the dismantling of the Ukrainian nukes in order for a promise of respecting the integrity of the Ukrainian territory, no one can argue that Russia has not violated this pledge. The fact is that no Russians or Russian-speaking people where oppressed by the government in Ukraine.
There is NO casus belli whatsoever in this case, the Russians are blatantly ignoring international law, their own international commitments (to respect the Ukrainian borders) and are in principle acting like Germany in the 30s.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
no, silly analogy.
You can't have a military where half the troops want to be on the other side and so join it. Let's get it straight, Crimea is mostly Russians anyway. most of them wanted to rejoin Russia. Half of Ukraine's troops in Crimea wanted to and did rejoin Russia.
Not our problem and anything else would make most the people of Crimea unhappy. so why compare it to some abused spouse, it's more like imprisoned woman gets reunited with her family.
Sure, Russia and Putin were douchebags (Russia is governed by three mafia) the way they went about it. oh well, the world is a tough place
We just had a referendum in our house, no one wants to be part of the country that claims the land we have the house on (there are also no native people living in our house). Can we secede? According to your logic, yes...
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Although the US military may be superior in fire power, I think the US military in such situation would be inferior due to bureaucracy and partisan politics. In Russia, there is no split Congress that would block such expenditure or anyone that would bother with politics and image, Putin is the boss and if you're a non-compliant member of the Kremlin, you'll be shipped off to Siberia.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I assume for some type of political advantage by the progressives and the participating countries who rather the US be held fully accountable.
Not "accountable," but "blamed."
There were many large "anti-War" demonstrations in 1991 when the US led coalition was preparing to remove Saddam's army from Kuwait after Iraq invaded and annexed it. The streets pretty much empty of protests after Saddam's invasion.
So, any protests going on in the West about Russia's invasion of Crimea, and threats against Ukraine? Or are we saving all our energy for when NATO needs to defend itself? I assume the protesters will find their signs by then.
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
Russians should take back Alaska too.
russian politicians are talking about that. just sayin' ;)
Rich
"A civilized approach would have been to approach the Ukrainian government, asked them for it and offered a pile of money for it"
Which Ukranian government is that? The one that Ukraine elected, or the one that the US installed?
If you mean the former, then I think your condition was already met. If you mean the latter, then you just might be an incurable neocon warmonger with a ton of rhetoric that needs to go somewhere, anywhere, quick as a banker's pocket picking hand.
there are reports that russian soldiers surrounded schools and kindergartens where kids of the ukrainian soldiers were. yes, that's the climate in which the "referendum" happened.
Rich
I cannot imagine any circumstances under which Congress would hamper the President's or the Pentagon's ability to fight a war if a fellow NATO ally were invaded. You're talking rubbish.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That is disengenuous and will only fool those who don't know what's going on. The two options were:
"Are you in favour of the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a part of the Russian Federation?"
"Are you in favour of restoring the 1992 Constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?"
The latter establishes an independent state technically within Crimea, but with autonomy to later join Russia if it wishes, and the parliament already said it does.
So, basically, the options were "Join Russia now, or join later." There was no option to remain as part of Ukraine under the status quo.
Well, duh.
The Supreme Soviet gave, the Supreme Soviet has taken away.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Do you have the slightest clue about how a parliamentarian system works? Governments are not elected by the people, they are elected by the parliament and they can be sacked by parliament. Apparently, in Ukraine the president can be removed by the parliament (if not, the disposed president should have raised the issue with the supreme / constitutional courts, but this has not happened).
This is not a coup, it is democracy in play.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Russians become a majority in Crimea long before Stalin's deportaions.
oh man, if only we could get mexico to take back texas.
There's a big difference between finding those claims credible and finding those claims enough of a fig leaf to decline starting WW3.
Is not the Ukrainian parliament an elected body?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No "real" similarities exist between Hitler's Germany and Putin's Russia, nor do they exist between Sudeten and Crimea, nor do they exist between the actions of Hitler and Sudeten and Russia and Crimea.
the similarities are huge and terrifying
Sudeten never voted to become part of Germany as Crimea did Russia.
that was not a vote in crimea. invaded by a foreign army, which operates without insignia and is denied by russia itself. active terror against tatars. it has been a terrible, terrible lie that seems to be promoted by rt, mostly (well, and the mass media in russia, of course).
Crimea as a region has been pro Russia since long before the coup in the Ukraine
it was not a coup. the current rada is the same one for the most part. claiming anything else is a lie from the cremlin media.
so the vote was not Russia "taking territory" like you are trying to frame it.
and again, something like that can not be called a vote, and yes, russia absolutely invaded a territory of another country. one that gave up nuclear arms in a promise to protect it's teritorial integrity... by russia in part.
Russia has been playing catch up since the disbanding of the old USSR.
compared to ukraine ? haha
...US has been
don't change the topic.
russia is the aggressor here. they occupied their neighbour - actually, they have been doing this continuously for quite some time, georgia being the previous victim. russia spends a lot of money on propaganda, though - i don't know whether you are paid or just mislead by rt and similar media, but there oh-more-than-enough paid people, spewing bullshit about "vote" in crimea.
look at all the neighbouring countries of russia. they know what they are dealing with. they are very, very concerned.
popularising such lies is very evil. please try not to be evil.
Rich
Well, go back far enough and the area was Tartar only because the descendants of Ghengis Khan formed the Crimean Khanate, which essentially took over part of the current Ukraine in the 15th century, massacring tons of ethnic Russians in the process.
It is actually pretty well known that the entire Eastern Ukraine is very much more Russian. If you want to argue that the Russians didn't *always* live there, we can continue this discussion with some American Indians if you like.
http://oi40.tinypic.com/tz581....
Even Russia doesn't claim that. I don't know if you're drinking Putin's Kool-Aid or if he's drinking your's.
There is no dispute that Crimea was part of Ukraine a month ago. Seriously, not even Putin has ever claimed any differently. The area belonged to Ukraine. The argument Putin has made is that the people there didn't want to be part of Ukraine anymore; they wanted to have Crimea be part of Russia again, and that the right of self-determination makes it all legal. But that's a far cry from claiming it was always Russian land.
Also, it isn't 60% Russian. It's about 51% ethnic Russian. Of those, the younger generations grew up only ever knowing it as part of Ukraine. Therefore, even among ethnic Russians, some percentage would self-identify as Ukrainian. Then you have the roughly 15% Tatars who've had nothing but persecution under Russian rule (the reason so many of them are there is that Russia got tired of beating the Hell out of them and expelled them from Russia ... to Ukraine). Between the ethnic Ukrainians, Tatars, and the younger generation of ethnic Russians who self-identify as Ukrainian, a fair vote would likely be something like 45% join Russia 55% not (some mix between becoming independent and staying with Ukraine).
The fact that it was 97% shows just what a Saddam Hussein style "vote" it really was.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Because it would have been A> futile, and B> converted this into a full-scale shooting war, which no one, but particularly Ukranians, want to see in their country. Ukraine cannot, as a practical matter, do anything about Russia.
It might still come to a full scale shooting war, but it is simply too soon. "First they took Sudetenland (Crimea), then they took Eastern Ukraine (Western Czechoslovakia), then our great leaders went to Moscow (Munich) and bought 'Peace in our time' for the rest of Ukraine (Czechoslovakia). Soon war will be upon you too." may get NATO involved which is realistically the only way Ukraine could ever hope to defend against the Russian army. Politically and socially we're not ready for that yet, if they started a shooting war now they'd stand alone and be crushed. If they try appeasement and show that Putin won't stop his expansion maybe NATO will draw a real line in the sand like England and France did with Poland, which may get Putin to back down or at least give them a fighting chance. Until then, they'll bide their time.
Of course the dangerous part here is that this is not your proxy war in Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan, if NATO first should commit to anything and get called on it we are looking at no less than WW3. Of course Putin would be crazy to risk war with NATO, but the one thing we can't do is bluff and assume he won't as that destroys all credibility if we get caught. And while it's cruel to say it, Russia hasn't done enough to Ukraine just yet that we're ready to commit to such an action. That may change though, if Putin continues the course of action he seems to be on. But if the rest is all blustering I think he can keep Crimea and go home.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
England ceased to exist in 1707.
Amusingly, Hitler thought the same. This was one of his primary reasons for believing he would have success in invading Russia...the Soviet experience losing the Winter War. But, as they say, "Past performance does not predict future results." We know how that mistake turned out.
We are all original Africans.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Yes, some of Tatars don't like Russians too much, but your generalization is, well...
Given that it all happened over half a century ago, it's like saying all Jews who ran from Hitler still hate and/or distrust Germans. Most of Tatars living there now only know about all of this from books.
You'd need to adjust your analogy to assume the Nazis stayed in power (being that Putin is "ex" KGB and is running the place like the Soviet Union of old). So it would be like saying that if the Nazis who exterminated Jews still controlled the German government, all Jews who ran from Hitler would still hate/distrust Germans.
And yes, I think that's fair to say.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Great. Now there will be a war to decide whether 'Rus' means Russia or the original Kievian Rus.
Amazing how the percentage keeps going up. Every decent source I've seen says 51% ethnic Russians. A poster here named etash claims it's 60%. You're claiming 65%.
Well I'm now claiming it's 104%! 104% of Crimea is ethnic Russians! 110% of them voted to join Russia! Vote is complete! It is fair and reasonable!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Another, even more important history lesson lies in Weimar Germany.
After the WWI, Germany was made a scapegoat, at the insistence of French. The conditions where the following:
huge reparations
ban of German submarines and airplanes
ban on German troops west of Rhine
ban on unification with Austria
ban on annexing Sudetenland
big swaths of land transferred to other countries (Poland, Austria, etc)
All of this imposed upon Germany even though Germans were lured to the negotiation table by the Americans promising there "would no losers". All of this led to rapid impoverishment of Germany and the rise of lunatic Hitler.
More recently, the historians labeled the 1990s Russia as a Weimar Russia. Even though Russia withdrew from East Europe unilaterally, the west has done nothing to help Russians deal with the turmoil following the transition to market economy and democratic institutions. When it came to loans, the west simply fleeced Russians. NATO also didn't waste time and move into Poland, and then former Soviet republics in the Baltics. NATO started the war in Yugoslavia and separated Kosovo from Serrbia despite Russian protests. All of this created great conditions for people to accept the autocratic Putin who nonetheless brought stability into Russians economy and politics, at the expense of rolling back the democracy and setting up a new police state.
At the same time comparing Putin with Hitler because of Sudetenland and Crimea is quite primitive. Hitler also advocated racial hatred and never made it a secret that he want to push the German nation to conquer Poland and Ukraine. With all its current problems, Russia is an multi-ethnic multi-cultural country with ethnic Russians constituting about 80% of overall populations. Even though, Putin used the nationalist rhetoric of helping Russians from abroad, the annexation of Crimea has broader goals. First, it's a demonstration of power, and a clear punishment of Ukraine for stepping out of line. Second, Putin just got another frozen conflict at the border, which means its unlikely Ukraine could join NATO any time soon.
