Actual Results of Crimean Secession Vote Leaked

An anonymous reader writes "Forbes reported on Monday that The President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights very briefly and supposedly by accident posted the actual results of the Crimean secession vote. According to the blog post, which has since been taken down, only 30% of Crimeans participated in the vote instead of the 83% participation officially advertised by Russia, and of that 30% only half voted for secession, which means that 15% of all Crimeans voted for secession rather than the 82% officially reported by Russia. There is no way for this claim to be verified as no foreign observers were allowed during the voting process. The vote is reportedly being conducted again during the 'May 11 referendum on the status of the so-called People's Republic of Donetsk.'" We've had a lot of discussion over the years about election methods and transparency; it would be interesting to hear from Ukranian readers in particular on this topic.

Comments

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[Keruo]

Crimea=Florida
But who's counting..

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[SensitiveMale]

Gore lost on every recount. Get over it.

Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.

One last thing that just about no one knows about. All of the major news outlets proclaimed Florida to Gore before voting was finished in Florida. Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

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[mooingyak]

Gore lost on every recount. Get over it.

Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.

One last thing that just about no one knows about. All of the major news outlets proclaimed Florida to Gore before voting was finished in Florida. Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

As I recall, the Bush camp wanted one recount method, and the Gore camp wanted a different one, and under the rules they each proposed, the other side would have won.

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[PIBM]

They are allowed to start counting the votes before the voting ends ??? We only spawn 5.5 time zones but that`s still not allowed and well enforced.

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[Anonymous Coward]

No dipshit, he lost according to the rules he insisted upon during the recount, and won according to the ones Bush insisted upon. But it doesn't matter a damn now, so quit fucking whinging about it.

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[n1ywb]

One last thing that just about no one knows about. All of the major news outlets proclaimed Florida to Gore before voting was finished in Florida. Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

If that's really true, well, those folks who walked out have nobody to blame but themselves.

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[scubamage]

Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders. On top of that, that country happens to control many of the major resource pipelines into and out of Russia. They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable. Do you expect that the US would do any differently if Juarez or Tijuana truly became a Narco-stronghold? Don't rush so quickly to judge. The media on both sides of the pond spins the story to make their respective side look good.

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[Anonymous Coward]

IF one of the more liberal areas of Florida didn't add negative votes for Gore it might have made a difference too. There are a number of local rumors floating around that physical ballot boxes "ended up in the Halifax River" too according to locals, but we'll leave rumors aside and stick to just the "Volusia Error" as an example of voting anomalies in the I-4 corridor since it is well documented. The Panhandle made no difference. Keep in mind few people live in the panhandle that are actually in Central time and vote in Florida. The voting recounts were due to anomalies in metropolitan left-leaning areas, and to set the record straight Gore wanted a Statewide recount but the court ruling was that it wasn't required.

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[ericloewe]

[Citation Needed]

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[PortHaven]

Mexico is a country on our border that's been near at civil war and a drug and crime mecca. So um, yes...we haven't invaded Mexico....(not sure on vice-versa)

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[Talderas]

Pershing's Punitive Expedition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

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[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to more work in educating yourself beyond what Putin tells you to post.

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[MightyMartian]

If the actual poll results are true, it suggest Ukraine is not that divided fundamentally at all, and that a small group of pro-Russian agitators lead by Russian military personnel out of uniform are creating this civil war.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, every single one

Except for the statewide recount carried out as a partnership with several news agencies after the SCOTUS terminated the official recount efforts. That one came out with Gore on top, and had Gore requested a statewide recount rather than recounting in only a few counties he probably would have won both numerically and by preventing the court challenge against his weird recounting efforts.

But you knew that, didn't you, liar troll?

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[smooth wombat]

They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable.

So why are Russian troops and Russian-trained operatives fomenting the unrest we're seeing? Don't you think Russia would want Ukraine to avoid what's going on? Why lie about ethnic Russians supposedly being targeted when they could provide not a single shred of evidence to show this was happening?

Russia started this because the people of Ukraine got fed up being used as a pawn by Russia and all the corruption their former leader was doing. That is why they opened up his former residence to show where the Ukrainian people's money was really going instead of for roads, electricity, etc.

Russia is the one who is causing the problem and the lies of the Crimean vote show the reality of the situation. Putin has become a modern day Stalin, though without the gulags. From dictatorial control of the media, the false imprisonment of political rivals and those who oppose his authoritarian rule, manipulating vote counts and election qualifications, goon squads to rough up and kill opponents, he has taken Stalin's playbook and updated it for the modern era.

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[scubamage]

Not so fast. We have aided Mexico militarily by sending special forces for training, and also bringing Mexican troops to the US for training. Russia itself has not invaded Ukraine. Russian loyalists however have occupied several government buildings/regions because they're not a fan of the Pro-NATO, Pro-West stance taken by the Kieven government. I'm not going to say Russia is entirely innocent here, after all there were supposedly photos of Russian special forces training Eastern Ukrainians, but that behavior is nearly the same as what the US has done with Mexico in the drug war. We picked the side we liked and benefitted us the most, we gave them equipment and training, and told the other side that if they spill over our borders we will christen them with hellfire missiles.

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[RabidReindeer]

Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

Having lived in the Panhandle, I very seriously doubt that people who left the lines were Republican. We used to have the term "Yellow Dog Democrat", meaning that the person in question would vote for a yellow hound dog rather than a Republican, but that was back when Democrats were the Party of the (white conservative) South. Before they all started calling themselves Republicans.

In other words, I think that the Panhandle Republicans would have cheerfully stood in line until the next morning if there was even the faintest moonshine of a hope that it would keep an evul Librul tree-hugger like Gore from taking the White House.

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[Obfuscant]

Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.

And his people were in court trying to get already counted Republican heavy areas thrown out. They challenged the absentees from the military because many military votes went via APO/FPO and lacked postmarks, and in one county they challenged all the Republican absentees because the Republican precinct captain was smart enough to write the voter's id number on the absentee request and the Democrat wasn't.

Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

That, too. That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.

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[supton]

That narrative is convincing only under duress of propaganda and threat of violence against any pro-unity Ukranians. Russia is effectively fascist; Yanukovych was effectively fascist. AFAICT, the Maidan protests were about severe discontent with Yanukovych's palatial corruption at scales not seen in most places in modern Europe, not just trade alignments -- the small number of right wing extremists that were anti-Yanukovych don't take away from the fact that -- according to most objective observers, journalists, etc -- the vast majority of the voices coming from Kyiv were effectively anti-corruption liberals, not right-wing extremists.

Yet the separatists are playing Wagner, detaining journalists, enacting violence against peaceful pro-unity rallies -- and at the same time talking about defeating fascists, the irony is either lost on them or their intended audience.

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[Obfuscant]

As I recall, the Bush camp wanted one recount method, and the Gore camp wanted a different one, and under the rules they each proposed, the other side would have won.

You recall wrong. Bush wanted the recount that was already completed to stand, which would allow the Secretary of State to certify the result in time for the Electoral College, and Gore wanted another recount that would have pushed the result back so Florida's votes wouldn't have counted at all, no matter who won another recount. That's what most people missed. If the electors cannot vote when the Electoral College meets, it doesn't matter who won the state, the votes don't matter. Gore knew that, and he knew he'd win if Florida's electors couldn't vote.

That's what the Supreme Court case was about -- whether the Florida legislature had the authority to define the election process or the courts could change it. The US and Florida constitutions both gave the legislature the responsibility, and the legislature had a process in place for counting and recounting and certifying the results. Gore wanted that changed after the polls had closed, just like he got the counting process changed to include "dimpled chads" in a system that said "poke a hole in a piece of paper" and his voters couldn't manage to do that simple task. A "poke a hole" system that both Republican AND Democrat election officials had approved prior to the actual election.

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[umghhh]

how big is this if?

Quite frankly with the amount of propganda that is being thrown at us all the time, it looks to me that no conclusion is possible. Some of the supporters of 'democracy' and Ukrainian unity are difficult to distinguish from racists and thugs. Neither current nor previous Ukrainian gov look much like they understood what human rights are either. The fact is also that the corrupt chieftain voted into presidential office last time and ovethrown by pro-western groups is the situation that happened before and the pro-western (if one can call them that) groups are apparently not less corrupt that the others - to me it looks like Ukraine is hoplessly devided, poor and unstable country with long and difficult way to stability and prosperity.

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[stoploss]

That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.

I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work? The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup heatmap created by some anonymous person that everyone would link to and this would be even less statistically accurate/more subject to manipulation than the media's exit poll results.

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[jklovanc]

Ukrainian new unelected leadership is more like Hitler.

First all the current leaders were elected to Parliament. The only "unelected" part is the post of acting President. That was done when the previous president abandoned his post and fled. Second the main political party is Batkivshchyna which looks like a pretty progressive party. Show me how they compare to Hitler in what they have actually done. If you mean the few radical outliers the same thing could be said for the Republican Party.

Aggressively moved right away to abolish equal rights for Russian and Russian-speaking population who make up almost half the country.

You might want to look at the demographics of the Ukraine. The Russian speaking percentage is 30%. The Ukrainian speaking percentage is 67%. So the less than 1/3 Russian speaking portion is nowhere near half. Take a look at this map. Most of the Ukraine is primarily Ukrainian speakers. Notice how much of the Russian speaking population is concentrated in the Crimea. I agree that should have been a referendum in the Crimea but it was done improperly under vary shady circumstances. Democracy does not work very well during political upheaval. The only thing close to a rights issue was a bill to make Ukrainian the only official language. The bill was passed by the parliament but vetoed by the President. It is not in effect. Do you have any other examples?

Russia has no choice but to get involved.

There are other way to "get involved" than sending in special forces, supplying arms to insurgents, holding large military exercises on the borders and threatening invasion. Those are the tactics of an uncivilized bully. Russia won't even admit that the Holodomor happened.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Gore lost on every recount. Get over it.

Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.

One last thing that just about no one knows about. All of the major news outlets proclaimed Florida to Gore before voting was finished in Florida. Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

Oh come off it. Florida actually had laws at the time governing recounts and how they should be done. Gore requested a recount according to those laws--there was no provision for a statewide recount. So he requested a recount where there were irregularities (i.e. huge discrepancies between exit polling and actual voting results). He did not request a recount where there were no irregularities, because there was no legal or rational basis for him to do such a thing.

Florida was called for Gore because the exit polling revealed that even if every one of the panhandle voters cast their ballot for Bush, Gore still would have won. Yeah, those panhandle voters may have been discouraged, just like Hawaii voters are discouraged every four years when their votes actually don't make a difference in who wins. Calling elections before all votes are cast is done because it CAN be done, accurately, once a certain percentage of the vote is known.

But it turned out, the exit polls were way off--way off to a degree that exit polls haven't been off by in recent memory. Now, if you're partisan, you can say that's because either there was a problem with the exit polling, or because there was a problem with the voting, depending on your bias. But you cannot say that Gore tried to goose the results, or that the media reporting favored Gore. Not with a straight face, anyway, you can't.

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[mooingyak]

Did a little more digging, I was halfway right. The meat of it was that the recount methodology that Gore requested was actually one of the least beneficial scenarios for his side.

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[smooth wombat]

You do realize stopping the flow of gas to Europe would hurt Europe more than it would Russia, don't you? That is why there are only economic sanctions going on and not the stopping of gas purchases because Europe needs that gas. And Russia knows this.

The supply lines run from Russia to the west, not vice versa.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the fucking article? US forces attacked AFTER Mexican para-military forces launched an attack on US soil.

CAPTCHA: standard: what /. is sorely lacking.

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[Rich0]

If the actual poll results are true, it suggest Ukraine is not that divided fundamentally at all, and that a small group of pro-Russian agitators lead by Russian military personnel out of uniform are creating this civil war.

And if actual poll results are true, it would make them like a lot of US elections, where most people sit it out and the fringes determine how the country will be run.

If this were just about electing a mayor I'd agree. However, the referendum was controversial and many boycotted it.

If the local KKK had a referendum on whether black people should be placed in concentration camps or just shot on sight, and only 0.001% of the population turned out, would the conclusion be that most people don't care about black people being shot on sight?

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[rahvin112]

Russian intelligence operatives along with Spetnaz Russian special forces out of uniform are occupying Ukrainian government offices. They are doing so with the assistance of several prominent Ukrainian oligarchs that backed and supported Yankovitch. It's been estimated that fewer than 15% of the "protestors" are actually even Ukrainian and many of those that are Ukrainian are being supported (and paid) by those oligarchs.

When US special forces out of uniform but still acting at the direction of the US government are seizing Mexican government offices by force let me know.

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[almitydave]

IF one of the more liberal areas of Florida didn't add negative votes for Gore it might have made a difference too.

The wiki article you link to states

The error was caught and corrected the night of the election. Of the registered voters in the precinct, 22 voted for Bush, 193 for Gore, and 1 for Nader.

so, no effect on the result or recounts.

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[Rich0]

I suspect that there are plenty of ordinary people living in these areas, but as things escalate everybody gets pushed towards taking a side.

Police are sent in to deal with pro-whoever rebels, and they just make a token effort and give up because they're sympathetic. So, then they get fired and replaced with more radical anti-whoever paramilitary and they go shoot up all the pro-whoever rebels. Then the pro-whoever rebel's families get all upset and start giving money to the pro-whoever cause. They shoot up the local anti-whoevers and before you know it you have civil war.

You can only have a democratic resolution if all sides are willing to seek and abide by one. Otherwise it ends up coming down to whoever has the most guns, or friends who are willing to use their guns.

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[GoCrazy]

I scrolled down 6 posts before someone affirmed Godwin's Law. New record.

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[wonkey_monkey]

Pershing's Punitive Expedition.

<daffy>A Perfectly Pusillanimous Portrait of Perfidity!</daffy>

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[mooingyak]

I looked at this: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/... and a wikipedia page about it.

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[SensitiveMale]

IF one of the more liberal areas of Florida didn't add negative votes for Gore it might have made a difference too. There are a number of local rumors floating around that physical ballot boxes "ended up in the Halifax River" too according to locals, but we'll leave rumors aside and stick to just the "Volusia Error" as an example of voting anomalies in the I-4 corridor since it is well documented. The Panhandle made no difference. Keep in mind few people live in the panhandle that are actually in Central time and vote in Florida. The voting recounts were due to anomalies in metropolitan left-leaning areas, and to set the record straight Gore wanted a Statewide recount but the court ruling was that it wasn't required.

Gore requested recounts in only 4 counties. "Gore requested manual recounts in four Florida counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade, which are counties that traditionally vote Democratic and would be expected to garner more votes for Gore. Gore did not, however, request any recounts in counties that traditionally vote Republican." That's from wikipedia but you can find lots of other cites if you want.

I agree that there were only a few votes in the panhandle that would have been in the majority for Bush. IIRC, it was projected 10k to 20k. Not many in the overall scheme of things. However, when a recall is decided by a few hundred votes adding ten to twenty thousand to one side makes a big difference.

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[Talderas]

The casus belli used for an invasion doesn't diminish that an invasion occurs. The post I responded to suggested that we never invaded Mexico, which we did on two occasions during the Mexican revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. The first was the Tampico Affair where we invaded and occupied Veracruz and the second was Pershing's Punitive Expedition in which we invaded Mexico in order to capture Pancho villa and crush the villistas. That's ignoring any of the potential invasions that the US might have performed prior to the 20th century while expanding westward which I'm sure occurred given that little Alamo spat.

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[MightyMartian]

Is this some sort of justification for a fake referendum overseen by Russia? The US, all in all, doesn't have elections that are that problematic or fixed.

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[CanHasDIY]

You do realize stopping the flow of gas to Europe would hurt Europe more than it would Russia, don't you? That is why there are only economic sanctions going on and not the stopping of gas purchases because Europe needs that gas. And Russia knows this.

Indeed; they also know that the only way to ensure that Russia sells their oil to Europe would be to start a land war in Asia, and as we all should well know, you never want to be involved in a land war in Asia.

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[SensitiveMale]

Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

Having lived in the Panhandle, I very seriously doubt that people who left the lines were Republican. We used to have the term "Yellow Dog Democrat", meaning that the person in question would vote for a yellow hound dog rather than a Republican, but that was back when Democrats were the Party of the (white conservative) South. Before they all started calling themselves Republicans.

In other words, I think that the Panhandle Republicans would have cheerfully stood in line until the next morning if there was even the faintest moonshine of a hope that it would keep an evul Librul tree-hugger like Gore from taking the White House.

Being curious, I did a quick search and found this graphic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2000 The panhandle is heavily Republican.

I agree with you 100% about the panhandle Republicans cheerfully standing in line to prevent Gore from winning. But that isn't what happened. All of the news outlets had projected Gore to win. So the people who were waiting in line thought "Why bother waiting if the election in Florida is over"?

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[nitehawk214]

Crimea=Florida

But who's counting..

Russia can have Florida.

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[Hypotensive]

Ukrainian new unelected leadership is more like Hitler.

And yet, they aren't the ones shutting down websites that disagree with their leader's propaganda. They aren't the ones passing laws against free speech and discriminating against homosexuality.

Russia has no choice but to get involved.

You (by which of course I mean Kremlin sock puppets) keep saying that. But nothing you have said so far actually implies it in any way.

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[CanHasDIY]

One last thing that just about no one knows about. All of the major news outlets proclaimed Florida to Gore before voting was finished in Florida. Florida resides in two time zones and the northwest "handle" of Florida is heavily Republican. Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.

If that's really true, well, those folks who walked out have nobody to blame but themselves.

By that same logic, the people who boycotted the Crimean vote being discussed here also have no one to blame but themselves for the result, right?

Personally, until "None of the Above" is considered a viable option in an election, I'm going to continue to consider the whole fucking process rigged.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Gore lost on every recount. Get over it.

It depended on the rules you used for what counted as a punched hanging chad and so on. By two of the many rule variations, Gore won.

Unfortunately, you must use the rules in place before the vote for jist such a reason -- to prevent changing the result by changing the rules.

Gore should have won, but because of the Buchanan confusion in that one county, which would habe statistically given him about 18,000 more votes. Sadly you can't reassign votes either for even more obvious reasons.

No, the vote was fubar. No way around it but to revote and even that has ethical difficulties of giving the loser a second chance.

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[almitydave]

Except for the statewide recount carried out as a partnership with several news agencies after the SCOTUS terminated the official recount efforts. That one came out with Gore on top

Thanks for the link - I remember when the study came out but had lost track of the details. The wiki article indicates that Gore would have won only if the most generous standards for determining voter intent (e.g. dimpled chad, slight mark on optical ballots, etc.) were consistently applied in a statewide recount. So yes, there is a scenario in which Gore "might have won", but the wiki article also mentions some important caveats that make it impossible to say with certainty what the "correct" result of counting every ballot would have been.

liar troll

That's a bit excessive, as what he said is technically correct - Gore lost every official recount, and the study you link to indicates he would also have lost every recount effort he was asking for in court.

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[Hypotensive]

there was just a violent overthrow of a legitimate government

There hasn't been anything legitimate about the Ukrainian government since before the Orange Revolution, and the main thing that was violent about it was the president ordering his troops to open fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators.

That kind of takes the wind out of your casus belli, right? But don't let the facts get in the way of a good fascist dictatorship. The "brilliant" Putin isn't going to.

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[Duhavid]

A, about 100 years ago. ( and that is the first thing I thought of when he said "never invaded" )
B, Mexico's borders and leadership do not appear greatly influenced by these events.
        I am not getting a great feeling that this will be so for Ukraine.

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[interkin3tic]

Putin has become a modern day Stalin, though without the gulags.

Stalin didn't start off with the Gulags though. Putin still has time to start full on purging Russia of some evil conspiracy. Possibly a homosexual conspiracy.

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[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Quite honestly, I don't think they are true.
I was there around 18 months ago and the place had a very Russian (rather than Ukranian) feel to it. It is an accident of recent history that the Crimea ended up in the Ukraine at all, it was also taken for granted before the vote that there was a large majority for secession. That majority had not been evident in the Eastern regions as of a week or so ago, what effect the Ukranian Army marching in is going to have on public opinion - I would not want to hazard a guess. The secessionists there were using all means up to and including murder of public figures to intimidate the locals, but an army fighting their way in could also cause antagonism.

Western perception is of the Ukraine is that part of the country orientates itself westwards and part towards the north (Russia). It is a simplification but wtf. The problem is that whoever was in power, they lined their own pockets. When the last west-leaning government was voted out but still in power, they proclaimed Stepan Bandera a Hero of the Ukraine. Bandera was a figure who (to a certain extent) cooperated with the Nazis against the Soviets and Russians, and whose followers "ethnic cleansed" around 70 000 Poles - mostly women and children - around 1943. He himself was interned at the time because the Nazis considered Ukrainians to be only slightly less sub-human than they saw the Russians. Bandera's people had nothing agaist Ukrainian Jews.
Still, those who distrust "western leaning" politicians have been provided with good reasons.

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[Hypotensive]

First rule of propaganda - claim that the other side is doing exactly what you're doing, but that they started it first.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

Of course they can! Not only is there no oil, unlike in Alaska, but it will be halfway underwater in a century anyway. ;-)

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[BForrester]

Exactly this. Virtually all invasions are justified, at least according to the invader.

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[quantaman]

Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders.

Who else got a mental image of a big brother Russia holding Ukraine's arms and swinging them at Ukraine's face while yelling "stop hitting yourself!"

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[quantaman]

I'm actually not convinced that there's any Spetnaz in East Ukraine (though there were definitely some in Crimea).

There's a lot of former military folks reminiscent of the USSR wandering around Russian speaking countries and a few Ukrainians who want to be part of Russia. Putin doesn't have so send forces East Ukraine, all he has to do is talk about defending Russian speaking peoples, use his army to keep the Ukrainian army out of the picture, and they get the message.

They may still be there, and they might be effectively leading, but I don't think they're necessary to drive the conflict. I think most of the fighters are something more reminiscent of the Bundy ranch, a bunch of people who see the opportunity to play soldier. They also see the opportunity to become oligarchs in a breakaway republic.

I'm not saying Putin isn't to blame, he's the one instigating it and providing the potential backing of the Russian army. I'm just not sure he needs Spetnaz to do it.

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[IgShaman81]

Current Ukrainian government was voted in as intermediate by a fully legit Parliament when Yanukovich, an originally elected president, fled the country for whatever reason (and took loads of money). I see no reason whatsoever to think that the current intermediate government, which was put into place in order to conduct new presidential elections, is somehow illegit. Moreover, it is basically only Russia which, on one hand, keeps squeaking the "illegitimacy" mantra, and on another, tries to halt the election process. Sounds rather stupid, doesn't it? But there's more - Russia never in its history had a precedent of handing over its governance to an opposition as a result of democratic elections. It is truly fascinating to see them comment on Ukrainian democratic process in light of this obvious and utter hypocrisy.

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[Kierthos]

The accord which removed all of the nukes from Ukraine was a brokered deal. In return, Russia agreed not to mess with the territorial integrity of Ukraine. (We can see how well that worked.) But considering that leaving the nukes in Ukraine would have only made it a major problem for Ukraine, Russia, NATO, etc., it was a good call to make at the time.

All you had to do was trust that Russia would abide by the terms of the accord, which, to be honest, they did, for 18 years.

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[Culture20]

If this were just about electing a mayor I'd agree. However, the referendum was controversial and many boycotted it.

If the local KKK had a referendum on whether black people should be placed in concentration camps or just shot on sight, and only 0.001% of the population turned out, would the conclusion be that most people don't care about black people being shot on sight?

That depends on whether the local KKK had thugs brandishing weapons at the polling places. If there was no reason to fear a backlash, then yeah, the people didn't care one way or another. If there were masked men with semi or full-auto rifles who refused to identify themselves taking over government buildings and making roadblocks to restrict travel, I could see why low turn-out would mean nothing other than people were afraid to vote.

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[ultranova]

Putin still has time to start full on purging Russia of some evil conspiracy. Possibly a homosexual conspiracy.

So... does that mean that the Religious Right is going to start rooting for Russia?

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[tomkost]

If anyone wanted to know how Crimean's felt about joining Russian Federation, they only had to google it. This poll from May 2013 shows the results and in fact, the percetnage of people supporting joining the Russian Federation has gone down since 2011 despite rough political and economic turns since then. Since the poll was done without the presence of occupying forces, I'm quite sure it's more valid. http://www.iri.org/sites/defau...

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[cheesybagel]

No man. AK-103 don't grow spontaneously.

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[Goaway]

If the actual poll results are true, 50% voted for secession. How is that not "divided"?

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[Obfuscant]

I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work?

Simple. A federal law that presidential ballots cannot begin to be counted until the last poll closes.

The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup

The whatever you call it will always have exit polls and hypotheses and guesses and try to make themselves look like the best news source. But exit polls carry much less weight in the process than actual poll results.

Re:well

[Calavar]

Yes, because that is something that is happening right now and not 100 years ago. It is completely relevent to the conversation.

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[Darinbob]

It's a statistical tie. The idea that with such a high error rate that a few tens of votes out of millions should be the deciding factor is ridiculous. But politics is inherently ridiculous rather than scientific. This is more about figuring out which horse had a hair that reached the finish line first rather than what the public wanted, since it's clear that the public was equally divided. No matter who won in that election he would not have had a "mandate".

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[Darinbob]

This was admitted in the Crimean case. Denying over and over that these people in unmarked uniforms were Russian soldiers, Putin later admitted that they were but ironically emphasized that this was not the case in eastern Ukraine (essentially saying "I was lying then but now now").

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[Darinbob]

Most US elections are legitimate elections though; the time of the election is known months (or years) in advance, it is set up and administered by proper government officials and based upon a long legal tradition, and there is no fear of being harmed by showing up to vote. The Crimean elections had no legitimacy about them in any form; they were called for by a self-appointed government and held at a time when there were armed thugs in balaclavas roaming the streets.

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[Darinbob]

The protests against Yanukovych were across the board. No one liked him essentially. But Russia continually points to Maidan protests and the current Kiev government as being dominated by neo nazis, which is absurd. What is ironic though is that the there are plenty of pictures of fascist like behavior occuring in eastern Ukraine from the pro-Russian militants.

Re:well

[Darinbob]

And yet Russia appears to have this planned out long in advance. There is no way they could have achieved the Crimean takeover in less than a month without having it planned out.

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[Darinbob]

Russia really really hates the orange revolution (as well as rose revolution). They want a solid buffer state on their borders, not a western leaning country. Russia, and especially Putin, want to be a major regional power again and preferrably a super power that is taken seriously by everyone. All this movement towards democracy reall hurts those plans.

Nothing happened earlier when the orange revolution was in full swing because Putin was probably worried about what Bush would do (who was not known for diplomacy-first tactics). This time around though Obama and most of the west is hesitant to do anything so Putin feels it is safe to take action. Putin has admitted that the unmarked soldiers in Crimea were Russian soldiers. (http://metronews.ca/news/world/1006376/putin-confirms-troops-wearing-unmarked-uniforms-in-crimea-were-russian/)

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[aralin]

Do you realize that the only thing that keeps the Germans at bay is the fact that the oil and gas are still flowing? If they are to stop, they have to stop because the Ukraine govt. stopped them for deniability and it has to happen at the right time for Putin (just before winter) for maximum impact.

Did you notice that Putin still didn't retaliate on the sanctions? And the Germans basically did not join them? If we push too far and Putin decides that the sanctions actually hurt, he will turn off the gas and oil just before winter and start sending it through the new pipeline to China. That would be such a serious blow to EU though it would be as aggressive move as bombing few of the eastern EU countries. But Putin so far has no reason to hit on EU just because US is acting crazy. He is not a loon, despite the attempt to portray him as one.

Also some of the supply lines are actually bidirectional. Slovakia just reversed flow in some and is sending gas to Ukraine.

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[J. J. Ramsey]

Actually, I think of the Russian occupation of Crimea as more analogous to the German occupation of the Sudetenland. The pretext for Germany occupying the Sudetenland was the presence of the ethnic Germans there, while for Russia, the pretext was the presence of ethnic Russians.

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[Darinbob]

Not really a violent overthrow, though that is how Russian state controlled media presents it. Yanokovych's leaving surprised the parliament. Talks had been underway. There were no mobs overrunning the Kiev government buildings (though there are plenty of pictures of mobs overrunning Crimean government buildings). This was not a coup.

Ultimately this is all a very old problem, not created recently. Russian empire under the czar had been sending in Russians to live in the imperial provinces, as part of a Russification program (promote Russian language, culture, and control). This process continued even in Soviet era. Many of these countries were resentful of Russian presence, and in many ways the stability of a country (whether democratic or not) depended upon how much Russian minority they had and how they dealt with that minority (granting rights or not). The status of these ethnic Russians has always been a bit confusing; should they be Russian citizens, or ex-pats, or have dual citizenship, or become full members of their new country in all ways. There are also native Russian speakers who are not ethnically Russian, there are native ethnic groups forcibly moved around in the empire, and so forth.