Not so much. For years afterwards, the Nazis' best military hardware was the stuff they got from Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia didn't just lose territory, they had to leave everything behind in the frontier defences.
Yes, under duress Russians rarely do any of that pinpoint smart bomb stuff.
Ukraine used to have ICBMs and Crimea.
Russia has lots of local "shopping" to do yet - Ukraine proper, Moldova, etc., before it is free to look at anything else. And the US isn't finished budget cutting and disarming yet. Besides, other desirable properties may be made available in the meantime. The UK keeps flirting with total nuclear disarmament.
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
Also Russian take over of the Ukrainian base happened after weeks of begging Ukrainians from all bases to switch sides or at least surrender. They were offered citizenship and jobs with Russian military. The problem is with the government in Kiev. Why didn't they just give the order to evacuate Ukrainian troops? Cheap populist politics. No politician in Kiev want to give the order to surrender or evacuate because that would mean formally surrendering Crimea. But they also didn't give anyone the orders to defend with force, because that would mean a war.
It is completely ironic that you suggest Putin won't take back Alaska because of the threat of nuclear war. The Ukrainians gave up their ICBMs so now the Russians are invading Ukraine.
The sad thing is that no one would make that "mistake" again. Say goodbye to any prospect of nuclear non-proliferation in the new century.
No the grand parent remember wrong as well. The two options was independence or join russia. Remain in Ukraine was not an option which is why 40% of the population (tartars and ukranians) boycutted the election. Fortunately their boycut was made up for by 120% voter turnout in the capital.
Are people making a big deal out of this because even though the majority of Crimerians voted to merge with Russia, they believe that vote was coerced under the threat of violence ( Russian troops massing on the border )?
No, people are making a big deal out of this because Russia marched troops and mobile armor into Ukraine, allowed (some would say encouraged) armed mobs of fanatical ethnic Russians to run amok, surrounded Ukrainian bases in Crimea, and then decided there should be a hastily organized vote on whether Crimea should join Russia immediately or become independent and let its leadership vote on whether to join Russia (no options to remain part of Ukraine). Ethnic Russians make up about 51% of Crimea. Since Crimea was handed to Ukraine some 60 years ago, younger generations of ethnic Russians have grown up as Ukrainians and largely self-identify as Ukrainian. About 15% of the population there are ethnic Tatars, who were brutalized and murdered by Russia until Crimea came under control of Ukraine. The rest is mostly ethnic Ukrainian.
So with Russian tanks and armed troops parked outside peoples' homes and armed mobs of fanatical pro-Russia groups roaming the streets uninhibited, a vote took place in which 97% of votes cast were to join Russia. 97%, despite the fact that at least 15% of the population would essentially be like Jews voting to have their homes fall under the control of the Nazis. The Russians claim this is somehow a legitimate vote and that the people of Crimea have the right to simply vote themselves part of any country they choose (so long as that country is Russia).
Why are some Crimerians fighting and not others? Different ethnic groups being for and against the merger?
There's very little fighting going on. Much of the violence you're seeing in Crimea is from pro-Russian fanatics who've formed armed mobs supported by the Russian military. They've killed or wounded a small number of Ukrainian soldiers stationed at Ukrainian bases in Crimea and they're generally running amok because nobody's stopping them. The Ukrainian troops in Crimea aren't shooting because if they did, the Russians would just murder them (bombing from the air, rockets from helicopters, shelling from artillery; the Russians have a lot of options against small numbers in tight quarters armed only with small arms). As it turns out, about half the Ukrainian military on the ground in Crimea are joining Russian forces, likely because they don't want to be on the losing end of a potential slaughter and/or due to personal or familial Russian self-identification issues.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
that was not a vote in crimea. invaded by a foreign army, which operates without insignia and is denied by russia itself. active terror against tatars. it has been a terrible, terrible lie that seems to be promoted by rt, mostly (well, and the mass media in russia, of course).
So Crimea did not ask for Russian protection on the first day of the uprising in Kiev? You are denying very recent history, or choosing to ignore events, to come to your conclusion.
it was not a coup. the current rada is the same one for the most part. claiming anything else is a lie from the cremlin media.
Wow, just wow. Armed gangs take over a government and it's not a coup to you, nothing like changing a word to fit your means I guess. Do I need to give a LMGTFY link so you can find the definition of "coup"? Say so if you can't find the definition of the word.
Interestingly what is lost by you, and US media, is that on when the protests started even US media said the uprising started not because of an evil tyranny, but because the Government of the Ukraine didn't want to become a member of the EU. Considering how every country that has joined has gotten butfucked by global bankers, I am not sure that decision was wrong. It had nothing to do with Russia, until someone needed a villain. Wholly shit this is still in Google, go figure out how to use "Search".
compared to ukraine ? haha
Ahh, selective thinking. No, not compared to the Ukraine but compared to the US and EU allies of the US.
Learn to spell and use your caps key, I refuse to respond further to a person that lacks common courtesy with communication in addition to a critical lack of facts..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It is not quite correct. The option you refer to as 'remain part of Ukraine' was not a status quo but return to 1992 status of autonomic republic of Crimea. Having said that this would mean staying part of Ukraine still which is conveniently 'forgot' bu GP and most of other heroes. I am pretty sure Russia made a mistake by sending soldiers and making referendum (Putirendum?) in such hasty way but then again - US and allies were meddling in Ukraine for quite some time and situation was more than chaotic with some nationalists doing stuff in Kiev which was not quite like principles that US and the rest of the West officially believe.
Pity if people have to die for Crimea on whatever site. It seems we did not have a major conflict for some time and some are missing ol' good times.....
What makes me worried though is general attitude: 'how dare Russians do that' while forgetting about acts of violence' by NATO and US alone which were sometimes sanctioned by US Security Council based on lies (Or Mr. Powell was misinformed) as well as this little incident in Kosovo. It looks like some sort of conflict cold or hot is inevitable.
Russians of Crimea have never lost their Russian identity. They always viewed Russia as their mothership and most didn't want to have anything with the government in Kiev. Russia has a big military presence there because of the Black Sea Fleet. I think it's possible some Russians would prefer to stay with Ukraine, but at the same time it's entirely possible that some ethnic Ukrainians would have preferred to be transferred to Russia. The benefits are obvious: much more stable politics, and a better economy. I think the explanation for the 97% pro-Russian vote is quite simple. Those who didn't want to transfer Crimea to Russia simply stayed home because they thought they'd lose anyways.
60% is at least supported by Ukrainian 2001 census (58%, actually).
Do provide some of your "every decent sources" - just being smug is cheap.
It depends on which year you're looking at census for. Per 2001 census, it was at 58% (I hope Wikipedia is a sufficiently "decent source" for you, especially when it cites its sources?), which is usually rounded up to 60%. 65% is from 1989, so that's my mistake.
Also, if you really believe that Crimea wouldn't have voted the same way in a fair referendum (note, I'm not saying that the one that took place was fair...), you just don't know much about that place. Russians were the most populous group there for something like two centuries, and were a majority ever since the deportation of Crimean Tatars after WW2 (who were the second most populous group).
Also, understand that these demographics are based on a poll where the question asked was "which ethnicity are you?". This does not necessarily correlate to language and cultural self-identification - most people would basically claim their parents' ethnicity (in USSR, this was sort of set in stone as there was the "Ethnicity" entry in internal passports, and you could take either your mother's or your father's), but in practice a large number of nominally Ukrainian population of Crimea is strongly russified, speaking Russian exclusively and self-identifying with that culture. The same 2001 census has also asked another question, "which language do you consider native?" - in Crimea, 77% said it's Russian. Going even further, when a 2004 poll asked "which language do you speak at home, with the family etc?", 97% of respondents in Crimea said it's Russian.
So, no, the percentages are fine, or close enough for the point of my post.
Mexican-American War
You mean the war that started after the US legally annexed Texas and Mexico refused to abide by the terms of the Treaties of Velasco between Santa Anna and the Republic of Texas, by not recognizing the agreed upon border of the Rio Grande and thereby claiming land that legally belonged to the US as Mexican? Huh, similar to the situation in the Crimea after all, since Russia gave the Crimea to the Ukraine back in the 60s and just now up and decided to change their mind.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
To make the Kosovo analogy work, you would need to establish that Ukraine acted against Crimean Russians in a way comparable to how Yugoslavia acted against Kosovan Albanians.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Exactly. If I'm a Ukrainian soldier and I believe my death may help bring about a true end to Russian tyranny, it may be worth fighting. If I look at the numbers and say "we're screwed either way," then it's just a choice of which is better: to live with Russian tyranny in a neighboring territory (not where I live), or to be dead and have the same Russian tyranny in the same neighboring territory (where I can't live, because I'm not alive).
Easy choice, that.
Sudeten never voted to become part of Germany as Crimea did Russia.
Would you prefer a comparison to Austria and their rigged election backed by the threat of German invasion to allow annexation by Germany?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Other than that we shall support our war effort in the name of democracy, human rights and common sense.... oh wait.
Who elected Ukraine's parliament?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
which raises another question - the one about the leadership in Kiev. One may question its legality but that they are bunch of incompetent assholes is I think beyond any question. After hearing the news about attempt to forbid minority languages including Russian I thought that these idiots are paid by Putin which may even be true as after all he used chaos to seize Crimea.
Shrug, I'm more making a statement that the "good" guys is an extremely subjective view. How much of Momar Ghadaffi and Libya had to do with him trying to get rid of US currency vs. him being such a "bad guy" for example. Sure, he was bad but we tolerated him pretty well until he decided to do away with global bankers. We can say a similar thing for Sadam and Iraq. None of them were good guys, but when the evil that gets ignored for decades (and even aided) gets played up you should start looking for other motives.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There are other countries that repeatedly defy the United Nations and the U.S. would never invade.
Which is not to say that Saddam Hussein was a nice guy and the U.S. are the empire of evil - I certainly am happier to live under the U.S.' influence rather than Russia's - but let's not paint conflicts of political interests with manicheism.
The only positive thing that comes to mind when one hears others sending yet somebody else to fight and possibly die is this moment - when Bush the older was blabbering about the 'aggression that would not stand' while Big Lebovski was paying for his milk....
Seriously, the west thought that the cold war was over, but Chinese leaders, along with Putin, remain in the cold war mind set.
The west needs to re-think their energy, along with how we handle commerce. In particular, the west, esp. America, keeps transfering tech. to China and Russia. America gave up all of our thorium technology to China. INSANE.
This is while both nations are massively spying on the west seeking to steal military technology.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No sane soldier is going to try to stand against amored vehicles with nothing heavier than a light machine gun. It's not fear. It's realism and following orders.
Unless you're Dice creating the latest Battlefield game. Then they are about on parity.
that was not a vote in crimea. invaded by a foreign army, which operates without insignia and is denied by russia itself. active terror against tatars. it has been a terrible, terrible lie that seems to be promoted by rt, mostly (well, and the mass media in russia, of course).