This current problem is just some more of the fallout from the collapse of the Russian/Soviet empire.

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[Darinbob]

Inconceivable!

Re:well

[r1348]

Your lack of sources disturbs me.

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[Darinbob]

The real losers though were the Supreme Court. They should have refused to take the case, with an added note to stop acting like children.

The recount would always have been extremely close, statistically speaking. With so many voters and the inherent error in counting a ballot, it was absolutely a tie. Even doing the same recount you will get different results every single time. Even with electronic voting you would get a different count every single time.

(speaking as a decline-to-state moderate voter who thought both sides were being irrational and petty)

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[stoploss]

I guess it really depends on how the psychohistory-esque meta-statistical analyses evolve. Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics both did a very good job modeling the prospective results of the vote for this past election. If this holds true again in the future—which seems quite plausible given the methodology that is being applied—then the actual vote on Election Day may end up being nearly a foregone conclusion.

Romney lost the entire election when he lost Ohio, but if you looked at the forecasts of the various states it was clear by August that he was going to lose, barring some freak upset (e.g. a Watergate-grade scandal). There was simply no plausible path to 270 electoral votes. What was really strange was that apparently Romney expected to win. I don't know if that was ignorance or delusion.

I'm uncertain what you mean by saying the exit polls carry much less weight, given that the current media system reports projected statewide results based on individual *precincts* reporting in. I mean, damn. If people are willing to buy that then they will definitely devour some stupid social media thing, especially if its the only source of information due to a federally-mandated information blackout.

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[quantaman]

You see a lot of yahoos in the US with crazy guns, I don't see why you wouldn't expect to see the same in the former USSR. Even the rockets they used to take down the helicopters are feasible, some of the fighters are veterans of previous wars, surely a few have the contacts to get their hands on heavy armaments.

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[AmiMoJo]

That's a big "if". Can't trust Russia, can't trust US media, can't trust random blogs and internet posts.

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[Obfuscant]

I'm uncertain what you mean by saying the exit polls carry much less weight, given that the current media system reports projected statewide results based on individual *precincts* reporting in.

I mean that an exit poll doesn't decide who the winner is, the actual vote does. Precinct results aren't exit polls, they are actual vote totals. "With 48% of the precincts in, X is leading Y by 34,000 to 23,000 ..." isn't the prediction.

If people are willing to buy that then they will definitely devour some stupid social media thing,

What they will "devour" may be significantly different than what they will base a decision on whether to vote or not on. There is no reason not to at least try.

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[Darinbob]

And it should have remained a Florida problem without getting the Supreme Court involved.

The US has no system for it, but in the case of an essential tie (with maybe 2000 votes in question out of 6 MILLION) a runoff election would have been the appropriate response. Except that won't work because of the time limits, so it should have been left to the state of Florida to figure it out. Had they not done so the process would have been submitted to the incoming House of Representatives in a contingent election with special rules (and to the Senate to decide the vice president).

The really sad thing is that the wrong lesson was learned from all this. Instead of focusing on problems with the electoral college, all the election official were panicked about hanging chad and butterfly ballots and other irrelevant stuff. So we end up getting lots of unreliable and unverifiable electronic voting machines to replace systems that work, but we're left with an electoral college system that's had a long history of quirks and scandals.

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[RabidReindeer]

Being curious, I did a quick search and found this graphic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... The panhandle is heavily Republican.

I agree with you 100% about the panhandle Republicans cheerfully standing in line to prevent Gore from winning. But that isn't what happened. All of the news outlets had projected Gore to win. So the people who were waiting in line thought "Why bother waiting if the election in Florida is over"?

Well, that's their option. But even if your horse is going to lose by a mile, why make the other guy look like he's got a mandate?

And besides, what True Republican believes the Liberal Press anyway?

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[quantaman]

Ukrainian new unelected leadership is more like Hitler.

First all the current leaders were elected to Parliament. The only "unelected" part is the post of acting President. That was done when the previous president abandoned his post and fled. Second the main political party is Batkivshchyna which looks like a pretty progressive party. Show me how they compare to Hitler in what they have actually done. If you mean the few radical outliers the same thing could be said for the Republican Party.

I like the new President, I don't like how he came to power. Yanokovych was a terrible leader, but the last election he won seemed to be fair. Chasing him out of the country was a bad idea.

Look what has happened in Egypt when they overthrew their terrible, but democratically elected leader. One of the prices of democracy is the only real way to deal with horrible leaders is protect the free press and elections apparatus and hope you can vote them out.

I don't think for a moment that Crimeans or East Ukrainians actually want to join Russia, or even create a federation, but I think the pro-Russians are able to run things and not get chased out of town because East Ukrainians are legitimately pissed off at the Euromaidan and don't want to stand up for a government they see as illegitimate. They bought into fair elections and when their guy won the opposition took over the capital and forced him to leave, they're gonna want justice.

I wonder if there's a way out of the crisis for Ukraine. The current President apologizes for the way the Euromaidan went down, maybe pushes back the new elections a month because Donetsk is way too chaotic, and the Parliament appoints a new President from Yanokovych's party. The narrative goes from a coup to a forced resignation and the bottom falls out of Russia's propaganda campaign. At that point east Ukrainians hopefully feel comfortable kicking out the militants and things go back to normal.

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[Rich0]

This is only true if there is no sampling bias. If people opposed to the secession were more likely to boycott the vote than those who were in favor of it, then the result of the vote would be skewed.

Whether or not that is actually what happened is impossible to say without a better survey.

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[Rich0]

If there was no reason to fear a backlash, then yeah, the people didn't care one way or another.

So, which are you in favor of - locking up black people or killing them?

My point is that many might be opposed to the very holding of the vote in the first place.

Also, if I put an ad in the paper saying that you can show up at my house on Tuesday and vote on whether my city should secede from the US, does the outcome of the 15 votes I collect mean anything?

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[c6gunner]

Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders. On top of that, that country happens to control many of the major resource pipelines into and out of Russia. They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable.

Oh yeah. What better way to ensure stability than to start a civil war?

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[mattack2]

"essential tie"? There is a tie or not a tie.

What you're saying is that someone should not be allowed to win by 1 vote.

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[Teancum]

When US special forces out of uniform but still acting at the direction of the US government are seizing Mexican government offices by force let me know.

America has invaded and even occupied territory on a permanent basis that used to belong to Mexico. Check out the very Mexican cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe where soldiers of the U.S. Army in uniform occupied and seized Mexican government offices by force.

I'd call that a precedent. There is no reason it can't happen again and you are a fool to think historical situations don't repeat themselves.

Considering the utter lawlessness of many towns on the U.S.-Mexican border on the Mexican side of things, I would dare say furthermore that President Obama is ignoring his constitutional mandate to defend the USA if he fails to order special forces from at least occupying such Mexican government offices currently occupied by the drug cartels. It is a festering problem right now that could really blow up and become a major headache for the USA in the near future and already is a problem so far as the crime happening in Mexico is spreading to the USA as well.

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[thesupraman]

>There are other way to "get involved" than sending in special forces, supplying arms to insurgents, holding large military exercises on the borders
>and threatening invasion. Those are the tactics of an uncivilized bully.

Sounds a lot like the US in central america for the last, well, a long time..

Re:well

[shutdown -p now]

They already do - didn't you see "Putin for President"? Note the second to last line.

Re:well

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, no, it would hurt Russia more than it would hurt Europe. Europe has other sources of gas (heck, potentially even Iran could be used for that), while Russia doesn't have other customers. Well, there's China, but they do not need it, so they would pay a much lower price... and a lot of Russian budget hinges on gas prices.

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[shutdown -p now]

There have been other polls asking similar questions, not just in Crimea but also in other southern and eastern regions of Ukraine. The results vary from region to region, but they did show that 1) in Crimea, the majority was pro-independence from Ukraine, and 2) No other region had such a majority, but some regions - notably Donetsk and Lugansk - had strong pluralities. It was also a poll conducted by Ukrainian agency, so it's unlikely that it is biased towards Russia.

Anyway, as a person who follows several dozen popular blogs in both Russia and Ukraine, I can assure you that the split is very real, and the degree of mutual hatred between the opposing sides is growing rapidly (especially after the recent events in Odessa and the reaction to them).

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[jklovanc]

I never said the US wasn't an uncivilized bully from time to time. And not much, if any, of that has happened in the last 20 years or so. By the way, I am Canadian so I can call both of them bullies.

Re:well

[shutdown -p now]

You might want to look at the demographics [wikipedia.org] of the Ukraine. The Russian speaking percentage is 30%. The Ukrainian speaking percentage is 67%. So the less than 1/3 Russian speaking portion is nowhere near half.

The thing in Ukraine is that most people there are actually bilingual, so what numbers you get depends on what questions you ask. If the question is "what language do you consider native", you'll get numbers like the ones that you've quoted. If you instead ask "what language do you speak at home", then around 45% say that they use Russian (so a bunch of people consider Ukrainian native, but use Russian day-to-day, including private conversations). If you ask "what language do you speak most of the time" (i.e. including work, official communication, and other communication outside of home), then Russian becomes dominant nationally, and in most regions except for the western ones.

So it's technically true that "most of Ukraine is Ukrainian speakers". It is also true, at the same time, that most of Ukraine is Russian speakers :) the country is often compared to Canada with its language issue, but the situation in Ukraine is radically different from that in Canada because there are no clear geographic borders defining language use, and language affiliation only weakly correlates with national self-identification and other political questions (case in point: the majority of people on Maidan spoke Russian).

. The only thing close to a rights issue was a bill to make Ukrainian the only official language.

Not quite. That thing that you speak of was an attempt to repeal a law, enacted under Yanukovich, that created a special category called "regional languages", with recognized official status on the territories of regions where their speakers constituted a minority above a certain threshold (it was still up to the regions to take up that opportunity or not) - it did not say anything about the official national/state language, however. It was clearly aimed at Russian, but in practice it was also used by e.g. Hungarian speakers in Transcarpathia. That said, it's a poorly written law because it has many vague definitions, and because it doesn't define the lowest level of territorial division on which it applies - so there were cases of e.g. individual villages declaring their own regional language (examples included Russian, Hungarian, Roma, Bulgarian, Tatar etc) - while the larger entity of which they are a part of did not do so. Needless to say, at some point it makes quite a mess, administratively speaking.

So the idea was to repeal that law, and then enact a new law on languages. However, the president vetoed the repeal because it was seen as politically inappropriate at the time (as many russophones took the repeal as an assault on their language rights).

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[shutdown -p now]

I like the new President, I don't like how he came to power. Yanokovych was a terrible leader, but the last election he won seemed to be fair.

There's one catch here. The last election that Yanukovich won, he won under the 2004 Constitution, which defined a relatively weak presidential position alongside a strong parliament and prime minister (e.g. under pre-2004 constitution, president appointed ministers; after 2004, it was the parliament). However, shortly after being elected, Yanukovich appealed to the Constitutional Court to declare the 2004 constitutional amendments invalid, which the court did (though several judges resigned in protest, citing government pressure). A lot of people saw that as a de facto coup, since the guy basically claimed a mandate that he was not elected upon.

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[jklovanc]

If the Crimea was removed from the Ukraine the percentage would drop dramatically. As I said there probably should have been a referendum but after the election to replace the president who fled.

Re:well

[Darinbob]

Statistically irrelevant though.

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[shikaisi]

Indeed; they also know that the only way to ensure that Russia sells their oil to Europe would be to start a land war in Asia, and as we all should well know, you never want to be involved in a land war in Asia.

unless ... you're the Mongols

Re:well

[quantaman]

That's a great point though I still think replacing him with your own candidate is problematic. The best course would have been to force him to bring back the old constitution or resign, replace him with a Russian speaker, and call new elections.

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[jklovanc]

Look what has happened in Egypt when they overthrew their terrible, but democratically elected leader.

The elections of Mubarak were about as democratic as the elections in China

Despite its significance, the election was marred by voter fraud, ballot stuffing, boycotts, intimidation, vote-buying, and protests by opposition groups, leading for a low-turnout of under 30%.

I don't think for a moment that Crimeans or East Ukrainians actually want to join Russia,

Crmea might want to join Russia but I doubt most of Eastern Ukrainians want to.

You have a good plan there. It isd sad the Putin will not let it happen.

Re:well

[shikaisi]

Russian intelligence operatives along with Spetnaz Russian special forces out of uniform are occupying Ukrainian government offices. They are doing so with the assistance of several prominent Ukrainian oligarchs that backed and supported Yankovitch.

Weird Al is behind this? Now it's beginning to make sense.

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[quantaman]

Look what has happened in Egypt when they overthrew their terrible, but democratically elected leader.

The elections of Mubarak were about as democratic as the elections in China

Despite its significance, the election was marred by voter fraud, ballot stuffing, boycotts, intimidation, vote-buying, and protests by opposition groups, leading for a low-turnout of under 30%.

I was talking about Morsi, not Mubarak.

I don't think for a moment that Crimeans or East Ukrainians actually want to join Russia,

Crmea might want to join Russia but I doubt most of Eastern Ukrainians want to.

You have a good plan there. It isd sad the Putin will not let it happen.

But Crimea didn't want to join either, that's the whole point of this story, everyone knew the results were a fraud but no one knew what the real unification support was, now we do know, and even with all the propaganda and intimidation is was still only about 1/4.

For that reason if this news does reach East Ukraine it could make a difference. The reason for the fake results being as crazy as they were was to create a false consensus, people are afraid to speak up because they think they'll be the only ones. What this tells East Ukrainians is they aren't the only ones, and they have to speak up or they'll get caught by a similar referendum.

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[williamhb]

You do realize stopping the flow of gas to Europe would hurt Europe more than it would Russia, don't you? That is why there are only economic sanctions going on and not the stopping of gas purchases because Europe needs that gas. And Russia knows this.

The supply lines run from Russia to the west, not vice versa.

Economically, stopping the flow of gas would hurt Russia more than Europe. The problem, however (and why the EU is perhaps unlikely to impose sanctions on the gas supply) is that it would hurt Germany worse than France, Netherlands worse than ... The EU often ends up requiring consensus to act, and when something has an uneven impact on different EU countries, getting that consensus becomes a big painful political negotiation ("Well, if we're taking most of the pain on X, then we want concessions from you on Y in return, otherwise we won't agree to do it..."). As the EU has expanded, this has theoretically become combinatorially worse.

The EU finds it hard to act, and we end up with this painful political talk about "Strong action and strong sanctions" that so far have been trifling limitations on a handful of people. NATO finds it easier, but Ukraine isn't in NATO yet.

It all looks like a rather horrible disaster in progress. With worrying echoes of the beginning of WW1 and the treaty status of Belgium.

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[jklovanc]

The best course would have been to force him to bring back the old constitution or resign

It is difficult to force someone to do something when they are hiding in a neighboring country under that government's protection. He was declared "incapable of performing his dutie" after he fled by a vote of the Parliament. The constitution states the acting president would be the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and that is what happened. That Turchynov was voted in at the same time looks a little fishy until one sees that the previous Chairman resigned due to ill health.

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[rtb61]

Apart from one thing, "according to a major Ukrainian news site". So this from a country that screams fowl about snipers (of questionable origin) joined in by Western Media against right wing protesters and yet ho hums about using tanks and helicopter gunships to eliminate left wing protesters. This same news source also claims that people who seize government buildings are now terrorists and disabled the forums to prevent counter opinion. So they shut down the anti-riot police (questionable allegiance) but in turn let loose the military on anti-terrorist operations (only to see military unites evaporate rather than murder civilians). OH Yeah, I believe. Damn If I don't believe this comes right out of US=B$ Department of State.

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[quantaman]

The best course would have been to force him to bring back the old constitution or resign

It is difficult to force someone to do something when they are hiding in a neighboring country under that government's protection. He was declared "incapable of performing his dutie" after he fled by a vote of the Parliament.

Hence "would have been" :)

The constitution states the acting president would be the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and that is what happened. That Turchynov was voted in at the same time looks a little fishy until one sees that the previous Chairman resigned due to ill health.

He fell ill the day they impeached Yanokovych. He really shouldn't have celebrated becoming President by going out for discount sushi!!

Even if he wasn't forced out they should have voted in someone else from the Party of Regions. I still wouldn't call it a coup, it was unfair but the country probably would have recovered after a round of counterprotests and the next election. Unfortunately Putin wasn't willing to let it.

Re:well

[maccodemonkey]

Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders.

A civil war that started as a limited domestic disturbance until Russia themselves escalated it.

On top of that, that country happens to control many of the major resource pipelines into and out of Russia. They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable. Do you expect that the US would do any differently if Juarez or Tijuana truly became a Narco-stronghold?

Funny how that works. Russia destabilizes a country, and gosh... now they have to go in and take it over. It's unstable after all!

Don't rush so quickly to judge. The media on both sides of the pond spins the story to make their respective side look good.

Uh huh.

There's a reason Germany has basically decided Russia is entirely disconnected from reality or not being honest.

If Russia was so interested in Ukraine being stable, they could have stabilized Crimea and left it in Ukrainian hands.

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[slackware 3.6]

You are an idiot. There is no pro-Russian half there is a pro Russian minority. Alex Jones and his like are spewing the same crap you are. Are you a 9/11 truther as well?

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[slackware 3.6]

Vlad, good Ukrainian name there. Or does it have more of a Russian feel to it? And especially how you forgot about the three year occupation. Vlad the German just doesn't make sense.

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[cyn1c77]

If the actual poll results are true, it suggest Ukraine is not that divided fundamentally at all, and that a small group of pro-Russian agitators lead by Russian military personnel out of uniform are creating this civil war.

Wait... you need poll results to draw that conclusion?

Re:well

[slackware 3.6]

The grandson of Joseph Stalin wants a criminal case to be opened against Ukrainian investigators of the 1930s mass famine. Last week a Ukrainian court put the blame for the famine on Stalin and several other officials. Evgeny Dzhugashvili believes the sentence is libelous and wants the agents of the Ukrainian Security Service involved in the case as well as the judges who reviewed it to be punished for the decision, he told the Ukrainian newspaper Sevodnya. http://rt.com/news/stalins-gra...

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[jklovanc]

Last week a Ukrainian court put the blame for the famine on Stalin and several other officials.

That was in 2010.
So a Russian propaganda outlet runs a story about a lawsuit brought by the grandson of one of the biggest murderer's in history. Do you thing the grandson of Stalin might be a bit biased?

The point that makes it obvious is the fact that of the millions of people who died most were from the Ukraine. One estimate from the Encyclopedia Britannica is that of the 6-8 million who dies 4-5 million were from the Ukraine. This is odd considering that most of Russia's grain and many other foodstuffs comes from the Ukraine. When there is a famine one would expect the production areas to be least hard hit. That was not the case because Stalin exported most of the food. He also wanted fewer Ukrainians so break any Ukrainian nationalism and allow Russians to occupy the land.

Re:well

[Eunuchswear]

Putin started by disarming Ukraine (Ukraine had loads of nuclear weapons before they stupidly let Putin take them away)

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia from 31 December 1999 (acting) - 7 May 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

On June 1, 1996 Ukraine became a non-nuclear nation when it sent the last of its 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine

So Putin managed to get Ukraine to disarm three years before he took power.

Idiot.

Re:well

[dave420]

You are an idiot. Sorry. I hate being rude, but wow. You think Nostradamus warned us by writing vague nonsense down which only becomes apparent after the very thing you purport it to predict happens? You need help.

Re:well

[QQBoss]

There is major oil in Florida, or at least under the continental shelf within the EEZ. However, Cuba would probably prefer that they didn't have to compete with Russia for the oil they are slant drilling (using Chinese drilling platforms, instead of US or EU-owned platforms due to sanctions).

Good for them, btw, as there doesn't appear to be any illegality (other than who has the will and biggest guns having the final say as to what is illegal) and obviously it is immoral for the USA to access that oil, anyway.

Man, so many grenades, so little time.

Re:well

[MightyMartian]

A self appointed government, mind you, that was little more than a Russian facade. Even where foreign powers like NATO have gone in and essentially forced a referendum, like Kosovo and Iraq, there were international observers and general agreement that, whatever you thought of the legitimacy of the events leading up to those points, the elections themselves were free and fair.

Nothing like that exists for Crimea. It was a scam referendum with a preordained conclusion.

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[HornWumpus]

That would have left it in the hands of the Floriduh supreme court. Who had already fucked their job up, essentially dooming Florida to have no electoral college votes.

They wanted that, as they are partisan democrats and they knew their guy had lost.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, seeing regular Joes in the US with a few legal, widely owned semi-automatic rifles is totally comparable with seeing masked, unidentified guys in military gear, slinging AN-94s, GM-94 slide action grenade launchers, Vintorez silenced sniper rifles, all of which are pretty much the exclusive domain of Russian Special Forces, and as such are not widely inventoried outside of Spetnaz armories.

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[Culture20]

Ah, I see now. I had reading comprehension problems. Didn't realize the choices were (X1 || X2) I thought it was (X1 && X2) || (!X1 && !X2). The vagaries of English.

Re:well

[umghhh]

It is painful is it not? To look at it and see that propaganda does not work as intended on all. Do not worry though - most people believe in whatever the magic box is telling them.

Re:well

[Parafilmus]

There is a tie or not a tie. What you're saying is that someone should not be allowed to win by 1 vote.

Our vote-counting methods are not accurate to within a single vote.

So if an election has a single-vote margin of victory, we'll never know about it.

When a margin of victory is smaller than the counting method's margin of error, that means we can't really tell who received more votes. This is rarely a problem, because the margin of victory is usually greater than the margin or error.

Re:well

[Sciath]

According to FactCheck, Bush would've won only if a "limited" recount had been completed [which is what the Fla Supreme Court had ordered]. However, had a recount of all "disputed" ballots been allowed to be recounted, then Gore would've won. Pick your poison.

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[quantaman]

The regular Joes in the US love wearing military fatigues. As to the exclusive gear you mentioned, supposedly the GM-94 has also shown up in Libya. Saying they're not widely inventoried outside of Spetnaz isn't the same as saying they're exclusive to Spetnaz. If these guns are pro-Russia they're gonna want guns that the Russian special forces use.

I'm just not convinced the evidence of Spetnaz being there is conclusive.

Re:well

[scubamage]

If you think that "a few legal, widely owned semi-automatic rifles" are the only guns owned out there, you're in for a pretty rude awakening. There are a LOT of guns out there that are owned less-than-legally by both criminals and aficionados alike. Just take a look at any large drug bust in the US where weapons are seized, you'll be amazed to see what sort of fun firearms people who flout the law can collect.

Re:well

[scubamage]

If it's like most Russian firearms, there are almost inevitably clones being produced in China. Look at the SKS and AK. (I am saying this as someone who is ignorant of the GM-94 so I could easily be wrong here).

Re:well

[scubamage]

You really need to learn US history a bit better. About US training and sending people to kill protesters, google "Kent State massacre." About the US invading and rigging an election, google "Operation AJAX" and learn a heck of a lot about why almost every country in the old WWI mandate hates us. As for not destablizing Mexico, maybe not to annex it, but destablizing. Google "atf gunwalking scandal."

Re:well

[romons]

If you consider the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, and the Financial crisis, the loss of personal liberty due to overreaction to 9/11, not to mention the huge surge in inequality due to the bush tax cuts, I suspect that we all lost this election. If you add in another 10 years of renewed gusto in carbon emissions, that is just icing on the cake.

However, it wasn't all a loss. We did get a few fun moments, like Bush and the aircraft carrier, bush and the fireman, bush and the shoe, bush and the hurricane, etc. He and his band of nitwits were at least good for comic relief.

Re: well

[gmyuriy]

There is no spin of the story. there are well publicized (at least in Russian newspapers) statements by officials in Putin administration what Russia will do if Yanukovych fails to disband Maidan [by any means possible]. and that was, force Ukraine federalize power to the regions, instigate hostile takeover in eastern regions ala Crimea, followed by referendum under unidentified armed people, and followed by absorption of said regions into Russia. the plan voiced and published quite openly back in December/January, all the way to Dnepr. So what you have now in Ukraine is not a country on brink of civil war. What you have is 5 years in making plan by Putin to re-absorb Ukraine and reinstate USSR, with Yanukovych de-facto destroying Ukrainian military and police ever since he came into office, transferring 30 billion USD of "government" money in January to Russia in cash and another 100 billion by other means earlier, and then deserting to Russia when things got uncomfortably hot. Once that sabotage stage of Putin's plan came to end, read Maydan, the active phase of the plan kicked in. That comprised sending in russian sabotage units from Crimea and east, led by people who nearly openly identify themselves in papers like Komsomolskaya Pravda as GRU operatives with the task to instigate or mimick, whichever necessary, civil unrest in Easter regions, yada yada read above, suppress in the most violeng form any pro-ukrainian dissent, so that it can't develop into anything before Russian troops arve, etcr. this s is accompanied by strong Russian propaganda on world stage, that worked for them so well with Assad, that consists of , no matter what actually happens, claim that Ukraine is on brink of civil war, Ukraine is shooting on peaceful citizens, Ukraine should move its army out of eastern regions, and - deny any involvement just as it worked so well for Assad. Even as pro-ukranian rallies are violently beaten one after another, pro-ukrainian activists shot and found dead, and overall the truth emerges that's what's going on is orchestrated Russian special forces spectacle, and noone in their clear mind and under 50 years of age, who had seen Russia from outside, ever wants to live under Putin. So that's the writing on the wall, now go ahead and correlate that with what yo learn from media. In fact western published actions are way way pro-russian compared to say Ukrainian newspapers; you can't imagine what actual shit is going on in Ukraine's eastern regions if you just read CNN or BBC - people are running from slavyansk, for example, saying that they are effectively being held hostage by foreign spec ops UN t that took over the city, speaking *Chechen* at the checkpoints, but the above is the generally correct picture.

Re:well

[BoFo]

I think the point was that had the US Supreme Court not intervened, stopping the recount and then declaring it was too late to continue, the recount of ALL ballots order by the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... This was based on the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations. Not that it matters. It seems clear that the US establishment was determined to have Dubya as president, and they were forced to use their reliable 5-4 Supreme Court majority as a final ploy.

Re:well

[Xest]

"Russia itself has not invaded Ukraine."

This is false. Even if you don't believe any of the agent provocateurs in Eastern Ukraine are Russian, Putin himself has now come out and admitted the guys in Crimea that it previously said were simply activists were in fact Russian troops, and that it did so to protect Russian people there.

At this point there's simply no question - Russian troops have been engaged in an invasion of Ukraine as admitted now by Putin himself.

The only remaining question now that is unanswered is whether Eastern Ukrainian rebels are in fact Russian soldiers. Russia obviously says no, but given that some of the faces there are the same folks that did the same thing in Crimea that Russia now admitted were Russian forces it seems silly to believe Russia is not also in Eastern Ukraine.

Besides, the recent shooting down of 3 Ukrainian military helicopters suggests they are. Keep in mind that Syrian rebels have been explicitly supported by Turkey and Qatar militarily now for 3 years and even they haven't been able to get hold of ManPADs and succesfully shoot down Syrian helicopters it's nonsense to believe the trouble makers in Eastern Ukraine are anything other than professional military. Their equipment alone costs more than over a decade of Ukrainian salary and isn't the sort of shit you can just pick up in an army surplus store, not even in Ukraine with it's post-soviet military sell offs. This stuff is modern, advanced, and expensive.

Re:well

[Xest]

The difference is that Americans are smothered in disaposable income being one of the most wealthy countries in the world, whereas the equipment the guys in Ukraine are using would cost between 10 and 20 years of your average Ukrainian's salary.

And no, the anti-aircraft missiles aren't feasible - Syrian rebels have been trying to acquire these for years and have had the explicit support of Qatar, Turkey and others yet have still failed to acquire them. Even the Taliban that outright used to have them having been given stingers by the Americans to use against the Russians in the 80s have only been able to get a handful operation, and have shot at most one helicopter down with them.

Also, many of the weapons we're talking about weren't even in existence in the sorts of wars where people tend to source such equipment, such as the Yugoslav wars which have been a major source of hand grenades and so forth. The weapons are just too modern to have come from the fall of the USSR, or from any major war since. The only place you're going to get stuff that new is straight from the factory.

Re:well

[Xest]

"You do realize stopping the flow of gas to Europe would hurt Europe more than it would Russia, don't you?"

No it wouldn't. Russia's entire economy is founded on it to the point it simply cannot service it's debts without it and so would default resulting in a collapse of it's economy. Europe in contrast can get gas from elsewhere, including fellow European countries like Norway.