So Crimea did not ask for Russian protection on the first day of the uprising in Kiev?
there are no sources claiming anything like that, even not russian ones. the first thing happening in crimea was invasion by an army wearing no insignia.
it was not a coup. the current rada is the same one for the most part. claiming anything else is a lie from the cremlin media.
Wow, just wow. Armed gangs take over a government and it's not a coup to you, nothing like changing a word to fit your means I guess. Do I need to give a LMGTFY link so you can find the definition of "coup"? Say so if you can't find the definition of the word.
Interestingly what is lost by you, and US media, is that on when the protests started even US media said the uprising started not because of an evil tyranny, but because the Government of the Ukraine didn't want to become a member of the EU. Considering how every country that has joined has gotten butfucked by global bankers, I am not sure that decision was wrong. It had nothing to do with Russia, until someone needed a villain. Wholly shit this is still in Google, go figure out how to use "Search".
not sure what the usa media did - don't think i've seen any detail on ukraine from them. not sure what media you follow, but it seems to be heavily cremlin controlled. your account of the events is wrong - either on purpose or not, that determines your evilness.
yanukovich cancelled eu cooperation (not even close to membership !) agreement, taking a loan from putin instead. a small group of students and like-minded protested in kyiv, got brutally beaten. as ukrainians said, "we are not used to citizens being beaten up" - so next day kyiv was full of protesters, this time majority of them brought out by the oppression from the special forces. more brutality, murders, kidnappings, torture... further events are more popularised - and eventually it was the rada that voted to remove yanukovich, even members of his own party ("party of regions") were leaving the party - there were dozens of deputies who left it...
compared to ukraine ? haha
Ahh, selective thinking. No, not compared to the Ukraine but compared to the US and EU allies of the US.
Learn to spell and use your caps key, I refuse to respond further to a person that lacks common courtesy with communication in addition to a critical lack of facts..
i apologise for my spelling, here in eastern europe we learned english as our third language. and we know this neighbouring country too well to see who's the aggressor.
you are either quite delusional or financially motivated to whitewash the actions of russia - which, despite there being many really great people in there, is a monster that endangers all of it's neighbours and whole world.
if you refuse to respond, that's good, because such propaganda, based on lies, can lead tu huge suffering.
Rich
There is a difference between "self determination" and "referendum performed under armed guard, with no international election observers allowed into the country", but it's a subtle one, I grant. That said, it's the sort of difference that can give you a 95% "Join Russia" vote, with 80% turnout (76% of total voters, if you do the math) in a region where at most 60% of the population is ethnic Russian and at least 10% (the Tatars) are _extremely_ unlikely to have vote for union with Russia.
If you think those referendum results are fair and represent self-determination, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
Ukrainiane didn't attempt to ethnically cleanse Crimea of Russians. That is the critical difference.
No, it is a spot on analogy. Crimea was legally transferred from Russia to Ukraine in the 1950s. Alaska was legally transferred from Russia to to the US during the 1860s. Both transfers were approved by the Russian legislative body of the time. The only differences are 1) that the US paid two cents per acre while Ukraine paid nothing (but this is irrelevant to the legality/sanctity of the transaction), and 2) Putin knows that if he ever landed troops in Alaska, it would set off a new world war.
In the comment sections of news articles I noticed a lot of support for Russia, mostly talking about the "fascists" in Kiev (yes there's a few shady characters but that had been hugely overblown) and even endorsing the "referendum". It's not entirely unsurprising since Russia is a big country with a lot of ex-pats and people with Russian ancestry who might be sympathetic.
However, I noticed two curious things, first there was very little support for Russia on /. which has a more cumbersome account creation process (it's obvious if you're new). And secondly, unlike most people who have a strong opinion these commenters, when someone replied to them, very rarely replied back.
My gut tells me that Russia has engaged in a very widespread online astroturf campaign, targeting major news sites. I'm wondering if that has affected the degree to which news sites have been reluctant to directly criticize the 96% result in the referendum.
I stole this Sig
Dont' forget, Crimea also was and is Ukrainian. It also was Turkish. Many of the countries around it didn't even fully form until the Crimean war. It is only about 60% Russian only because of the existing Russian bases and because of Russification programs in the past. So to say it "was always a part of Russia" as Putin declares is just political rhetoric (ie, lies intended to make the fan base cheer).
As for most of the rest being Russian friendly, many of them are definitely not. Many are friendly in the sense of liking the economy from the local Russian bases of course, but not in any "hail Putin!" style. There is a sizeable Tatar presence who are now being persecuted by the locals with the breakdown in law and order there, they were persecuted by Stalin and expelled, and to assume they're happy with being Russian is ridiculous. The reason the fictitious vote got 97% was because of a boycott of the election. (seriously, you've got a neo-fascist mob running around shouting pro-Russian slogans, Russian "soldiers" walking around carrying heavy weaponry, and you want someone to walk into a polling station and trusting that they can vote against them safely?)
The referendum was bogus by any rational measure. No time was set up for voters to become aware of the issues or debate them, it was obviously rushed. There was plenty of heavy handed intimidation by mobs in the streets, Tatar houses were marked with Stalinist era crosses, and so forth. No opposition would want to speak out in that environment. Journalists were intimidated. The government itself was essentially gone; the Crimean government buildings had been taken over forcibly and flags replaced before any voting. Ukrainian forces (the legal military protectors of that region of land) were blockaded in their bases. The pro-Russian people essentially set up a de-facto "we're already Russian" system in a couple of days.
Mysterious snipers, maybe hired by Yanukovych, maybe hired by someone else, no one is sure. But after that most of Yanukovych's parliament allies either stopped siding with him or pressured him to soften his stance. And soon after that he fled office. I think he saw the writing on the wall, knew that he could not win the next election, knew that he'd be in big legal trouble when all the money turned out to be missing, and knew that his only friend left was Putin.
I think, right or wrong everyone has pretty much written off Crimea. A lot of bitching may go on about it for years but it's a done deal. The thing most are wondering is if it's enough for Putin. He's certainly acting like he's planning on collecting the rest of Ukraine as soon as he'd done digesting Crimea. You'll have to come up with some other kind of story to justify that.
I wasn't aware that the Supreme Soviet continued to meet after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Or is that an oblique reference to Russia? I suppose in a way it fits, but that should worry everyone.
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
Crimea and Kosovo are not the same issue. Crimea essentially transferred to Russia over a weekend. Kosovo involved months of diplomacy. Ukraine had not been at war, though it had some protests in Kiev for some time beforehand. Yugoslavia had a long period of internal civil war with many atrocities and war crimes.
Yes Kosovo could have gone better. Some think it's a big injustice. But nothing in there justifies a future unilateral invasion of a country with no pretense. At least with Kosovo you can find quite a few countries that think it was the best alternative of the choices out there, but with Crimea what other country is standing behind Putin?
Also known as "oil".
Useful in what way? The US and it's allies don't have any need to use the UN. It's a useless debating society. Anything we need to do can be done with our allies.
It had nothing to do with Russia, until someone needed a villain.
Russia seems to have volunteered for that role by invading Ukraine, your friends not withstanding.
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
I'm pretty sure Victoria Nuland has a good idea on where those snipers came from.
Nah, it's not dangerous for Russia at all. Hitler's concentration camps provided a lot of political fodder for other countries to initiate war with Nazi Germany. If Russia doesn't make that mistake, keeps their conquests slow and reasonably managed (i.e. one front), it would not be too difficult for all of the "West", in particular Russian-dependent Western Europe, to overlook their advances into former Soviet territory.
The U.S. is never going to move, as it would lose all of its Asian interests (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) if it commits to fighting against Russia. U.S. moving against Russia is going to spell MAD, maybe not nuclear MAD, but MAD nonetheless, and there isn't enough political capital in the U.S. to want to risk that.
Western Europe is by and large going to do nothing, since they're heavily dependent on Russian natural gas (by Russian design). They've pretty much alienated everyone else who can provide them with natural resources, except maybe Turkey. And it would be a long, protracted war, as history has told us time and again, which they aren't going to initiate if they don't feel sufficiently threatened, and which won't happen if Russia only moves against countries in the former U.S.S.R. Hell, some people in the U.S. probably couldn't tell you the difference between Russia and U.S.S.R.
Nobody's successfully taken over Russia except for the Mongolians. The Chinese/North Koreans will not move against Russia without significant concessions, at which time they will take over the rest of East and Southeast Asia first before aiming their guns towards Russia if at all, since Russia is more of an ally to them than any "Western" country. In fact, I'd say that if Russia does move against Western Europe, and the U.S. is dragged into a long and protracted European front, that it will be more likely Russia+China+North Korea vs the West rather than Russia vs. the West+Asia.
Putin knows this, and that's why he's able to move against Ukraine now and other parts of Eastern Europe later. There's almost 0 chance of war, and if there is, it will be Russia vs. Ukraine, and no one else. Maybe when it was still the U.S.S.R. 30 years earlier, there was enough political capital to commit to a war with the Soviets, but the West is war-weary and the "Western" populace in particular is disinterested in fighting someone else's war at this point.
If things go this route, I suspect it'll be Estonia, and Latvia since there's a sizeable Russian population there. I'm pretty sure it'll be Lithuania, and Belarus after that, to make Kaliningrad contiguous with the rest of Russia. Or, we could be hopeful that Putin will stop with Crimea. I wouldn't count on it though.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The US did not install a government in Kiev. That is ridiculous Russian propaganda. This was internal strife in the country, not from outside agitators, and Yanukovych was quite well disliked on his own lack of merits.
Yes, that government had a shakeup. Yanukovych fled, the remaining parliament rolled back recent constitutional changes, some minority MPs got a few seats in the government. But it was not entirely lawless (except in Crimea). However, even if it had been completely lawless, that is no justification whatsoever for Russia to invade. The neocon warmaker here is Putin.
I guess you are throwing the right of self determination out of the window dude. What sort of international law are you talking about? It's funny because in Kosovo, there was no referendum at all, it became independent just by bombing. The alaska thing is straw man, it was sold to the US.
Ironically, Alaska was sold to the US in part** to help pay for Russia's war debt incurred during the Crimean War (and in recognition that it would likely loose the territory anyways in a war with Britain as well) ...
The reason it took so long to close the Alaska deal (1859-1867) was that the US was fighting its own right-of-self-determination referendum (aka US Civil War) and that temporarily interrupted negotiations. I don't remember how that referendum turned out... ;^P
Fortunately for the US, we kicked out most of the 700 Russians in Alaska shortly after annexing (a small part of the off-color history General Jefferson C. Davis), so there would unlikely to be a vote similar to Crimea the matter of rejoining Russia...
On the other hand, I'm sure some high ranking democrats would be happy to support Alaska going to the other red team to make room for Puerto Rico, so you never know...