The reason Europe hasn't stopped buying Russian gas yet is two fold:

1) Causing economic collapse of Russia is a last ditch option, Putin is, if nothing else, a known quantity. If Russia collapses who takes over the world's largest/second largest nuclear arsenal? Who makes sure Russian commanders don't go shipping nukes off to batshit crazy lands like North Korea to make themselves insanely rich? It's probably containable, but it's a risk that shouldn't be taken if necessary.

2) Although Europe can live without Russian gas it would cost more to switch suddenly to other suppliers, that would reduce economic competitiveness to a degree and reduce the disposable income of Europeans due to higher fuelling costs. This wouldn't cause economic collapse in Europe like it would Russia but it would leave people unhappy as it'd likely mean a few more years of recession or negligible growth until supplies of gas to increase competition and reduce prices again came online such as that to start being shipped from the US.

Europe has the power to crush Russia and bankrupt it, but right now it's an option that has risks and has burdens that people do not want to suffer unless absolutely necessary.

See here for how utterly dependant on trade with Europe Russia is:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

In contrast Europe isn't as dependent on Russia for trade, it can easily live without it. In fact, only one or two countries in Europe actually make more from Russia than Russia makes from the (again, largely because of Russian energy imports), one of those countries is the UK who now has one of the strongest Western economies and could most afford to foot the loss anyway.

Re:well

[Xest]

"it was also taken for granted before the vote that there was a large majority for secession"

No it wasn't, the only polls from before Russia invaded showed that there was a distinct lack of support for joining Russia with the highest proportion of support being at only 41%:

http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...

There was slightly higher support for outright independence (i.e. no attachment to either country) at 51% but that can hardly be called a "large majority", it's a majority of 1%.

So these leaked figures are actually pretty reasonable - they're a more realistic swing (especially given Russia's military occupation of the place) by way of a 26% swing away from support for joining Russia, compared to Putin's claimed results which suggest a 42% swing towards joining Russia.

Sorry but whether you were there 18 months ago or not, what you say has more of a tone of the typical hipster "stick it to the man" nonsense ideology on Ukraine, rather than what Crimeans actually felt. You're parroting widely discredited nonsense, which is trivially rubbished by things such as the poll done above before shit kicked off that hence gives us a far more reasonable view of what Crimeans actually wanted - hint, it was far closer to these supposed leaked results, than it was Putin's claimed actual results.

Re:well

[Xest]

You can say the same things about English too though but it doesn't really tell us much about their ethnic identity. The Scottish have their own languages (scots and scottish gaelic), as do the Welsh, but they pretty much all identify as Scottish and Welsh respectively. Try telling a Scotsman he's English because that's what he speaks and see how well that works out for you for example :)

Even if Russian is the dominant language, I think the fact people actually say "Ukrainian" in the poll still tells us all we need to know - that 67% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Ukrainian category, whilst 30% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Russian category. Even if the figures don't tell an honest picture about language use, they tell us about an honest a picture as we can get about preferred ethnic leaning - that the vast majority of Ukrainians prefer to declare themselves in the Ukrainian categories, rather than Russian categories.

Re:well

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, but at no point did I say that russophone Ukrainians are Russian.

My point was rather than language is not a good proxy for where one's loyalties lies. Curiously enough, neither does ethnic self-identification, though that has a better correlation than language. A lot of people in the eastern regions do consider themselves Ukrainian while also wanting independence (or even "reunion" with Russia). Heck, a lot of Russian citizens identify as Ukrainian - for example, Sergei Lukyanenko, which has a very telltale last name ending in in -o, and who went on record to say that "there is no such state as Ukraine" - and who considers Ukrainian and Russian to be two "sub-ethnic groups" of one single Eastern Slav ethnic group that should be unified in a single state...

Thing is, Ukrainian as clear self-identification is much younger than Scottish... and historically there hasn't been an independent political entity that corresponds closely to the borders of modern Ukraine. So different regions derive their identity from different historical periods and entities - Galicia is the successor of Halych-Volynian kingdom, Zaporizhia comes from the Sich etc. People from either one might count themselves Ukrainian, and they both have a point, but they can have radically different outlook as to what it means, exactly.

Basically, in western regions, ethnic self-identification follows political affiliation pretty closely. In southeastern regions, especially those on the very border with Russia, and also in Crimea, it's largely orthogonal.

As far as language goes, if someone declares Ukrainian their native language, and especially if they say that they're more proficient in it, then they're very likely to support the new Ukrainian government, and oppose separatism or annexation by Russia (i.e. people who strongly affiliate with Ukrainian culture also affiliate with independent Ukraine as a nation-state). OTOH, if someone declares Russian to be their language of choice, it doesn't tell much about them either way.

Re:well

[cwsumner]

Actually, the entire thing was about forcing the use of electronic voting machines. All parties thought that they would be the ones able to "hack" the software and steal elections!

Re:well

[cwsumner]

Too many people think that voting is like a test in school. That you are supposed to vote for the one that you think will win, instead of the one that should have the job. Bad mistake...

Re:well

[Rich0]

Ah, I see now. I had reading comprehension problems. Didn't realize the choices were (X1 || X2) I thought it was (X1 && X2) || (!X1 && !X2). The vagaries of English.

I've been speaking English my entire life and have gained a true appreciation for just how messed up a language it is!

Re:well

[almitydave]

...the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations...

Your link discusses a partial review of overvotes in January 2001. We've been discussing a more nearly comprehensive review done much later. Try to keep up.

Re:well

[niftymitch]

Crimea=Florida
But who's counting..

Hello Chad, How is it hanging?

You know that this is not just silly news images and
sound bites generated by news outlets with agenda.

This is bigger, blatant and outright corruption.

The astounding thing in Florida was how close it was.
Neither side contests the vast majority of ballots cast in Florida.
In this case the vast majority of ballots are in question.

The game in Florida was how well the machines mobalized
the historic non-voters. One hint was the android/iphone
application that Democratic canvassers had. They could walk up to a
doorstep and with a click connect to a data base that told
them if the occupant(s) were registered and for what party
and if they had voted.

A democratic canvasser might pass a republican home
and knock on a democratic home and get that vote out
often providing transportation portal to portal on election
day. A lot of energy went into mail in ballots.

Some of these canvassing groups were funded by federal funds
but had clear agenda: racial, social, age based, union based
and political. Agenda that were well within the law as it stands
today since most were never put on the record.

The old phrase "Birds of a feather flock together." applies here
those that recruit recruit within their comfort zone. Some of
this is good, some bad, some can be made to sound good, some
can be made to sound bad.

Pay attention... There is an electoral college end run in progress.
Again within the law but enough change to upset the close balance
that we now expect to see.

As for organizations providing rides portal to portal for voters
there is no evidence for multiple stop fraud but the same vehicle
does make multiple stops and it is unclear if the occupants
are different or the same. This lack of clarity invites FUD that
feeds voter ID laws. A better solution IMO is the finger in ink solution
that we see on TV and in the US it could be UV ink that makes no
statement at the grocery store or other public place.

Re:well

[stoatwblr]

The choices given were

1: secession to independence
2: Joining Russia

Nothing about staying with Ukraine

It's kind of hard to vote against an option if the contrary position isn't on offer and I'm not overly surpised there was such a low turnout. What other option did people have if they didn't agree with either choice?

Again?

[jbmartin6]

Given how many lies and half-truths have been circulated by the press about this, I am not sure I believe this at all.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it any easier though? Sure, the Russians are probably fiddling everything they can, but do you think the west isn't?

Re:Again?

[clarkkent09]

It is, since it is well known that Crimea is heavily pro Russian. If you know anything about Crimea you would find it impossible to believe that they would vote to stay with Ukraine rather than join Russia or even that the result would be close like TFA claims.

Re:Again?

[Nexus7]

Most people in that region identify with Russia. They were looking at an EU austerity regime vs free money from Russia.

Yeah, I find the original results easier to believe.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

The results of Crimea is not hard to believe. They had similar referendum with just as much support for Russia in the past. They voted in overwhelming majority to support greater autonomy and dual citizenship with Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_referendum,_1994

Note the date: 1994. No imaginary Russian troops to allegedly pressure Crimeans.

Obama ain't fooling anyone with his propaganda. Sorry.

Re:Again?

[bobbied]

Given how many lies and half-truths have been circulated by the press

Ahh... Just stop there and you got it...

Re:Again?

[PortHaven]

Cause it's large Tartar population, and 25% Ukrainian population wouldn't oppose. Heck, how many Russians oppose Putin in Russia. Just can get the guy unelected though.

Re:Again?

[MightyMartian]

How could the West have fiddled the Crimean referendum when the Russians controlled the territory, ran the polls and had a willing and colluding agent in the government of Crimea?

Re:Again?

[gman003]

No.

Crimea was pro-secession, but not by a significant amount, and they were most definitely NOT pro-Russian.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the article tells a bold face lie, and that this commentator has a history of IMHO excessive spin on the topic, I dont know, is OP kidding?

Article quote:

"No international observers were allowed. This pro-Russia election pressure would have raised the already weak vote in favor of annexation."

Facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014#Observers

West-aligned International observer groups refused the open invitation, 'conveniently' creating a situation where the only attending observers
could be attacked via straw man as either 'pro russia' or 'too small of a sample size/easily manipulated'.

So - this guy is clearly *lying* or doing *terrible research* about *key points* ...

Guess he's not that good at his 'research' despite his fellowship at a west-aligned think tank:

http://www.hoover.org/fellows/10125
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution

either that or hes confusing his own interests in the matter in order to make a one sided point.

But I guess I'm just 'kidding'.

Re:Again?

[Vicarius]

Cause it's large Tartar population...

Large compared to what? To population of Tatars in Boston or New York? They are a minority in Crimea.

... and 25% Ukrainian population wouldn't oppose...

Not all ethnic Ukrainians are pro-Ukraine.

...Heck, how many Russians oppose Putin in Russia...

Only the vocal minority in the bigger cities. Most of Russia, which is mostly rural, supports him. Those who like Putin, just go about their lives instead of wasting time campaigning against him.

... Just can get the guy unelected though.

Can't unelect a democratically elected president when most of the country actually likes him.

Re:Again?

[Katatsumuri]

First, any public poll with close to 90% outcome should be suspect.

There are 10% Crimean Tatar and 25% Ukrainian nationals in the Crimea, that makes Putin's figures unbelievable.

And even people who identify with Russia do not necessarily all want to actually join it under Putin's regime.

So, even though there are no proofs for this story and you are right to doubt it, too, you should doubt the official results more.

Also, regardless of any poll results, the poll was illegal under Ukrainian law, and you cannot legally come to another country, conduct a regional poll, and take a part of the territory.

Re:Again?

[Katatsumuri]

While I do believe that these figures are closer to reality, but given a complete lack of evidence, I agree this "leak" is not very useful.

Re:Again?

[guacamole]

Tatar population is not large at all, about 10%. Even with the 25% Ukrainians, they won't make a majority.

Re:Again?

[guacamole]

It seems much more plausible that more ethnic russians would prefer to stay part of ukraine than ethnic ukrainians would prefer to join with russia because some will be happy with the status quo, but ethnic ukrainians have no particular tie to Russia, they don't even speak the same language.

Why? Your comment is laughable. Zero evidence. Pure speculation.

Not only Crimea is heavily Russian ethnically (60% Russian, and the rest speak Russian language anyways), but it is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet ships and headquarters. So, the whole economy depends on Russian navy and tourists. Typical public sector salaries were twice as low under Ukrainian rule compared to Russia.

Re:Again?

[Mysticalfruit]

I would suspect that when Putin's involved... there's not such thing as free money... Also Russia isn't exactly soaking in cash at the moment. Ukraine's infrastructure is a mess and it's going to take a lot of money to fix it. Once your average Russian citizen sees how much it's going to cost in actual Rubles, they'll be pissed about it. There won't be anything they can do about it, not even complain, but they can be pissed about it.

If Russia decides to not fix up Ukraine just take the territory, that's going to look *really* bad too.

Re:Again?

[CanHasDIY]

Yeah man, it's much harder to believe this than the originally posted results.

Are you kidding me?

I don't see where OP ever said that this claim was "harder to believe" than the previous one; rather, they merely pointed out that, due to the media's role as 'unofficial propaganda outlets' for whatever regime happens to be footing the bill this week, anything that's claimed but not verified is suspect information. And he's right about that.

Of course, it seems you've already decided which "truth" you're going to believe, facts (or lack thereof) be damned.

And that's why you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Chechen republic, there were 99% of votes given to Putin during last elections. The current president of Chechnya is ex-field commander, who was fighting against the federal army. Against Russians. Now he is fervent supporter of "the regime". The point is - Putin is a way better chess player than Kasparov.

Perhaps in a well fed country, that haven't seen a war on it's territory for ages, 90-something percents is a clear sign of cheating. But in a country on the edge of devastating civil war, especially taking into account the circumstances, it's pretty much believable.

Also, the Crimea is a place of Russian military glory. Russians had a few wars for Crimea - with Turkey and even with England (read: West). Every second street in Crimea is named after some military event or hero. The red should be a natural color of that land. So, if there would be a cheating of such scale, people would fight. But guess what? There was only one man shot during the whole conflict, and the shots were made by a brainwashed teenager who came from western part of Ukraine.

The moral of the story - everyone is wrong. Americans about Russians and vice versa. You are fed with information that your government is interested to feed you with. And the same is with Russians. And with nearly every other country. It even became a new norm. Our hatred is their money. So if you want to hate [Russians | Americans] because they are [whatever you don't like] - go on, hate. Just don't let your hatred turn into actions, or there will be no children left to remember your stupidity. And theirs.

Re:Again?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

First, any public poll with close to 90% outcome should be suspect.

There are 10% Crimean Tatar and 25% Ukrainian nationals in the Crimea, that makes Putin's figures unbelievable.

And even people who identify with Russia do not necessarily all want to actually join it under Putin's regime.

This is quite right. I'm an American and I've spent a grand total of several months in Ukraine in the first half of the decade of the 2000s. I can speak Russian well. I was by pure luck, not by plan, on the ground in Ukraine while the Orange Revolution of 2004 was happening and I saw if first hand. What was just amazing at the time is how insanely bad the Russians and their Ukrainian lackeys are at cheating in elections. In 2004 some of the oblasts (this is something like a state or region) reported vote totals approaching 100% for the entire state for Yanukovich. I had no doubt that Yanukovich easily won his home oblast, but the 98% in favor of him reported in the first (later thrown out) voting was just absurd. Other regions came out with equally absurd totals, such as Odessa with something like 90%. I believe that Yanukovich truly won every oblast he was said to have won in the original 2004 elections, but none of them were won with the vote totals reported. The Russians and their Ukrainian lackeys like to report huge super majorities in their favor and no sane person believes the vote totals reported.

Re:Again?

[JackDW]

I don't believe this either. There's no corroborating evidence, not even a screenshot (though that could be trivially faked).

This is a conspiracy theory and it's as nonsensical as thinking that Bush's "people" accidentally leaked "the truth" while they were supposed to be covering up "the facts" about 9/11.

Take note of the names of the Slashdotters who automatically believe this sort of thing, and give their opinions an appropriate level of credit.

Re:Again?

[jbmartin6]

As I recall, they said 90% of the votes were pro-secession, with something like 80% eligible turnout. So to me, that was saying that all the Russians voted, 10% said no, and the other 20% (non-Russians who would have said no) stayed home. So I thought that lined up around the ethnic divisions within reason if we assume that almost all the ethnic Russians would say "yes". I'm not saying it wasn't faked, just saying that was how I looked at the numbers at first.

Re:Again?

[IgShaman81]

"Huge" does not mean 97%. It actually does not translate into numbers at all. Proper elections do, give or take a few points. As a russian-speaking Ukrainian, having visited Crimea over 15 times in past 10 years or so, I can not confirm any massive support for joining Russia. A guy who was appointed as an interim PM of Crimea during referendum preparations - Axenov - had 3% support in Crimean parliament only 2 years ago. There is no democratic way he could've become PM, unless we are speaking of Russian democratic ways, of course. The most tragic outcome here is that 85% of Crimean population are now hostages to the neo-communist regime, via a military aggression - and this happened in Europe, in 21st century.

Re:Again?

[jbmartin6]

No I'm not kidding you, Coward. Is that how you judge what is true, based on what is "harder to believe"? Your feeling of "truthiness" aside, evidence is a better method.

Re:Again?

[IgShaman81]

Being pro-Russian ehtically and culturally does not imply being pro-Kremlin or pro-Putin. One simply can not guess anything on this matter. Proper polls and democratic referendums are the only known methods. One such poll was performed in Crimea in Feb 2014 and yielded 41% pro-Putin support. Feel free to interpret whichever way you are biast the most.. Afterall, it is the only kind of democracy russians know of - a post-war, post-election wild guessing.

Re:Again?

[Hypotensive]

Interesting times, as the Chinese say. My sincere condolences, but what do you mean by "neo-communist" - surely the Putin regime is north-north-east on the political compass, where Marx and Engels are due west?

Re:Again?

[Strange Quark Star]

From what I heard from my relatives in Simferopol, even the Crimean Tatars lined up to vote "for Putin" and now that Russian passports are starting to be issued the Tatars are the first in line to get them. It's quite telling that even most of the Tatars choose Russia as the lesser evil.

And from what I can tell by living the first part of my life there and regularly visiting my friends and relatives, the general populace is really fed up with the Ukrainian government and, if old enough, reminisce about and miss the Soviet days, which now translates to longing for reunion with Russia.

It is really bizarre to us (ethnic Russians from/living in Simferopol, Crimea) how thoroughly the western media misses the fact that most Crimeans really want to join Russia or at least part from Ukraine.

Re:Again?

[IgShaman81]

Here in Ukraine, what we mean by "communism" is what Westerns know as soviet bolshevism. So my bad, and hope this makes things clearer - also in case you were wondering why we are so opposed to Putin - his rule means going back to the place our parents escaped from so happily.

Re:Again?

[Darinbob]

However the state has a huge control over the media in Russia. So it remains to be seen if the average Russian voter is going to see an unbiased view of the issue. If the ruble goes down and Putin sends a memo that all newscasters must blame it on the west, then that's what the Russians will hear.

Re:Again?

[Darinbob]

Why would observers come and watch an obviously invalid election, which was called for by a self-appointed government at a time when there were Russian soldiers and strong arm thugs on the ground?

Re:Again?

[Darinbob]

Another referendum, as equally invalid as the previous referendum. When mobs take over government buildings and tell the citizens that there will be a vote, then this is not a valid referendum.

Re:Again?

[Darinbob]

I agree that the eastern Ukraine militants are most likely home grown opportunists, of the same variety that were in Ukraine but without the direct support of Russian soldiers. It is uncertain if there's a lot of indirect support from Russia though. I'm sort of inclined to believe against that, just because this new group is so obviously a bunch of thugs and neo-fascists that it really ruins Putin's storyline that Kiev is the true fascist government and not the democracy loving pro-Russian people who only want greater autonomy. I do think these new militants are embarrassing Putin, especially if he has some sort of long term plan that's being messed up.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you realize, of course, that your ethnic Russian relatives and your ethnic Russian self aren't exactly disinterested witnesses?

Re:Again?

[superwiz]

From what I read, the Russian propaganda machine has the entire country convinced that Ukraine has inundated the entire world with its propaganda. The only country impervious to Ukraine's influence are Russia, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. Yeah, Soviet Union lived by propaganda. They know what they are doing. Arguing with Russians is pointless at the moment. They don't actually know that there blanket censorship going on. They just shout down any voices of reason and spread FUD. The Soviet Propaganda is the genuine article. It's not some wanna-be propaganda. They actually ran a country based on it. Everything else, including every marketing campaign you've ever seen, is just a poor imitation.

Re:Again?

[shutdown -p now]

Most ethnic Ukrainians are bilingual, actually. And in Crimea in particular, 77% consider Russian their native language (it's in the same Wikipedia article you've linked to) - so obviously quite a few people who identify as ethnic Ukrainians do so.

Understand that ethnicity has practically nothing to do with one's political position in this conflict, and language is only a weak correlation (if you watch the videos, both pro-Russian and anti-Russian protesters mostly speak Russian outside of formal occasions). It's all about cultural self-identification - Soviet/Orthodox Empire (some people manage to combine both even!) versus independent westernized Ukraine.

Re:Again?

[MightyMartian]

The one truth we know is that Russia has violated Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Re:Again?

[Hypotensive]

I think that no matter how much he tries to dress up his new empire in back-in-the-USSR clothes, it will always be run behind the scenes by a bunch of capitalist oligarchs. Not that this makes it any better for you, I'm afraid.

Re:Again?

[CaptSolo]

Intercepted phone call (video w. English subs) re. how Russian politicians are orchestrating the May 11 "referendum" in Donestk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

In Crimea vote they might have been more subtle but there still were armed "pro-Russia" forces (in contact w. Russia) inciting and carrying out Crimea vote. When you hear text like this re. Donetsk (in the link above):

"write something like 99% [voting "yes"] down - are you going to [actually] walk around and collect [vote] papers? are you fucking insane?"

... it casts more doubt on the Crimea vote too. After all, same forces are working in both places.

come on, this is RUSSIA

[alen]

Edward Snowden fled there to escape US tyranny

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[Bacon Bits]

Sometimes the only person who stands up to a bully is another bully.

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[evilviper]

North Korea is probably a nice country, if you are in the leadership, or a VIP like Dennis Rodman, too.

I've considered taking my savings, and living like a king in some 3rd world shithole before, myself, too. That some people have it good, doesn't make it a nice place.

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

you'll be a tempting target for K&R,

First or second edition of K&R?

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[AdamColley]

Second (or third)

Pre ANSI is not so fun these days -.o;

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[swb]

The problem is, as an outsider, you're on the hook for protection money forever. You've got no leverage and they will just bleed you dry and then dispose of you.

As an insider, well, look what happens with top guys in DPRK when they fall out of favor -- they get hauled out of bed, shoved into a car and get shot someplace. And I don't think it's so easy to just be a low-profile yes-man, either. You don't get to be in the leadership or stay there without playing the game, which means angling for the spot above you while somebody angles for your spot.

Re:come on, this is RUSSIA

[umghhh]

This I am afraid describes the situation acurately.

I was born in one of the eastern block countries and every time I look in the media these days a very uneasy feeling overwhelms me - all the strores are somehow 'almost' true but together they do not convince. The 'good' guys in Kiev are not people I would like to socialize with or have in government of the country I live in. As much as I am sorry for the people in Ukraine that have to suffer because of this I do not see any side I can honestly and with ease of mind support. Which to me means not meddle with Ukrainian affairs and send enforcements to Baltic states just to be on the safe side. But as it is usually the case we will be lucky if the only cost of this for us will be more our tax money transferred trough Ukraine to oligarchs all over the place.

Truth is always the first casualty of war

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will ever know what the 'actual' vote was. All that matters is who has the bigger stick.

Re:Truth is always the first casualty of war

[bill_mcgonigle]

All that matters is who has the bigger stick.

But we need to know if 51% of the people want to clobber other other 49% with that stick so it will be fair!

In-window popup autoplaying video ads with sound?

[Dachannien]

Seriously, DICE? I'm sitting here looking at the first few comments, hoping for a little clarity and maybe even some insightful discussion - you know, Slashdot style - when the window contents scroll up and a video ad, with sound, starts playing.

I am done with this piece of shit website. How do I delete my account?

History lesson

[DaveAtFraud]

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

  Joseph Stalin

Sounds like Putin has studied history.

Re:History lesson

[DaveAtFraud]

I've been suspicious of the counts since the day they were announced. Either the participation claimed is way too high or a lot of ethnic Ukraineans and Tartars voted to join Russia which seems highly unlikely. Either way, it looks like the vote was about as fair as elections in Uncle Joe's time.

So, I have studied the facts on the ground and the leaked results sound more like what I expected given the population demographics of the Crimea. Not saying that they are accurate but they more closely match what would be expected than the official numbers.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:History lesson

[superwiz]

Sounds like Putin has studied history.

Really? You think the man who outmaneuvered a democratic revolution and rose to become a new Soviet leader from a rank of a KGB lieutenant colonel is a man who may have studied history? You think? You realize that his entire public persona is borrowed from Theodore Roosevelt, do you not?

Re:History lesson

[DaveAtFraud]

...
You realize that his entire public persona is borrowed from Theodore Roosevelt, do you not?

Public persona borrowed from TR but theory of government straight from Uncle Joe. Yikes.

Cheers,
Dave

Misleading

[WiglyWorm]

The vote had 30% turnout. ~50% voted to be annexed. Thus 15% of the population voted yes, but ~50% of the VOTE was for annexation. Of course, going to go vote no while the russians are sitting around in your country with guns and amassed on the border couldn't be an easy decision.

Re:Misleading

[jonnythan]

You'd think it would take more than a simple majority to secede from your country.....

Re:Misleading

[fermion]

The key for an election, in the modern sense, is that everyone who is allowed to vote vote is equally able to vote in a way that will not result in individual retaliation for a vote. We don't know if that happened in this case, to a lesser or greater extent than anywhere else. In the US voting is an equal struggle. Many have had to vote for suffrage, and some are having road blocks added to keep them from equal access. Also for off year elections 30% is not such a low number in the US. Yes if we talk about registered voters, the numbers can be closer to 50%, but it sounds like in this case we are talking about a case where everyone can vote. Often only 30-40% of the voting age population in the US votes on off cycle elections. Add to that that about 1-2% of the voting age citizen population is ineligible for some reason.

Re:Misleading

[radarskiy]

Ask South Carolina. They did not even bother with a plebiscite.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

The question of the referendum was posed as:
[ ] Do you support Crimea joining Russian Federation?
[ ] Do you support Crimea returning to its 1992 constitution and being part of Ukraine?
Exactly one box must have been ticked for the ballot to be considered valid. Under the 1992 constitution Crimea was almost an independent state, with its own diplomatic relations etc, and it would have the power to secede from Ukraine anyway. So there was no option for status quo, no option to vote "no" at all, the only way to express such opinion was to boycott the referendum.

It's as though the referendum was "Mind if Crimea joins Russia?" -- "OK" / "No, I don't mind".

Re:Misleading

[serviscope_minor]

but ~50% of the VOTE was for annexation.

Yeah, but never mind that there was no option to stay in the Ukraine like a significant fraction of the population voted. The entire thing was rotten end to end.

Re:Misleading

[guacamole]

Actually, the guy who posted the piece on Forbes is just a lying bastard. First, the figures were not official but estimates. Second, the estimates said that the turn out was 30-50% while the pro-Russian vote was 50-60%. So why does the Forbes editor low ball the numbers? Anyways. Personally, I have not respect for Forbes and its neocon conservative hacks, but I am surprised the story got posted on slashdot. Slasdhdot could do better than repeat a completely baseless claim.

Re:Misleading

[guacamole]

You are wrong. There was an option to stay in Ukraine. Check your facts. Moreover, the Forbes article is garbage. The guy was posing hysterical anti-Russian garbage for months. The report said that _probably_ 30-50% of voters voted, with 50-60% voting pro-Russian. So why does the guy lowball his numbers? Forbes is the last place you should consult for the truth in international politics, by the way. It's a typical conservative, neo-con mouthpiece.

Re:Misleading

[unixisc]

Why? People who were opposed to the vote could have voted the other way. As it is, the Ukrainians were alleging that the choices were either join Russia now, or declare independence (and join Russia later).

Re:Misleading

[unixisc]

But Ukrainians or their supporters claim that a majority of Crimean Russians are opposed to the peninsula becoming a part of Russia. In which case, they could have voted for the second option, and then since the Russian Crimea wouldn't have seceded from Ukraine, there wouldn't have been anything to worry about.

Re:Misleading

[MrNiCeGUi]

I have no idea about the political tendencies of Forbes, but in the TFA (not in the Slashdot summary though, go figure) the numbers were not low balled.

To quote, "This leads to a range of between 15 percent (50% x 30%) and 30 percent (60% x 50%) voting for annexation."

So, Forbes' article did not low ball the numbers (even if the data source seems highly suspect), the Slashdot summary did.

Re:Misleading

[shutdown -p now]

Says Wikipedia:

There were two choices to choose from on the ballot. Voters were able to choose only one of these.[62] The choices reflected the following stances:[63][64]
Choice 1: Do you support the reunification of Crimea with Russia with all the rights of the federal subject of the Russian Federation?
Choice 2: Do you support the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and the status of the Crimea as part of Ukraine?