** the other part was to pay the debts associated with the 1861 Russian Peasant reforms...
The Bay of Pigs Invasion certainly qualifies as "invaded a peaceful neighbor", whether the US would have "invited" Cuba to join the United States had this invasion been successful has to remain speculation. Grenada is another example where a nearby country was invaded to overthrow a regime disliked by the US government. Usually, the US is fine with "changing regimes" to one made of string puppets after invading a company, and so is Russia - they just offer "rescued" regions to "join the Russion federation".
Bay of pigs?
"Covert United States foreign regime change actions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
The USA usual backs some band of freedom fighters, military staff or political leader until they win.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This.
> The referendum was observed by 135 international observers from 23 countries with no violations registered.[14][15][16] The EODE observer mission concluded that the referendum was conducted freely and fairly.[17] [...]
Is this.
> Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections (EODE) is an election monitoring organization led by the Belgian far-right activist Luc Michel.[1] Since its founding in 2006, it provided monitoring missions to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Caucasus, Balkans, the Black Sea region, and North [...]
This translates to friends of Putin. There is no reason to believable anything they say. Being a corrupt and all.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
He wasn't deposed that way, he lost support in the parliament then he made a run for it lest he be prosecuted for crimes after losing the next election. No mobs actually got inside the parliament and forced them to oust the president.
Majority in Crimea are happy with Russia because that's where much of their money comes from (supporting Russian bases and catering to Russian tourists). Most of the Russians are there because they were imported by Soviets and Czars to instill loyalty in the non Russian outliers of the empire.
And by "majority of Crimeans" you should say a small majority, less than 60%. Does this mean the 40% can be ignored? I actually think there will be some ethnic cleansing there, sad to say. There's already a large amount of intimidation, and reports of violence. It depends upon whether Russia is willing to actually step in and calm things down, including calming down the radical pro-Russia mobs and tell them to accept non-Russians as equals.
If a large-scale crisis would really cut the Russian gas supply to Germany, alternatives would be found.
Be more concerned about Bulgaria, who import almost 100% energy from Russia and have much less alternatives.
Re Who's side is right in most conflicts are a matter of opinion backed by the winner. Send your kids over? Is it worth you or yours dying for, especially if you don't have all the facts?
Thats going to be the sock puppet war option, do big powers in the US and EU go in to undo a vote in a region?
The EU votes to allow your region in, you don't get to vote to stay out?
If so Gibraltar, Guantanamo Bay, 1980-90's Yugoslavia, other parts of Spain, parts of the UK, South Sudan, Tibet, Ireland, Falkland Islands start to look legally as interesting.
Some 'declaration of independence" by locals voting is then lost on the wider community?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Interesting how people will falsify information to suite their needs. I believe you meant to say "Crimea", which is not the Ukraine and who was going to be autonomous in May by democratic process. This vote was scheduled long before the coup in Kiev, and was scheduled for the same reasons that the coup expedited. They were not pro-western, and were pro-Russian.
This is the same Crimea that asked the Russians to protect them from the Euromaidens on the same day the coup happened in Kiev, and the same Crimea that just voted to leave the Ukraine and join the EU.
If you claim to be pro-democracy but only if the democracy does what you want it to do, it is not a democracy.
I do realize that you don't let "facts" get into the way of your opinion, but that just means you should not be spreading your opinion. You have a history of repeating false information so this today is no big shock.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The current leaders in Ukraine were elected by parliament. They just repealed the Yanukovych version of the constitution that granted him all the power first. It is debatable whether or not it was a coup in the first place, but even it was does this mean the coup was wrong? Egypt gets rid of Mubarek and everyone is happy, everyone manages to keep their treaties in place because they don't suddenly become null and void (though debts may be renegotiated). In Ukraine though, Putin acts like all existing laws have become moot because Yanukovych shows up at his door carrying a suitcase.
You left out that Russia signed a treaty with the Ukraine respecting their territory and along with the US and the UK to defend the boarders of the Ukraine in exchange for the Ukraine giving up it's nuclear weapons.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Crimea and Kosovo are not the same issue. Crimea essentially transferred to Russia over a weekend. Kosovo involved months of diplomacy.
Absolutely! The Kosovo thing also involved NATO bombings of Serbia disregarding a UN security council resolution. Which resulted in hundreds of dead innocent civilians. And yes, of course the months of "diplomacy" as in NATO telling Serbia that they would lose their most precious piece of motherland no matter what. How dare Putin do his dirty wars with no casualties and backed by the majority of Crimeans?
Thats going to be the sock puppet war option, do big powers in the US and EU go in to undo a vote in a region?
Depending on who you believe, it just happened in the Ukraine. Considering that the US paid for their Orange revolution I don't think they were happy with the Ukraine voting to stay out of EU economics.
The EU votes to allow your region in, you don't get to vote to stay out?
Eastern nations have wanted little to do with the EU and seem to be able to stay out, so I'd need some better basis for this statement. Seems like you are saying "EU" but meaning "NATO", can you clarify?
Some 'declaration of independence" by locals voting is then lost on the wider community?
I'll ask for clarification here also, Crimea was slated to be autonomous in May. The coup expedited the process, but is not really a surprise to anyone that spends a few minutes studying the region.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Iraq was wrong. However we did not march into Iraq in a single weekend, we didn't send in soldiers in unmarked uniforms, instead we went to the UN and when that failed we still obtained allies. Dubya did not have the unswerving patriotic fervor of all Americans standing behind him ready to do his every bidding; instead he got a lot of flack for it and lots of protests. Russia invades almost immediately after Yanukovych leaves, with no external allies, no attempt at diplomacy, citizens standing behind him giddy at the prospect of Russian glory, and virtually no opposition or protests at all due to near total state control of media and laws that make organized protests a serious crime. Similarly, Iraq was aggressive, they had been taking provocative actions, whereas all Ukraine did was get rid of a corrupt president.
Remember that in Russia there has been a decade of propaganda that the orange revolution was a bad thing, that it's all about mob rule which is secretly controlled by western powers trying to undermine Russia. They don't see it as democracy but as subversive. Losing Yanukovych meant that orange was coming back in fashion, and Putin felt he needed to stop that before it took hold again.
It is a ridiculous attitude to take of "country X did an immoral thing, therefore it's good if my country Y does an immoral thing too".
you're just an idiot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... 60%. and no, putin is a dictator, but taking crimea back was the right thing to do. now go back to langley please.
if that interpretation makes you feel better, so be it.
This SHIT got modded "informative"?! Seems everyone with a brain in /. have already left.
The locals have voted, is the US and EU going to go in and undo a local vote? Will the locals be happy about been reintegrated back into the EU and NATO after their vote? :)
The other option is for NATO and the US to revert to backing all kinds of regional freedom fighters and turn up regional tensions over vast areas with the tame press watching.
Its the perfect storm of soft loans, hard currency deals, coups, gas, huge backing for color revolutions, future regional pipelines, the interests of Russia, UK, EU, USA and NATO.
Add in contractors selling advanced weapons and long term mil support systems to needy nations via new loans.,, everybody is winning but the locals who just wanted to vote.
Since Peter the Great Russia has always understood the need for its own ports and the value of exports from Russia by Russians on Russian ships. How the world responds to Russia trading on its own terms with its own raw materials, setting its own prices is very well known historically.
The other aspect is regional politics with leaders been seen as willing to help NATO or Russia just to out pace their rivals and get a part of big soft loans, gas deals.
They can find nationalism and flip sides with the next big loan or energy deal
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I have an idea.
How about Finland proposes a self-determination referendum for Karelia (since it was part of Finland before WWII) and see how the Putin likes it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"If our Western partners believe the format [of the G8] has exhausted itself, we don't cling to this format. We don't believe it will be a big problem if it [the G8] doesn't convene"
~ Sergei Lavrov (Russian Foreign Minister)
I think a shorter translation might simply be a middle finger.
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Quite a lot of people inside of Russia find those claims credible. There is a lot of control of state media there and the propaganda compagn has been going on for years. It's a rather old belief that any country that dared to cooperate with evil German dictator in WWII in defense against the benevolent Soviet dictator are irredeemably Nazis, even several generations later.
This is a very deeply rooted source of pride in Russians. Despite all the problems with Soviet rule and the problems and evils it caused, with almost nothing at all to look back on as positive in those times, at least they can claim to have saved the world from Nazis! Any country in the east that's not eternally grateful is automatically viewed with deep suspicion of still harboring Nazi sympathies or else is too radical and unstable. (sort of similar to the bozo in the US who spews out "they'd be speaking German if it wasn't for us!" when France decides not to support Iraq invasion)
Several decades ago you would also not imagine any circumstances where Congress would hamper the government's ability to pay it's own workers (Government shutdowns), hamper it's ability to get and give credit (raising the debt ceiling), hamper laws that protect the equal rights of all it's citizens (recognizing non-traditional unions), create laws that take away a women's right to choose (anti-abortion legislation), create laws that hamper science education (considering creationism) in school or hamper laws against large companies effectively buying out both law enforcement (DMCA) and democratic elections (Citizens United).
Our government has been co-opted by religious zealots with the end goal of creating the Christian version of Sharia/feudal law where the rich and religious leaders have and maintain all the power (you keep them dumb, we'll keep them poor).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The Ukrainians gave up their ICBMs so now the Russians are invading Ukraine.
I think people keep overestimating the usefulness of nukes.
You really think Ukraine would have threatened Russia with ICBMs over Crimea? And Putin would have backed down? Not likely!
Traitors to who? Yanukovych? He's not a country, he's just a corrupt politician and thief. As for the country of Ukraine, the president fled and then the parliament held new votes and repealed the newest constitution and reverted to the pre-Yanukovych version. It's difficult to call this a coup when the president left the country to a complete surprise to the members of parliament who thought they were still in the process of negotiations. Yes the opposition came into power as a result of this, but the majority coalition was already falling apart and in tatters because of the violence that happened in Maidan square.
So if they are traitors, what do you call the mobs who stormed the Crimean government buildings and took them over, raising up new Russian flags? Were they also traitors or merely criminals? This stuff at least was caught on video.
Soldiers should be loyal to the country, never to the temporary and usually corrupt leaders. The problem is that soldiers get this messed up and remain loyal to individuals which causes all sorts of messes and causes the leaders to think of their armies as personal thugs for hire.
But this isn't quite the same in Ukraine. Many members of the opposition were native Russian speakers from Russian speaking regions in eastern Ukraine, including former prime minister Timoshenko. There's really nowhere in Ukraine that is completely monolingual.
The problem is that "most" Crimeans you talk about is only 58%. There's another 42% who may not be pro-Russian. Is it ok if they're unhappy, intimidated, killed (already has started), as long as "most" are happy?
It would have been better military sense to spread around military to different regions rather than letting them stay close to their home towns, which is what most countries do. Then these soldiers aren't only hearing the local propaganda, they can see other people for actually being human beings, they don't get caught up in localized politics, etc.
Before Catherine the Great took Crimea away from Ottoman empire there were a lot more Tatars.