Observers

[evilviper]

OSCE observers were invited, but the organization declined. Somewhere around 100 international observers from other organizations were present. They might have mostly been Russian schills, but they were there.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Observers

[Katatsumuri]

Yes, OSCE refused to take any part in this circus, because the poll was illegal under Ukrainian law and was conducted under "protection" of Russian armed forces posing as local militia.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

"OSCE observers were invited, but the organization declined."

This is a gross oversimplification and I don't know why it keeps getting parroted here. The OSCE didn't decline, they said there was no legal basis on which the invitation was valid in the first place - you can't decline an invitation that isn't even valid. Other observers did try and enter in an unofficial capacity but were shot at as a result so gave up trying.

The non-OSCE observers are the same neo-Nazi (yes really) observer organisation that Putin's friends use to whitewash legitimacy into their elections in such pinnacles of democracy as Belarus.

So it's really a bit silly to say observers were there, you don't get to just declare yourself a doctor without having any training in medicine. Similarly you don't get to just declare yourself an observer and get to understand how to spot the many methods of electoral fraud, and how to objectively validate poll results in a verifiable way. The people that were actually able to go were just people pretending to be something they weren't - they were no more observers than were the Russian soldiers aiming the barrels of their guns at the electorate as a hint of how to vote.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

they said there was no legal basis on which the invitation was valid

"Legal" in who's jurisdiction, exactly? The ruling authority in the area invited them. On the level of countries, that's as legal as it gets.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

Legal in Ukraine's jurisdiction, it was still part of the Ukraine.

You don't just get to go home tonight, declare yourself the ruling authority of your household, and declare yourself an independent government that's going to hold a referendum on autonomy of your household. That's not how it works. People don't get to arbitrarily just seize areas of land and declare them the leaders of it - hell, even if you don't believe the interim government is legitimate you do realise the guy who called the Crimea referendum and who offered the invite wasn't actually elected right? You know Crimea had it's own elected government as an autonomous region that this guy backed by the Russian's overthrew right? You know then hence that even if Crimea was within it's rights to offer an invite then this wasn't the guy to do it because he wasn't the recognised leader of Crimea by either the Ukrainian population or the rest of the Ukraine? You know that the guy in question was leader of a pro-Russia party that only got 10% of the vote in the last Crimean election despite that being held under pro-Russia Yanukovych's rule?

What's that? You didn't know any of that? I didn't think so, but I guess you're one of those guys who thinks he's a bit cool for playing devil's advocate against the "evil Western media" or whatever right?

It doesn't matter how you try and spin it, this guy had no legal legitimacy to offer the invite - he didn't have authority from the Ukrainian government, and he wasn't the legitimate leader of the Crimean autonomous region's government. He was just some guy who turned up along with the Russian military and threw the elected Crimean representatives out.

Re:Observers

[mcmaddog]

from the Wikipedia article you linked to, Uninvited OSCE military observers attempted to enter the region four times but were turned away, sometimes after warning shots were fired,[93][94] which was another reason given for not dispatching referendum observers.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

People don't get to arbitrarily just seize areas of land and declare them the leaders of it

Yes, actually. That's how it has worked since the beginning of time. If there's no authority that's willing and able to force you out, you are the de-facto ruler of your own sovereign country. There's nothing more to it than that.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

Election observers != Military observers

Re:Observers

[Xest]

Right but we're not in an era "since the beginning of time", we're in the modern world where there are in fact international norms that have been determined for deciding boundaries and defining sovereignty.

As I said, if you disagree, go tell your government you're declaring your house a sovereign state, send letters to the UN demanding it. See how well it works for you.

Given you didn't even respond to the rest of it though I'll assume your nitpicking of this particular point and pretending the distant past has any relevance to the discussion means you've conceded the fact that you did in fact have absolutely no idea what you were on about and not the slightest clue about the situation, so congratulations on that. It means you learnt something about geopolitics and the Ukraine situation today.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

The "international norms" you're so excited about, have done absolutely nothing to stop government overthrows. They consist of a lot of politicians spouting a lot of hot air, and nothing more. Soverignty works today, exactly as it always has.

You can keep your tedious rants to yourself.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

Yet you've still not answered why you can't declare your own back yard as a sovereign state.

You know, rather than continuing to make a tit of yourself it's probably far easier if you just type "Sorry, I didn't realise the guy who gave the invite himself wasn't an elected representative of Crimea and had no legitimacy".

But you know what? I'll do you a favour, god only knows you clearly need an education on the topic. I'll give you a hint: declaring sovereignty has no impact if absolutely no one else recognises it. Of course, the situation in question is even more humorous when you consider we're talking about a referendum vote, which, by definition, means the territory was Ukrainian and hence bound by Ukrainian laws until the referendum results were in, which, by definition, meant only the Ukrainian government could make the invite because it had to be Ukrainian territory at the point of calling a referendum or there'd be no need for a referendum in the first place.

If you can't see the logical fallacy in your argument, then it probably explains why you're not smart enough to get this or understand simply why you were wrong.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

I assumed your question was rhetorical, because the answer is idiotically simple.

I can't declare my backyard a soverign country, because after some time, armed men would come and incarcerate or kill me.

If I had an army, that was fully capable of defending the territory from other armies that wanted to take it, then it would be soverign territory.

Nothing else matters. "Recognition" is political hot-air. You don't have to recognize my back yard as a country, but stepping foot in it will still get you subject to local laws, and/or shot for failure to comply.

No idea why you keep ranting about someone not being elected. Democracy is new. Kings and dictators have been around forever. Voting isn't a prerequisite for anything.

You just keep talking out of your ass. Lots of wishful thinking that has no bearing on the real world, just because you support one side, and want any excuse to dislike the other.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

"I can't declare my backyard a soverign country, because after some time, armed men would come and incarcerate or kill me."

So you're saying that up until that point it would indeed be a sovereign country? What makes you think that? Who else recognises you as such?

"but stepping foot in it will still get you subject to local laws"

Right, but not your own personally defined local laws - the laws of the actual sovereign country in which you reside, like say, the laws of the Ukraine for Crimea prior to annexation.

As I said before, you really might want to stop digging at this point, unless you're actually enjoying illustrating how stupid you're capable of making yourself look.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

Who else recognises you as such?

Everyone in said sovereign territory... They are under no illusions about who is in-charge. What anyone outside the territory believes is irrelevant.

but not your own personally defined local laws

Wrong. That's PRECISELY what I said, and what I meant.

As I said before, you really might want to stop digging at this point,

You've said a lot of BS before, and I don't expect you to stop now. Name calling, directed at me, won't make your idiotic assertions any less inaccurate. Nor will all your silly games get you anywhere.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

"Everyone in said sovereign territory... They are under no illusions about who is in-charge. What anyone outside the territory believes is irrelevant."

What nonsense. You think it's possible to exist in a vacuum in this day and age? You really are naive to the way the world works aren't you?

"Wrong. That's PRECISELY what I said, and what I meant."

Then you're more retarded than I even first gave you credit for. As I said, declare sovereignty on your own home tonight, do something illegal in your country and see if you don't get arrested for it. There wont be anything about them redeclaring sovereignty, because you were never able to declare sovereignty in the first place, they'll just treat you as the crackpot you are.

But let's just ignore all this a second, because none of it changes the fact that the guy who sent the invite was the guy calling the referendum and he was calling a referendum because he recognised Crimea was part of the Ukraine (and hence bound by Ukrainian law) and that he didn't want it to be. So even if your assertion that someone can arbitrarily decide they're leader of a random bit of territory and that's all there is to it was true then there's still the problem with your theory that even that guy recognised he was part of the Ukraine which is why he needed a referendum in the first place. If he was part of the Ukraine he was bound by Ukrainian law and Ukrainian law gave him no right to give that invite.

So even if you were correct (you're not) and power is held on the terms you describe (they're not) then you're still wrong because it doesn't make any sense to require a referendum. However you spin it your whole argument either doesn't make sense, or points to the exact opposite of what you're claiming it points to. By definition that means you're just plain wrong either way. There's just no alternative where you're right unless you somehow think invalid logic makes you right.

But anyway, it's obvious you're one of those especially retarded people who will keep arguing even when their argument is long past salvageable, so have fun continuing to be wrong if that's what you enjoy - you can't get away from it, your argument has reached a dead end where the only answer is that you are wrong.

I guess you must just really love Putin or something to be so wilfully ignorant and wrong, but hey, even he doesn't back you - even he agreed Crimea was Ukraine until the referendum which hadn't happened at the time of invite.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

As I said, declare sovereignty on your own home tonight, do something illegal in your country and see if you don't get arrested for it.

I lack the requisite army to do so. Didn't we cover this 3 or 4 times already? Strange you keep failing to grasp this very, very simple point.

there's still the problem with your theory that even that guy recognised he was part of the Ukraine which is why he needed a referendum in the first place.

Your circular logic here hinges on the "need" part. In fact, just because they decided to hold a vote, does not in any way imply that they NEEDED to do so. It was a PR stunt, really. Lots of countries hold fake elections on a regular basis.

it doesn't make any sense to require a referendum.

Nobody (other than you) said it was required. It's still your own circular logic gone haywire, here.

people who will keep arguing even when their argument is long past salvageable

You're the one arguing against the very definition of the word sovereign. You just refuse to admit you're utterly wrong, because denying one simple fact helps you justify your own political opinions.

You haven't provided one single bit of counter evidence to a thing I've said, and instead just keep repeating the same baseless illogical nonsense, arguing that a sovereign leader isn't a sovereign leader unless YOU say he is. Meanwhile, I can list plenty of internationally recognized governments that were overthrown, where their new rulers-by-force continue to exist for the long-term, without the benefit of international recognition. There haven't been quite as many secessions.

Re:Observers

[mcmaddog]

read the last part of the sentence, having their military observers sent away with warning shots was part of the reason they didn't send in referendum observers, in addition to believing the referendum itself was illegal.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

"Your circular logic here hinges on the "need" part. In fact, just because they decided to hold a vote, does not in any way imply that they NEEDED to do so. It was a PR stunt, really. Lots of countries hold fake elections on a regular basis."

Need or not, even they didn't declare themselves a sovereign nation until afterwards so even they accept they were part of the Ukraine and hence subject to Ukrainian laws until it happened.

Your argument is still broken, your argument still can't be fixed. Trying to redefine words in the dictionary, or pretend that established international law isn't wont change the fundamental fact that your argument is still broken based on the fact that the people you're claiming had the legal power to offer the invite by their own admissions did not.

It really is amazing that you still cannot see this logical fallacy in your argument. It's clear desperation to avoid admitting you are wrong, or desperate stupidity.

It astounds me that there are people that in the fact of such a logically indisputable failure of their argument still feel the need to trying every which way to spin the argument as if the fallacy will disappear, as if you'll suddenly become right. You wont, because once again your whole argument is still fundamentally broken.

Re:Observers

[evilviper]

Hard to see something that's not there.

Funny how your claims are down to absolutely, positively NOTHING but name-calling, and you still think you HAVE an arguement.

Goodbye.

Re:Observers

[Xest]

Sigh, even if I let you off the fact your argument doesn't make sense you've still got the fundamental problem that the OECD is run by 34 countries, with more attempting to join including Russia. So even then it's not like anything other than the determination of legality matters by anyone else other than them (which is why international recognition matters, duh).

At least you've now obviously realised your argument is unsalvageable though given that you've stopped trying to talk nonsense to claim otherwise. You could just have never ever recovered it - as I say even if I let you past that last unsalvagaeable point you were already at you'd still have been wrong to pretend some random guy in Crimea can somehow define international law and what is and isn't legal all by himself. You just didn't have a hope, because you were so very wrong and couldn't admit it.

Don't be too pissy about it, we're all wrong sometimes, maybe just try and be a bit more mature about accepting it in future though.

The propaganda wars begin

[joe_frisch]

There really is no way to know what is real and what isn't with propaganda machines going full out on both sides.

Re:The propaganda wars begin

[superwiz]

What both sides? Russia is the only side who has anything to gain. Who is the "other side"? Status quo? Peace? You think Ukraine needs propaganda? To what end?

No international observers?

[Richard_at_work]

You should tell the 30 strong team from Poland, Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Italy and Latvia that they weren't there...

No tensions in Ukraine’s autonomous republic of Crimea were reported by the team of international observers Saturday, as they started monitoring polling stations and readying for the crucial vote on the peninsula’s independence.

Thirty observers, who come from 10 European nations, have arrived in Crimea at the invitation of the republic's election commission and have already started their work, Mateusz Piskorski, the director of the European Geopolitical Analysis Centre and the mission coordinator, said.

“At the moment we are starting to monitor the preparation of polling stations. In general, the situation is very calm, there is no tension,” he told Interfax news agency. “Everyone hopes there will be no provocations."

Members of the mission come from Poland, Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Italy and Latvia. Representing the European Democracy and Election Monitoring Institute (Brussels), they are deputies from the European parliament, members of national parliaments of their native countries, as well as leading European international law experts and famous human rights activists.

http://rt.com/news/crimea-refe...

Re:No international observers?

[wooppp]

Except that from http://www.theguardian.com/wor... ------- No major international organisations are monitoring the vote, but a group of observers from 23 countries – a mixture of anti-western ideologues and European far-right politicians – have arrived of their own accord and gave a press conference in Simferopol on Saturday evening. ------- I ain't sure whether some readers understand the implication of the Ukraine issue now, of which Putin is using the same strategy as in the Russo-Georgian War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_war) that ultimately led to ethnic cleansing. There will be lots of blood.

Re:No international observers?

[Moskit]

Mr Piskorski has often commented that "Ukraine is a fallen country". He appeared on Russia Today tv station as "western expert" claiming Maidan was inspired by Western countries, and repeating Putin rhetorics.

He was accused of being Russian agent since 2007. He is collaborating with CIS-EMO, who go to "observe" various elections in Russia, and produce reports positive for Russia.

All in all - those observers were likely just used by Russians to validate "elections".

Re:No international observers?

[Hypotensive]

You should read before you post twaddle.

Re:No international observers?

[Hypotensive]

the major international organizations were invited, but refused to attend

Because the vote was illegal.

Those organizations have not right to determine the legitimacy of people's vote

If the UN doesn't have the right to determine the legitimacy of a vote, I somehow don't think that the Kremlin does.

Re:No international observers?

[quantaman]

You should tell the 30 strong team from Poland, Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Italy and Latvia that they weren't there...

You might want to watch the end of this report

The whole series is actually pretty good but I find the observers' claim to not have seen any armed people to be absolutely uncredible and I think that's an important fact to take notice of. If they either lied, or worked so hard not to notice, something so obvious and incontrovertible as the armed people wandering around the city then why would you believe a thing they say about the things you can't verify?