However really the modern notion of states in those regions really came about during Crimean war (or eastern war). Before then many of those areas were very fluid regarding nationality and ownership. There weren't even lines being redrawn on the map ala WWI, but very fuzzy strokes as three major powers all wanted to have influence over the regions and grow their empires.
Plenty of absurd conspiracy theories to go around. Take your choice of strange explanations, there is evidence on the internet to support it. Why is why I wasn't going to pick one as my favorite choice.
Yes, because NATO supported Kosovo, that gives Putin the right to be a dick as well and support "majority" of crimeans, although soon we may see the remaining 42% being forced out of Crimea. Already we've seen some of them killed, a very ominous repeat of the start of Yugoslavian ethnic cleansing.
As someone said recently: Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
So technically it might not be part of the US, but you are a fool if you belive they don't have a very pro western/american goverment now installed.
Rocket Surgeon.
Because Saddam Hussein made open threats against the west,
Are you talking about the 1990 invasion here? Because Saddam was no serious threat to anyone in 2003.
The invasion was justified by falsified evidence of WMDs, but had long been sought by the neocons, and was mostly about oil (not just in Iraq, but the region.)
It was not popular with the people of those coalition countries, but the US put sufficient influence on the governments to get them in.
(Unlike in 1990 where the US had genuine popular support for the invasion and partial occupation of Iraq. And Bush the First had enough sense to keep out of Baghdad.)
I agree, it is interesting how people falsify (and distort) information to suit their needs. I in fact meant to say "Ukraine" because Crimea was legally part of Ukraine when Russian forces invaded. Russia has previously acknowledged Ukraine's control over Crimea since Russia leased military bases there. You don't lease someone from someone that doesn't own it. You can tell it was an invasion since the national government did not authorize Russian troops to take control of Crimea. A referendum that is scheduled for the future is not effective today. Where is your usual outrage about not obeying the rule of law? Instead you are making excuses for Russian aggression and obfuscating the truth. It appears that you are willing to abandon logic when it suits your needs.
You have a history of outrages against the truth, crank theories, and foolish notions. Now you are proving to be an apologist for Russian aggression. No wonder you are so disaffected against your own country.
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
The Bay of Pigs was an attempt by Cuban exiles at a counter-revolution supported by the US, not a US invasion and annexation. Grenada was a US invasion, but the territory was not annexed and US forces left.
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
Sorry A. The Bay of Pigs was an attempt by Cuban exiles at a counter-revolution supported by the US, not a US invasion and annexation. You may consider it splitting hairs, but the details on this one matter.
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
The stipulated period was since the Vietnam War. Do you have any of those?
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
There's a rather huge difference between "Kosovo becoming independent" and "Russia taking Crimea."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Apparently, in Ukraine the president can be removed by the parliament (if not, the disposed president should have raised the issue with the supreme / constitutional courts, but this has not happened).
It could not happen since the new government revoked the constitutional court (which as far as I understand is not allowed by the constitution).
What we have seen is a revolution, which means the older constitution does not apply anymore, and one territory decided it was therefore not bound anymore to the new rules
I guess you are throwing the right of self determination out of the window dude.
A lot of people think the the election was rigged. So I'm not so sure about this "right of self determination"
As someone said recently: Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
Exactly, getting Crimea back is exactly a repeat of history. Historical justice has been restored.
Why does everyone ignore the fact that the population there WANT to join Russia? And where do you get off thinking that you have some Divine appointment to resolve this matter according to how YOU think the border arrangements should look?
This is not a Western fight. We have no right to intervene in conflicts which do not involve us.
When will we learn?
it was russian before ussr even existed.
So was Finland. While Kaliningrad was German. etc.
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/22/...
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/0...
Read the Wikipedia pages on 'Operation Nickel Grass' and 'Yom Kippur War'.
And those accusations have been proven in court or is it like WMD in Iraq?
Actually, why not? Of course, then your house would be surrounded by a potentially hostile nation. They would have the right to set up a border with which you would need a visa to cross, they could charge you whatever for utilities or cut it off entirely until a trade agreement is in place. Orrr... they could just invade.
Hell why we are at the Russians should take back Alaska too.
Quiet you! You'll give Putin ideas!
Although 60% of Texas might come from Spanish or Mexican backgrounds I think you'll find the number of Texans that self identify as Mexican over Texan is very small. Which is not the case in Crimea.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Oh! While I knew I was oversimplifying a bit, I wasn't aware of where Timoshenko came from.
Thanks for clearing that up.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How do you know that? From an election organized and controlled by a militia linked to mafia? And the next point if to take Alkaska Back. And also to give back Finland and Poland their territories.
I would consider it far more likely that Putin annexes parts of the Balkans. Estonia or Latvia would be a whole other ballgame as they're EU and NATO members. That would basically force the EU and NATO to engage as the next step after that would be Poland and East Germany. It would be obvious that there's no intention at all of stopping at all.
As that point at least Britain and France might very well start pressing nuclear buttons.
Sorry, sport, you're a little out of date. Your Wikipedia numbers are pulling from the 2001 census (and it was 58% Russian then). Since that time, overall population in Crimea has been falling at about 0.4% per year. Numbers of ethnic Russians in Crimea has been falling at about 0.6% per year. Meanwhile, ethnic Tatars have been growing at a rate of about 0.9% each year.
If you look back a little bit, the trend (which has continued) shows up a bit easier. In the 1989 census, it was 67% Russian and 1.6% Tatar. By the 2001 census, it was 58% Russian and 12% Tatar. The shift is from mass repatriation of Tatars primarily resettling from Uzbekistan. So your 13-year old data just isn't valid anymore. Best estimates are that right now, it's about 51% Russian. Of those, a growing number would actually self-identify as Ukrainian. Putin's lies just don't work here. The memory hole doesn't go deep enough.
I'm particularly amused at your "now go back to langley" comment, essentially claiming I'm working for the CIA. That's pretty funny, but it actually just helps to confirm your disconnect from the facts on the ground. I'm not working for any government agency; I'm just a regular guy with better, more up to date information. Chin up though, sport, you'll get the hang of it. Just need to not use decades old data when making your point if there's any chance you're going to get caught.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The Americans like this narrative a lot, probably because it's a good excuse for preemptive interventions.
However, I don't think "appeasement" changed anything in the course of events except for holding up the outbreak of the war for one year. If the other European powers and the US had tried to isolate Hitler at the time, do you really think Hitler would have been cowed? On the contrary, it would just have been better for his propaganda machine and he wanted to start the war earlier anyway. And the idea of a massive military intervention to throw Germany out of Czechoslovakia is something that you may justify in retrospect, but at the time it would have been an absurd move, even it had had with popular support.
You realise that if you change "West" with "Iran" and make "resolution 1441" into "a bunch of UN resolutions" you get a description fitting Israel, right? And if you change "West" with "India" it becomes Pakistan? With "South Korea" it becomes North Korea? With "Taiwan" the PRC (well not the UN part since they have veto right)? The world is full of militaristic nations threatening neighbours and defying UN resolutions. Cannot see any invasions there, possibly because these countries are either allies, or pose a credible military challenge, or are not sitting on a bunch of oil.
You are either disingenuous or a complete fool. Iraq was invaded because it was an easy prey, rich in oil resources and with a nonexistent defense capacity. Generals could be bribed off the field. It was an overwhelmingly US operation, with some support from a subservient UK, and only nominal support from a bunch of countries thrown in only for the effect of inflating the number you quoted. Some of these countries did not even have an army (Iceland, Palau, Micronesia, Solomon Islands), others were countries looking to appease the US (most Eastern European countries) or failed states whose leaders could be bought (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan).
The casus belli was that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing WMDs for Al-Quaeda; at least according to Colin Powell. That was a big, fat lie by the US. It was even less credible of a Polish invasion of Germany in 1939 (at least Poland had an army: Saddam Hussein had neither WMDs nor Al-Qaeda), and the execution of the invasion was a textbook war of aggression, the punishment for which in Nuremberg was death by hanging.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
"Why does everyone ignore the fact that the population there WANT to join Russia?"
Because they almost certainly don't? Objective polling before the election put only 41% of Crimeans in favour of becoming part of Russia. Russia invaded, installed a puppet Crimean government (kicking the democratically elected one out) took over the airwaves, spread propaganda everywhere, refused to allow impartial international observers in and then called an election which they "won" with 97% support - the jump from 41% to 97% isn't within any sane margin of error.
The real question is if a majority of Crimeans wanted to be part of Russia then why did Russia have to go to such lengths? If the Crimean people supported joining Russian then their democratically elected government could've called a referendum, international observers could've been allowed in to verify it's validity and so on and so forth. The fact none of that happened is evidence enough that the Russians had zero confidence that the people there wanted to join them fair and square. If that was the case then hell I'd even support what happened, as it wasn't I can do nothing other than refer to it as an illegal annexation against the verifiable will of the populace.
Well, if you're a pro-russian person, there is little hope of providing any proof that would be acceptable, especially evidence from tainted western sources. Why bother, if you don't believe the news that comes from outside Russia then it is hopeless. I'm not going to attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt or do further research on your behalf when I presented links to the news stories as I heard them.
The Maidan protesters came from many different political backgrounds and regions by most accounts, though the Russian media likes to imply that it was composed of only far right extremists.
I see no meaningful similiarities. This is just warmongering western media spewing propaganda without mentioning who started this mess by staging a coup that has gone out of control (hint: leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt - hear this with caution, famous 'F the EU' is least important part of this conversation). I also recommend considering geopolitical context of this situation - Russia could not afford NOT responding to this as NATO bases in Ukraine could pose direct strategic threat to them of the same magnitude that missiles in Cuba posed to the US of A. This is also conveniently overlooked by western media.
Having said that, I view Crimea annexation as some kind of act of aggression, yet compared this to "liberations" conducted by the US (which usualy end up in massacres and drastic atrocities) it was (almost) bloodless. This makes very bad publicity for western warmongers, especialy neocons who look like war criminals by comparison (and in fact some of them are). Maybe this is the reason of recent media frenzy over Crimea issue.
Putin's way to achieve his goals seems to be mostly political (with some military support). First steps after Crimea annexation were to set up conditions for as fast growth of crimean economy as possible. They'll now be governed by russian laws (that are way less intrusive than ukrainian laws). Additional laws are being passed to ease conducting business in Crimea. Crimean firms don't have to pay taxes until the end of 2014. After that they'll have standard russian 13% flat tax (which is quite low compared to other countries in Europe). Russians also pledged to invest 5bn EUR into infrastructure of Crimea. My guess is Putin is trying to make a template for other post-soviet republics that will look easier to achieve and possibly more attractive than joining the EU. Just compare this to how well Greece is doing today under Troika dictate. The same results are not guaranteed anywhere else (first ones have the best bargain), yet it will give others something to thinks, especially in countries that went through color revolutions (all of which failed miserably). This stands in stark contrast contrast with how West (especially US) conducts their politics in other countries, which in most cases boils down to either staging a coup (Ukraine), funding insurgents waging a civil war (Syria, Libia) or bombing the hell out of (perceived) opponent (Iraq, Libia).
I'm trying to guess what Putin will do next but I don't believe in "invade The Free World" myth spewed by western media. With Ukraine descending into chaos, neo-nazis from Svoboda (originaly: Social-National Party of Ukraine - I'm not joking!) in key positions in ukrainian government (deputy PM, defence ministry, security services), ukrainian military mostly NOT obeying their orders (and rightfuly so - should they obey we'd already have civil war), Party of Regions (still having most popular support) being outlawed by force, gangs stopping busses, beating and robbing anyone with russian passport, Putin could just sit there and wait until this whole thing breaks down and people revolt once again and this time request joining Russia in order to improve their miserable life conditions. The other thing he can do is to annex other eastern regions of Ukraine the same way Crimea was annexed and leave Western Ukraine to Europe with all debts, troubles and nationalist gangsters roaming around. He propably doesn't want deal with those troubles when someone else can.
I'm truly asamed of my country politicians (hello from Poland!) who helped creating this mess. Should they not stage this coup, or at least enforce treaties they've signed with Yanukovych in February, Ukraine could go in orderly fashion into elections and - with sufficient monitoring - Ukrainians would elect whoever has popular support. Instead, our politicians are now spreading anti-russian hysteria and supporting ukrainian nationalists praising Stepan Bandera (the man responsible for murdering of some 200 thousands Poles in Ukraine in 194
No, Germany was not technologically superior at the time. In fact, the only reason Hitler started rearming Germany was that he saw that Europe would not resist him regardless of what he did. Russian military industry has now started producing again. It's been able to finance itself with large arms sales in recent years (like 1.5-2 MILLION machine guns to Venezuela).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I don't think the loss of life is really necessary, it just requires the West to be willing to play a game of brinksmanship - Russia's deployment on Eastern Ukraine's border needs to be matched by Western deployment on Western Russia's border.
Russia knows it couldn't win the war, it knows it wouldn't even be worth starting the war, so it's then entirely down to who blinks first, and just as the USSR ran out of money first last time, it would do so again this time.
You don't need to start a war, you just need to match his deployments to create a stalemate, then it's not as though he can roll further into Europe because there'll be a big Western military barricade in the way. From here you can negotiate a phased stand down by both sides, and that forces Putin to either go bankrupt in a stand off, or pull back his troops from the border and remove the threat of a Ukraine invasion.
If the Ukrainian people want us on their borders as a deterrent to war we should accept - it's not as though we don't already do this in places like Korea and Japan without any wars starting. Some may argue it's not our problem, and that's the same shit we heard with World War II - it's not our problem, until it is. Putin's advance needs to be checked now, before it reaches a point where it is our problem - once the bullets start flying in Ukraine THAT'S when it becomes impossible to stop, so it's far better to stop it now before the bullets have started flying.
The problem right now is we're leaving Ukraine in the shit, we're saying to Russia don't invade, but we're telling the severely militarily weaker Ukraine well there's not much we're willing to do if they do, so tough shit. If Russia does invade then it wont take much to spiral out of control and start effecting neighbouring nations and then it most definitely is our problem, we can't avoid it at that point because we have people and interests in those countries.
The West is paralysed by the fact Europe is not yet ready to have their energy supplies cut off, the US wants them to do more but isn't willing to sell shale gas to them to remove their dependence from Russia to let them do more and so nothing's happening whilst Russia does what it wants. Find an alternative to Russian gas for Europe and they can act more economically but I think this'll just make Putin more resolute to use military force without there also being a firm barrier of iron and steel on it's border to block that move on the chess board.
That's all part of NATO now. Russia won't do anything to Germany or Poland or Lithuania.
Presumably... The NATO alliance has never been tested because the resolve of the United States to fight a war of principle has never been in question. It is now. We abandoned our ally Poland by backing out on the missile shield agreement we had with them simply because Russia asked. It is not at all clear that Russia would not (in 2-3 years time) manufacture a conflict in one of the Baltic states simply to see if it can get away with it. I would say it will largely depend on whether US elects another Communist or will change the course.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's a strange day when I have to agree with you more than with somebody listed as my "friend", but it happened today. Moving my personal emotions aside, your arguments are actually solid and sound. Well... kudos to you!
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
it could be debatable, but not in the context of this story. otherwise one could say "oh, but north korea is worse than russia... for now"
Rich
when you say "Russia gave up the Ukraine" it's as if they owned it - well, they kinda did, by extension of the soviet union. but i don't think anybody sane would use that as an argument.
"replaced it with a more pro-NATO one" - that is false. even the new government never mentioned nato. except that the russian movements in crimea actually got them worried enough to mention it, and even then say that they are not looking to join nato...
"it's a hell of a lot more real than people like you seem to think" - in 2013, ~ 10% of the residents of crimea would have voted for joining the russia. sorry, invading a territory and staging a "vote" is not acceptable, even if you try to hide it behind rephrasing.
Rich
I find it amusing that you demand evidence from the parent poster when your own 'source' gives it This is particularly apparent in both the Russian and Ukrainian ethnic populations, whose growth rate has been falling at the rate of 0.6% and 0.12% annually respectively. In comparison, the ethnic Crimean Tatar population has been growing at the rate of 0.9% per annum.[13]
Your own wikipedia page from which you've quoted a 13 year old survey shows that there's a yearly 1.5% shift in demographic from ethnic Russian to Crimean Tatar.
2001. Is Friends still the most watched show on TV. Is the population of America still 280,000,000 and the approximately 40 million new citizens can be ignored? A 13 year old census is a piss poor source, what is especially amusing is that the same wikipedia page says that demographics in Crimea are shifting from ethnic Russian to Crimean Tatar by 1.5% a year. So if you just blindly follow your 'source' without applying any critical thinking you'd actually conclude that Crimea is 40% ethnic Russian.
I think Ukraine might remember a little more acutely, how they were treated by Moscow as humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
the only one disconnected from the facts is you, as you a) lied about the numbers and 2) never provided any sources for your so called 50%. Until then you're just a shill without citations for his claims.
Well then I suggest you catch up, or at least think a little more broadly. The point of Nuclear weapons in MAD is to ensure that nobody else uses Nukes against you because it would result in both sides being destroyed. If Russia invaded Alaska (unlikely at best) then America wouldn't retaliate with Nukes because it would be moronic to do so; it would use its conventional military. Even if America couldn't retake Alaska for some reason it wouldn't make sense to use Nukes in response because that would result in vast, or total, annihilation of America as well as Russia. Better to use economic and alternative military options to target Russia until you can force them to back down.
I'm actually quite surprised that eastern European nations, who appear to be both concerned about Russia and frustrated by Europes response, haven't started hinting that they might begin developing nuclear weapons so that they have their own nuclear deterrent now that the west has shown how little a promise means. Putting Europe in that position might force them to be more aggressive in their sanctions against Russia in order to stop it.
The Supreme Soviet has existed until 1993 when it was replaced by the Duma. USSR was dissolved in 1991. And now you know.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Because they almost certainly don't? Objective polling before the election put only 41% of Crimeans in favour of becoming part of Russia. Russia invaded, installed a puppet Crimean government (kicking the democratically elected one out) took over the airwaves, spread propaganda everywhere, refused to allow impartial international observers in and then called an election which they "won" with 97% support - the jump from 41% to 97% isn't within any sane margin of error.
It's less than 41% actually. In 2011 it was 33% and in 2013 it was 23%
http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-...
Also the leader of the puppet government - a Russian gangster nick named Goblin - was from a party which got 4% of the vote in the last elections. And it's not even clear that the votes in Parliament making him PM and organising the referendum were quorate. Also Parliament was surrounded by gunmen who only let in MPs who would vote the right way
http://time.com/19097/putin-cr...
So far, the most revealing aspect of his time in power has been the way he came to possess it. Before dawn on Feb. 27, at least two dozen heavily armed men stormed the Crimean parliament building and the nearby headquarters of the regional government, bringing with them a cache of assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades. A few hours later, Aksyonov walked into the parliament and, after a brief round of talks with the gunmen, began to gather a quorum of the chamber's lawmakers.
It is not clear whether the parliament was seized that day on his orders. On the one hand, the masked gunmen identified themselves as members of Crimea's "self-defense forces," all of which are, according to Aksyonov, directly under his control. On the other, he claims the seizure of the buildings was done "spontaneously" by a mysterious group of fighters. "We only knew that these were Russian nationalist forces," he tells TIME in an interview Sunday. "These were people who share our Russian ideology. So if they wanted to kill someone, they would have killed the nightwatchmen who were inside."
Instead, they let the guards go, sealed the doors and only allowed the lawmakers whom Aksyonov invited to enter the building. Various media accounts have disputed whether he was able to gather a quorum of 50 of his peers before the session convened that day, and some Crimean legislators who were registered as present have said they did not come near the building. In any case, those who did arrive could hardly have voted their conscience while pro-Russian gunmen stood in the wings with rocket launchers. Both of the votes held that day were unanimous. The first appointed Aksyonov, a rookie statesman with less than four years experience as a local parliamentarian, as the new Prime Minister of Crimea. The second vote called for a referendum on the peninsula's secession from Ukraine.
Oh and the referendum offered people a choice between independence (and joining Russia later) or joining Russia immediately - "yes, now" or "yes, later". There was no way to vote for the status quo of staying inside the Ukraine.
https://www.kyivpost.com/conte...
The ballot for March 16 Crimean referendum gives two choices, to join Russia or become independent.
Voters in Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea who vote in the March 16 referendum have two choices - join Russia immediately or declare independence and then join Russia.
So the choices are "yes, now" or "yes, later."
The referendum took place only two weeks later dur
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You can be a dick all you want to the guy you responded to, but it doesn't change the fact your argument is shit because there was still no "Retain the status quo" option.
This is the same as the UK's far right Tories proposed referendum on Europe, the far right Tories cry "democracy, people should have a say on Europe!" but then say the referendum will be a choice between leaving the EU, or staying in only if the EU accept some unacceptable changes. Where the fuck is my preferred option of "Stay in and change nothing about our relationship"?
It's not democracy if both options amount to the same thing no matter how much idiots like the Tory far right like to claim it is or fools like you like to believe it is.
Then next time Russia or some other country you don't like "takes care of some business" without waiting for the U.N. don't act outraged. Principles can't be bent to one's convenience.
"The majority of people in Crimea were loyal to Russia before any of this unrest began a few months ago."
Liar. Only 41% were:
http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...
"The last elected Ukranian president was a Russian loyalist."
Who got into power after having lost the previous presidential election despite his Russian friends having tried to assassinate his competitor through poisoning. The election in which his competitor was poisoned which was in itself a re-run because the prior one was deemed by the courts to be necessary because the original election was utterly full of electoral fraud in favour of Yanukovych:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
"He was a deposed by a moltov-throwing mob with west-leaning sympathies, so we support them."
No, he was deposed by people who were sick of a decade of Russian interference of their elections involving vote rigging and assassination attempts designed to get him in in the first place. The Ukrainian people have been sending a message for over a decade that they didn't want Yanukovych despite Russian attempts to defy that, and when they were finally worn down and accepted him and he proved that he was indeed the man they didn't want they reverted back to the stance that they'd had for that decade which was that they did not want a Russian puppet leader.
"But that doesn't change the feelings of the majority there."
Apparently it does, because the majority wanted to remain part of the Ukraine but with full autonomy, yet somehow they've now ended up completely Russian, at least in Russia's eyes.
Perhaps if Russia hadn't been fucking with Ukraine trying to get Yanukovych in charge of them since 2004 they'd have a better relationship between the Ukrainian people and Russia, but when you try and kill the president the people wanted, when you try and rig their votes, when you have Russian death squads in your country murdering your protest leaders it's not terribly surprising that the Ukrainian citizens including ethnic Russians in Crimea didn't all want to be part of Russia.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 act passed the house with 69% approval (297 yes - 133 nay - 3 abstained) and the senate with 77% approval ( 77 yes - 23 nay ). The yes votes included 40% of the Democrats in the house and 58% of the Democrats in the Senate. A very small minority of constituents were against the war. It was only after the war that the majority of Americans considered the Iraq War a mistake (Gallop 2007).
The record doesn't show that "Dubya" acted alone or without support.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
No it didn't, England is still a country today.
Prehistory? Action in Chechnya was contemporary with US efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's really not that simple, he was only elected after a decade of Russia rigging votes, and attempting to assassinate the opposition. Russia rigged the vote for Yanukovych in 2004 but it was overturned by the courts and a re-run was forced, when that re-run occured Yanukovych's competitor was poisoned by the Russians but by some miracle managed to survive and still won the election over Yanukovych despite being extremely ill as a result of that poisoning.
The fact is that the Ukrainians as a majority have never wanted Yanukovych, but Russia has been trying to force him on them for years, and it's not surprising that when they finally do his tenure resulted in forced ejection (by a majority of 73% in the democratically elected parliament for what it's worth).
Yes the Ukraine is divided, but in February polls showed no single part of the Ukraine supported by a majority joining Russia - even Crimea only came out at 41% in support of joining Russia.
Russia has been meddling in Ukraine to try and keep it in the Russian sphere of influence and Russian leaning because it's scared shitless (rightly or wrongly) of having the European Union only a 2 hour drive from Moscow so it wants it as a pro-Russian buffer. The people of the Ukraine mostly do not want that though, they want to be like other ex-soviet states like Poland, the Czech republic and so forth which are now becoming very modern successful westernised nations.
So it's a battle between Russia doing everything it can to maintain a buffer, and the people wanting to enjoy the benefits of the West. The West can live without Ukraine, but Russia feels it can't live without the Ukraine as a buffer between it and the EU - the West supports the Ukrainian leadership because it respects what the people want, Russia is against the Ukrainian leadership because they don't want to be a pro-Russian buffer zone, they want to be like their EU neighbours - a modern, succesful, progressive nation. Who wouldn't? Even a lot of Russians are sick of living in Putin's Russia and want what we in the West have if you haven't forgotten the riots after Putin's last faux election that kept him in power so why so surprised that non-Russian citizens like those in Ukraine also want fuck all to do with him?
Well sport, since you like Wikipedia, we can use that if you like.
"The number of Crimean residents who consider Ukraine their motherland increased sharply from 32% to 71.3% from 2008 through 2011; according to a poll by Razumkov Center in March 2011,[10] although this is the lowest number in all Ukraine (93% on average across the country).[10] Surveys of regional identities in Ukraine have shown that around 30% of Crimean residents claim to have retained a self-identified "Soviet identity".[11]
Since the independence of Ukraine in 1991, 3.8 million former citizens of Russia applied for Ukrainian citizenship.[12]
This is particularly apparent in both the Russian and Ukrainian ethnic populations, whose growth rate has been falling at the rate of 0.6% and 0.12% annually respectively. In comparison, the ethnic Crimean Tatar population has been growing at the rate of 0.9% per annum.[13]
The growing trend in the Crimean Tatar population has been explained by the continuing repatriation of Crimean Tatars mainly from Uzbekistan."
As for the 1989 and 2001 census numbers, they're also up there on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Sadly enough, all this information was in a link right from the very page you originally linked. See, you've got to keep reading, sport. Can't give up as soon as you think you've found something to back up your incorrect, out of date beliefs. Now, am I still a CIA spy here to mislead the masses? Or is someone else perhaps a little guilty of drinking that Putin Kool-Aid delivered right from the RT pitcher? :)
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
So, your definition of "contemporary" does not include events that happen within 1-7 years? I think we're going to have trouble discussing this.
Also, you are including the "insurgency" phase of both Iraq and Afghanistan but not the Chechnya wars.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Apologist? I don't believe so, but I'll contemplate that a bit. Do I believe the US is some great virtuous beast? Nope, those delusions have been gone for a very long time, because I read a whole lot of history. There are certainly cases where I would back US actions, and certainly cases where I would denounce Russian actions. Crimea does not fall into this case, and the massive amount of distortion does not change my opinion.
If Crimea was not going to be autonomous in 2 months whether or not there was a coup in the Ukraine, I would agree that "Russian's invaded". That condition is not true.
If Russia had raced in shooting like they did in Georgia, I would probably again denounce the Russian's actions. That condition never happened either.
There are many conditions that we could present showing the same change in opinion, but none of those happened.
People repeating propaganda that I heard on Fox news, like comparing this to Sudeten, won't change that opinion either. Hitler claimed that Germans in Sudeten were being tortured, abused, and killed by the Czech government. I have heard no such rhetoric from Russia regarding Russians in Crimea. Hitler said that turning over Sudeten would prevent war. Again, I have heard no such threatening rhetoric from Russia so the comparison is simply not true.
It's clear that the US and EU does not like the vote in Crimea. I don't have any insight into the election process, but the voting numbers are consistent with past voting in Crimea. Crimea has been pro-Russian since long before Nikita Khruschev gave the land to the Ukraine.
As stated before, when democracy does not work the way the administration wants it to work, they attempt to change the outcome. That is not being pro-democracy.
Lastly, there is a difference between being against certain US activities and being pro anyone else. The US has done a lot of wrong, and questionable things. The wars in the middle east are a few of them, but these fabrications as a method of starting wars goes back quite a ways. At least to Vietnam. If the US is dishonest about the start of the conflicts why would you trust their motives?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Thanks for the further points, it clarified your earlier statements. I agree that the people that tend to get screwed in any deal are the locals.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yes they are, and they voted to oust Yanukovych and to step down and allow the interim government to take their place.
Oh, what, I'm sorry, does that ruin your coup narrative? Sucks to be you. Sorry, but there was no coup, the elected government voted with a majority of 73% to oust Yanukovych, and to allow the interim government to take over.
The whole process was democracy in action, as much as that upsets the pro-Russian narrative.
Right, int he soviet-afghan war, when they were at the height of military expenditure.
Fast forward to 2008, when they invaded Georgia, a massively inferior opponent given the size and equipment of their forces and they lost 70 soldiers lives, 40 armoured vehicles and a couple of tanks and planes in just 9 day.
Or in other words, the modern Russian army is a joke, it's 3rd rate at best having struggled so badly against Georgia's 3rd rate military.
Christ, you only have to look at the pictures of them in the news, half of them look like they've spent every year since Afghanistan in the 80s doing nothing but eating all the pies.
Krushchev was born in Kalinovka, which was and still is in Russia to Russian parents. Brezhnev was born in what was part of the Russian Empire to Russian parents. Try again.
Democratically elected government? Do not think Godwin will protect you.
Come on, I am from Russia I think there is no freedom of speech in USA, no in EU, and no in Russia. There is only propaganda from government, both yours and ours. And I clearly see on this forum, that this propaganda works like different drugs, so there is no chance one understands other side. In fact, most of what you (and us in Russia) see about Crimea, Ukraine and Russia on TV and other media is (des)information. Trying do decide something based on this type of information is senselessly. There is too many interests there to get independent information. Currently there is no possibility to split information, desinformation and motives for desinformation in any media. How can this be changed?
Sorry but on this issue I'm disregarding the words of Anonymous Cowards.
Normally they add value on this site but the astro-turfing has been far too immense on this particular issue and I just don't trust anything posted entirely anonymously.
Pseudonymous posters at least have a posting history I can use to determine their relative reliability.
We don't have any better sources, that was the most recent census in the region.
The shift from Russian to Crimean Tatar is due to the gradual return of Tatars from where they were deported to (such as Uzbekistan). It's fairly obvious that it's going to end at some point. In fact, it is safe to assume that it already peaked in a long time ago - the number of Crimean Tatars in Crimea today is noticeably higher than the number deported from Crimea in 1944 - and they were not exactly placed in conditions encouraging population growth while deported (not to mention insanely high death rates during deportation itself). So everyone who could return has already done so, and now it's just natural population growth.
Also, where did you get the 1.5% figure from? The article says that Russian population decreases by 0.6% per year, and Tatar population increases by 0.9% per year, but those percents are relative to two different base figures, so you can't just add them up. Applying them separately to either number over 13 years will net you 1,050,000 Russians and 263,000 Tatars - or a change from 4.8x difference to 4x.
Oh, as a side note, all those stats only count the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which does not include Sevastopol, which alone counts 340,000 people - or about 15% of the entire Crimean peninsula. However, the referendum took place in both administrative units, with combined results. And Sevastopol is even more skewed towards Russians (not surprising, since many families of Russian Black Sea Navy live there), whereas Tatars are below 1% there.
It's not about "tainted western sources". It's about making serious accusations without a shred of proof. One has to be blind or deliberately ignorant, to not see how Russians are always portrayed as bad guys in western media. 100 people died in Kiev during "peaceful protests" and nobody's investigating that. 1 random person died in Crimea of unknown causes and it's commonly accepted (again with no proof whatsoever) to have been organized by evil Russians.
I'm up for that - we'd get to nuke France.
It's worth losing London for.
Neocons McCain and Nuland actively took part in the protests in Kiev, and promised the dissidents money from the US and EU that they would/could never deliver.
Broken EU promises of bailouts is why Yanukovich sided with Russia "suddenly and mysteriously": there were 15 billion good reasons to do so. Putin is a thug and a maddog killer but he doesn't play the con-games that the EU and US do.
The US fomented that coup thinking that Russia would roll over, or at most start a huge skirmish and kill a few hundred thousand people that we don't give a rat's behind about. Then we would be able to sell ICBMs and ABMS on credit to people (aka "muppets") that can't afford toilet paper, and Russia would be a step closer to rolling over and accepting ECB/IMF's terms of surrender. It didn't work that way.
Now, Ukraine will be the next Greece/Cyprus and the Ukrainian people will get the rubber-stamp bailout package, and hand over all their wealth to the ECB and the IMF.
Either you're trolling, you're that clueless, or next, you'll say the US had nothing to do with Mossadeq and installing a madman dictator over Iran in 1953.
Voting No to both these options IS the status quo..
For example when a referendum comes up on abortion you don't go 'Do you wish to legalise Abortion for pregnancies upto X weeks' Y/N?
Then ask 'Do you wish to keep the current legislation' Y/N?
3 Options were open, Join Russia, Stay In Ukraine but return to the older version, or by voting NO to both these options stay as you are.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
So 31% and 23%. That sounds like a significant constituent opposed it, not a majority for sure but it's not "very small".
Only one person in the Duma voted against Putin in annexing Crimea.
Pro tip: if the US is backing someone, odds are the someone is a really bad person and we're doing it for a percentage.
Tymoshenko wants the 8 million Ukrainian Russians killed "with nukes", according to an FSB-leaked phone conversation with a Ukrainian parliament member. She apologized though, so that makes it all good.
Odd that the US hasn't warned these morons that Russia has an NSA-equivalent, but then, we don't care what they do to each other as long as they pay the interest they're about to owe.
There was no option to vote no on both. You vote for "Russia now" or "Russia later." The only other option was not to vote. Counting that as a valid option to choose the status quo is absurd.
For an abortion example, imagine the religious right-wing legislature in a US state got two options on the ballot, "Make abortion illegal" and "Allow the legislature to decide whether abortion is illegal." Any vote by the people is simply a rubber stamp of what the legislature has already decided -- making abortion illegal. There is no option to disagree with the legislature and keep abortion legal.
First, whatever source you are getting 41% from, were they there? Did they actually count the votes? Or are you getting this information from western media, who logically did not even have access to Crimea at the time of vote? To recap you don't know who is lying (Russians or the West), but the source that you choose to believe literally has no way of knowing the truth in either case.
Gallup did opinion polls in 2011 and 2013
http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-...
Incidentally doesn't it seem a little suspicious to you that western media ' did not even have access to Crimea at the time of vote'? The reason for that being that the Russian army and pro Russian militias wouldn't let anyone into Crimea from Ukraine or the West - the whole country was under lockdown with anyone who wasn't repeating the mantra that "you're either with Russia or you're a Nazi" was either kept out or beaten up.
Second, I have seen pictures of ballots (I also happen to read Russian since I was born in Ukraine, thought it was USSR at the time). The choices are "Would you like to join Russian Federation" or "Would you like Crimea to stay an autonomous republic as part of Ukraine".
If you look at the ballot here you can see one option is to join Russia and one is to restore the 1992 constitution.
What does that mean?
http://www.reuters.com/article...
According to a format of the ballot paper, published on the parliament's website, the first question will ask: "Are you in favor of the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a part of the Russian Federation?"
The second asks: "Are you in favor of restoring the 1992 Constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?"
At first glance, the second option seems to offer the prospects of the peninsula remaining within Ukraine.
But the 1992 national blueprint - which was adopted soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and then quickly abolished by the young post-Soviet Ukrainian state - is far from doing that.
This foresees giving Crimea all the qualities of an independent entity within Ukraine - but with the broad right to determine its own path and choose relations with whom it wants - including Russia.
With the pro-Russian assembly already saying it wants to return Crimea to Russia, this second option only offers a slightly longer route to shifting the peninsula back under Russian control, analysts say.
The option of asking people if they wish to stick with the status quo - in which Crimea enjoys autonomy but remains part of Ukraine - is not on offer.
Like I say you can vote to join Russia or restore the 1992 Crimea Constitution. Under which, incidentally the Crimean Parliament could decide to join Russia without another referendum.
Third, I have friends living in Crimea. They would rather be part of Russia, because they would rather have stability than being a part of a failed and corrupt state where revolutions occur every 3-4 years. Also, since you believe that all Ukrainians are held at gunpoint here's a Ukrainian (me) telling you that Russia did the right thing. I assure you nobody is holding me at gunpoint.
I've got friends in Russia and they would rather Putin - who they call 'the Russian Mugabe' loses this gamble because it means he's likelier to lose power.
But hey anecdotes have a small sample size. If you want a decent sample size look at the Gallup polls. And note that the most popular option with 53% support in 2013 - autonomy inside the Ukraine - wasn't even on offer. Also note that 97% in favour is a very unlikely number to get in any referendum.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm not saing "evil russians". However there are absolutely pro-Russian extremists in Crimea. All those "self defense" forces are basically self-appointed militia. Which would make minority groups a bit fearful.
Odd though, that the legislature was occupied by these self-defense forces, Aksyonov claims to be in control of the self defense forces, and then in the presence of the gunmen Aksyonov is elected the Crimean prime minister. Previously the pro-Russian political party he is a member of never got more than 4% of the vote in Crimean elections and held no seats in Crimean parliament. This sounds like the real coup.
Except that is 31% and 23% of the legislators who only voted once and the issue was over. That does not reflect the public sentiment at that time.
I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. I do remember being a member of a very small minority that voice their opposition publicly.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Obama is working on a strongly worded missive.
You know, IIRC the Austrians were planning a "join Germany" referendum in 1938, and Hitler then occupied Austria and held a referendum that was overwhelmingly in favor of the union. I hope the history repetition stops here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yup. Russia's borders have fluctuated wildly over the centuries, but I think these are the first borders that exclude Kievan Rus.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
On the other hand, there was a referendum in Austria after Hitler annexed it, and it was overwhelmingly in favor of the annexation. Remind you of anything?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
there are no sources claiming anything like that, even not russian ones. the first thing happening in crimea was invasion by an army wearing no insignia.
This information is surely available, and I gave the search method for finding all kinds of goodies. The first thing happening in Crimea happened long before Kiev fell. History is not that hard to find or read. I will give you that generic searches will mask history, and you will see the most recent propaganda pieces. These sources were not just RT news, so it's not purely Russian propaganda.
i apologise for my spelling, here in eastern europe we learned english as our third language. and we know this neighbouring country too well to see who's the aggressor.
And you will further claim the the US and EU nations are not aggressive and have purely altruistic goals? Nope, it's a game and the people in the Ukraine are caught in the middle. At the same time, what Russia did was nothing like what Hitler did, which was my original point.
you are either quite delusional or financially motivated to whitewash the actions of russia - which, despite there being many really great people in there, is a monster that endangers all of it's neighbours and whole world.
If I don't pain them as evil I paint them as good? Nope, not hardly and your level of logic is rather delusional. Funny that you continue to portray exactly what you accuse me of.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The first thing happening in Crimea happened long before Kiev fell.
do you mean russian soldiers wandering outside of their bases, which was prohibited by ukraine-russia agreement?
And you will further claim the the US and EU nations are not aggressive and have purely altruistic goals?
i'm not sure about the usa. most eu nations seem to be very concerned, especially given that many of them have just slipped out of the totalitarian grip. i would agree that they don't have purely altruistic goals - they have survivalistic goals. they know they are the next...
what Russia did was nothing like what Hitler did, which was my original point.
it's definitely close to what hitler did. it's almost like putin is roleplaying hitler.
just one example of many is to compare putin's speech with hitler's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6SB9sqCevk#t=1h50m11s
If I don't pain them as evil I paint them as good?
you whitewash evil actions. decide for yourself what does that make you. it might seem ok right now, but such approach does seem to eat the consciousness from inside.
Rich
i really dont understand the history of crimea from what i read people there willingly to join russia did crimea was part of russia before http://www.arcasecell.com/
I have found it the height of irony that Putin has been essentially mirroring the beginning of a conflict that killed millions of Russians
The path of that conflict will be different now, as it will be a war between nuclear powers. Very high cost and very high casualty for everyone, except North Africa, for whom a reversal of global warming from a Nuclear Winter may bring greater prosperity.
The personal sanctions are the interesting and possibly effective weapons. I think many such political weapons will be deployed long before war is genuinely considered.
The only time I heard about the Crimean legislature occupied was when in the first days after Yanukovich's ousting, Crimean Tatars organized a rally in front of the legislature, after which the militias took over the building. But it was vacated soon after. So really it was the Tatars who acted first in Crimea.
They re-occupied a second time soon after because the Ukrainian flag had been replaced.
As for Aksyonov, see wikipedia. Some of that is certainly hearsay and rumor about his background, so don't trust that. But as for what happened this is what I read on BBC, which I think is far more reliable than American news sites, though you may distrust it.
Basically we've got multiple groups all struggling to make sure their version of the truth gets out. So far all the videos I've seen lean towards the pro-Russian self-defense militias as being the thuggish ones, with videos of them intimidating journalists, therefore I am more inclined to disbelieve their version of the "facts".
Well, I have the advantage of having grown up in Crimea (some from my family still live there) so stories about Russian thugs, ethnic cleaning and things like that generally just make me smile at first :) And then I realize that people believe all kinds of BS they get from media. I probably do too when it comes to things I don't know much/anything about, but in this case I do know that 99% of all the info in western media about Crimea is pure BS.
If he was killed "rather publicly" by Russians, the media would still be all over it. The fact is that a ukrainian soldier AND a Crimean militia man were killed at the same time by an unidentified person. That makes a difference, don't you think?
As for your friends, they probably were deported to Uzbekistan. Sounds realistic, doesn't it?
The first thing happening in Crimea happened long before Kiev fell.
do you mean russian soldiers wandering outside of their bases, which was prohibited by ukraine-russia agreement?
No, I meant exactly what I said. Try to read a little bit of history of events in the Ukraine prior to the coup in Kiev.
And you will further claim the the US and EU nations are not aggressive and have purely altruistic goals?
i'm not sure about the usa. most eu nations seem to be very concerned, especially given that many of them have just slipped out of the totalitarian grip. i would agree that they don't have purely altruistic goals - they have survivalistic goals. they know they are the next...
EU countries that were in totalitarian grip, like Spain or Germany? I think you are fabricating reality, which we call delusion.
what Russia did was nothing like what Hitler did, which was my original point.
it's definitely close to what hitler did. it's almost like putin is roleplaying hitler. just one example of many is to compare putin's speech with hitler's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6SB9sqCevk#t=1h50m11s
No, it's not. You have to pluck sentences from here and there to make them look similar, just like you have to pluck an hour of history from weeks worth of conflict to make Crimea look like Sudeten.
If I don't pain them as evil I paint them as good?
you whitewash evil actions. decide for yourself what does that make you. it might seem ok right now, but such approach does seem to eat the consciousness from inside.
I did not white wash, I pointed out that people like you are trying to paint the situation as completely black. RT probably white washes, but I'm not RT.
If you distort reality you are a bad person, even if you think that you are doing so for a good reason. Lies always lead to more lies, when caught people don't trust you. This is the reality that so many people refuse to grasp even though Socrates pointed out this very thing 2,500 years ago. If you look at a spot on a painting that's red, and claim the whole picture is red, you are an idiot that should keep your mouth shut. Anyone that takes a step back can see it's an apple on a tree that you are looking at, and the tree is in a forest.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.