Re:No international observers?

[superwiz]

Yep. Provoke tensions. Create bogus calls for international "peace force" lead by Russia. Provoke more tensions to justify the further military occupation. Are you familiar with the old Russian proverb, "screw me once, shame one you; screw me twice shame on me?"

Re:No international observers?

[Xest]

Right and I'm a doctor, may I operate on you?

An election observer is an actual profession requiring an actual skillset and knowledge. If you don't have that you're not an observer, you're someone pretending to be an observer. The people who went were people pretending to be observers but whose actual service is lying to pretend a vote is legitimate when it's not so that all the dumb people in the world and people with a similar bias towards pro-Russian and far-right ideals that this particular group supports can go "Hey look it was legitimate!".

Re:Same as other countries

[sharknado]

Why bother voting at all?

Because we have to maintain the illusion of a democracy, that's why.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[sharknado]

How do I delete my account?

You could edit all your posts and write "copyright 2014" then issue Slashdot a DMCA notice. But that might not work.

Who stands to gain?

[Anonymous Coward]

The source, a blog posting, is not at all credible and the fact that its even newsworthy indicates it is being pushed by propaganda. Who stands to gain?

According to what I have read (sorry i didn't bookmark the source) and in my conversations with people from the area, it is very understandable that the people of Crimea would have voted to join Russia. We get the NATO side of the propaganda over here.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[scubamage]

Why do you need an ad-blocker on slashdot? If you have great karma from being a good member of the community they give you the option to disable all advertising. Just post constructively and no adblocker is necessary.

All about the Eurasian Union

[bigpat]

There is a blatant information war going on on both sides of this.

Here is basically what is going on:

1. 1) US/EU has been actively trying to keep Russia from forming an Eurasian Union with some of the members of the former Soviet Union. (most probably because the people running US/EU foreign policy grew up with the Soviet Union and are afraid of repeating the cold war)
2. 2) Russia pressured/bribed Ukraine to move towards the Russia side after a brief foray towards the EU.
3. 3) The EU/US fomented an overthrow of the government in Ukraine probably facilitated by covert operations in order to prevent the Eurasian Union from coming together with Ukraine as its economic crossroad to Europe.
4. 4) Russia tried to salvage something out of this collapse of the pro-Russian government by grabbing Crimea with its majority Russian population.
5. 5) Russia is now fomenting separatists in Eastern Ukraine using the same tactics the CIA used in Kiev and the US/EU doesn't like it.

....

Next) Either Russia invades and annexes Eastern Ukraine following the Crimea model or they simply foment separatism which either succeeds in splitting the country or causes a bloody crackdown by Kiev which further de-legitimizes that interim government.

- Probably China is cheer leading this US/EU/Russia split on because if the EU and Russia are forced further apart, then it forces resource rich Russia towards China which needs all the wood/oil/natural gas/mining that Russia has to offer to sustain its manufacturing economy and China doesn't want a strong Eurasian Union coming together either. This has already started with announcements of greater cooperation with China.

I think the bitter irony in all this is that the foreign policy leaders in the West that are so afraid of repeating the Cold War are precipitating something like it now because of that fear. Russia has every right to be concerned that it is stuck between a growing EU and China and that it needs to build up its own alliance in the middle. Their historical lesson is that a Europe united under Germany is a threat. It seems to me that the EU and US are being very shortsighted to have undercut Putin so blatantly and overtly in Ukraine. The US and EU needs a strong Russia and something like a Eurasian Alliance to counterbalance China to the East. If anything the EU should have invited Russia to join it to form an even greater Union that would be a direct counterbalance to China instead of just leaving Russia as a buffer state.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[ericloewe]

3) Deserves a massive [Citation Needed] sticker. The only covert operations of which there is any proof is the massive Russian involvement.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Deserves a massive [Citation Needed] sticker. The only covert operations of which there is any proof is the massive Russian involvement.

Proof? What proof? So when an elected govenrnment gets thrown out by `activists' and 200 people get killed in resulting clashes, we all cheer and denlounce the government as `bloody dictators'. When the government that replaces it cheers over 30 people burned alive (Google `Odessa massacre' yourself), we just write it off to `those bad separatists'. Just read the media reports. `Protesters' during the first apprisal and `pro-russian separatists' in the second. Evewn the language is biased. Where is the proof for any of that? Why are they not parading those `russian specia forces advisors' and instead just vaguely refer to so phone converstations between `the Kremlin' and `separatists'? I've got news fo you: there IS a civil war in the Ukraine now. Claiming that it was incited by a few `bad apples' is disingeneous. They have a genuine problem and part of it is rampant nationalizm, and the current Ukrainialn government deserves at least half the blame. More, since they are the ones in power and the ones who craved than power.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[gman003]

There is a blatant information war going on on both sides of this.

Here is basically what is going on:

1. 1) US/EU has been actively trying to keep Russia from forming an Eurasian Union with some of the members of the former Soviet Union. (most probably because the people running US/EU foreign policy grew up with the Soviet Union and are afraid of repeating the cold war)
2. 2) Russia pressured/bribed Ukraine to move towards the Russia side after a brief foray towards the EU.

With you so far.

1. 3) The EU/US fomented an overthrow of the government in Ukraine probably facilitated by covert operations in order to prevent the Eurasian Union from coming together with Ukraine as its economic crossroad to Europe.

I have seen little evidence of US/EU covert operations in the revolution, and I've been following it closely. There was definitely propaganda support, maybe political pressure, perhaps even covert advisors trying to make sure that the revolution was successful, but it was by and large a Ukrainian revolution.

The thrust of the revolution was forcing out a government that was blatantly corrupt and increasingly dictatorial, not to join up with the EU. While I usually frown on getting involved in other country's problems, I don't think I could get too upset about lending a hand to a revolution that was forcing out such a government, particularly when the support is only aiding a revolution that would have happened anyways, not forcing a revolution that the people did not really want

1. 4) Russia tried to salvage something out of this collapse of the pro-Russian government by grabbing Crimea with its majority Russian population.

Crimea is "majority Russian" only because Stalin forced out the native Tatars. And while there was a separatist movement (nonviolent) before the revolution, it was a secessionist movement, not a Russian one. There was no way they got the numbers they claimed legitimately.

1. 5) Russia is now fomenting separatists in Eastern Ukraine using the same tactics the CIA used in Kiev and the US/EU doesn't like it.

Russia's tactics are different. Even if you assume CIA involvement in the revolution, they let the actual people perform the revolution - which means a good number of people had to be ready to fight for it.

Russia is sending in their own military. They are the ones fighting this counter-revolution - not the people they claim to be helping. This is by and large a Russian military intervention.

The western revolution was fought with molotov cocktails by students and retired veterans. The eastern revolution is being fought by armed and trained soldiers, following radio orders from Moscow. It's impossible to claim they're the same tactics, which means it is completely valid to treat them differently.

The CIA isn't mad that Russia is using the same tactics - they're mad because Russia is unable to find enough people to actually fight this war in Ukraine, so they're just sending in soldiers and pretending it's a popular rebellion.

....

Next) Either Russia invades and annexes Eastern Ukraine following the Crimea model or they simply foment separatism which either succeeds in splitting the country or causes a bloody crackdown by Kiev which further de-legitimizes that interim government.

- Probably China is cheer leading this US/EU/Russia split on because if the EU and Russia are forced further apart, then it forces resource rich Russia towards China which needs all the wood/oil/natural gas/mining that Russia has to offer to sustain its manufacturing economy and China doesn't want a strong Eurasian Union coming together either. This has already started with announcements of greater cooperation with China.

I think the bitter irony in all this is that the foreign policy leaders in the West that are so afra

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[jd.schmidt]

Sorry and no way. There may well be elements in the former Soviet Union that would like some updated Eurasian Union and the Russians may tell themselves the idea will fly, but there is a huge wellspring of resentment against Russia and many, many, many who fear Russia reestablishing dominance and view the European Union and/or NATO as the only real guarantee of long term independence. You are likely reading too much Russian propaganda.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[jd.schmidt]

Sorry to double post but I have to add, the very fact the countries feel they have to choose sides tells you about their relationship with Russia. If they were confident they could be left alone and not get invaded on a pretext, they could have great trade ties with Europe AND Russia, which probably IS what they would really prefer. Russia's ham fisted handling of this crisis is digging their own grave.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[mlg9000]

There is exactly zero evidence that the US or EU played any part in the Maiden movement. If there is I challenge you to provide it.

There are two sides to this story:
1. The Russian side (what you're repeating, partially)
2. The truth

We in the west have a legitimate free press. It may be imperfect, it may be incompetent, but it's legitimately free to report what it wants and no single government has any controls to stop it. As long as *somebody* is paying attention the true story WILL get out eventually. Russia none of this is the case. The Russian government tolerates a domestic free press up until the point they do something they don't like. Then they make up some BS excuse to arr

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[CanHasDIY]

There is exactly zero evidence that the US or EU played any part in the Maiden movement. If there is I challenge you to provide it.

There are two sides to this story:
1. The Russian side (what you're repeating, partially)
2. The truth

There are 3 sides to every story - his side, her side, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between.

We in the west have a legitimate free press. It may be imperfect, it may be incompetent, but it's legitimately free to report what it wants and no single government has any controls to stop it.

That would be funny, if the reality of it wasn't so damn sad.

FYI, the "free" press you speak of? For sale to the highest bidder. Unless, of course, you're referring to the "press" in the Constitutional sense, which would refer to a printing press, which yes, would still be considered "free," since anyone can print anything they want, provided they have the time and materials.

Getting folks to listen is another story altogether.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[bigpat]

The only US involvement was in the legitimization of the leader of the new government, which was the subject of the leaked wiretap by the FSB, where the American Ambassador says "f* the EU".

Except that was well before there was a new government... So a US "diplomat" trying to help organize a new government in Kiev while the old one is still in power is actually pretty clear evidence of US government involvement.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[swb]

I think China and Russia are much more conflicted with each other than you describe. They nearly went to war over some river island in 1969.

While China certainly has a standing policy of accepting anything that goes on inside a country as its "internal affairs", that policy is a little sketchier when it comes to basically annexing territory of another sovereign state. It's not just internal affairs when the guy next door decides he wants to redraw your own Western boundary.

Russia may be willing to extend its raw material export economy to the Chinese, I think the Russians are more than a little anxious about the economic power and military ambitions that economic power can buy of its neighbor to the east.

The Chinese spent a long time somewhat under the shadow of the USSR and now that they are in a lot of respects seen as the #2 power in the world (in terms of gross military size plus economic clout at least), they are probably unwilling to cede much if anything to the Kremlin, especially on the topic of where the border should be and what's "historic Russian territory".

I'm sure the Chinese like to see Obama's fecklessness in the face of Putin's Ukrainian policy, anything that preoccupies Uncle Sam is great sport for Xi Jinping, but he cares about stability, and stability means a good economy and that means good business relations with Uncle Sam.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[AuralityKev]

But we've ALWAYS been at war with Oceania!

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[bigpat]

And this is where I lost your train of thought, because it sounds like you read just enough of a history book to know what has happened before, but didn't read enough of them to realize that nations aren't people. They don't have long memories, and they don't act consistently.

Nations are people, that is all they are. Lot's and lots of people acting with their own motivations, their own perspectives and their own base assumptions. Which is why nations don't act consistently. But that doesn't mean they can't be understood.

The underlying point was simply that US foreign policy has been too narrowly focused on Ukraine and blocking Putin from forming the Eurasian Union and has failed to see the bigger picture. My point is simply that the US has overplayed its hand and it is not in our best long, short or medium term interest to weaken Russia further with either real sanctions or other destabilizing actions. The overthrow in Kiev was a win for the EU and the US (without any realistic prospect that there will suddenly be a less corrupt government in Kiev), but what may have seemed like a simple move on the chess board in the halls of Langley is closer to an existential threat to a Russia that is surrounded by very very big nations that need Russia's resources. The math is the math and Russia needs to be bigger in population and military in order to defend itself effectively against threats from the bigger nations to the West, the South and the East which will likely always need its resources but may not always be willing to pay its prices.

I really don't know what is the best solution for Ukraine right now. But it does seem like some sort of compromise with at least some measure of local autonomy would be the best way for both sides to save face and defuse the crisis and so we can start to try and repair relations.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[gman003]

I think it is somewhat naive to think that the US or EU did not play some part. However, the movement acted like a genuinely populist movement, so either the CIA is really, REALLY damn good at faking such things, or their role was limited to encouragement and advice, or perhaps putting some pressure on politicians at appropriate times. The revolution itself happened because the people wanted it, not because some other country wanted it to.

Crimea and the east seems fundamentally different. The rebels there are armed like a military, act like a military, and fight like a military. The Maidan was fighting with paving stones and molotov cocktails - the eastern "rebels" are taking down helicopters with anti-air missiles. The only thing that makes them not look like a military is the fact that they aren't wearing insignia on their uniforms (but most of them are wearing identical, military-looking clothes - a far cry from the "whatever is in your closet" the Maidan wore).

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[Hypotensive]

it is not in our best ... interest to weaken Russia further with ... sanctions

Interestingly, I would have agreed with you several weeks ago, when I thought that they would simply be ineffective. However since that time the strong focus of the Kremlin sock puppets on the BBC HYS and other forums trying to question the justification of sanctions has set me thinking the opposite, which is that sanctions will actually be extremely effective at the moment since the Kremlin is very afraid of them.

... defuse the crisis and ... try and repair relations

That doesn't appear to be Lavrov's current tactic.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[quantaman]

There is exactly zero evidence that the US or EU played any part in the Maiden movement. If there is I challenge you to provide it.

There are two sides to this story:
1. The Russian side (what you're repeating, partially)
2. The truth

There are 3 sides to every story - his side, her side, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between.

If 1 is the Russian narrative and 2 is the Western narrative the truth is probably about 1.9.

The US and EU were certainly providing some support and advice to the Euromaidan protests. And I think the Euromaidan shouldn't have ignored the agreement and forced Yanokovych to leave, he was very bad of course, but it's just a bad idea to force a change like that that in democracies.

But I find the claim that the US or EU were a driving force in the protests to be incredible, the Euromaidan protests were massive, and occurred over months. I find the concept that they were all US or EU stooges to be insulting to the point of mildly racist. Good or bad the credit for Yanokovych's overthrow belongs to Ukrainians.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[jbmartin6]

Russia is sending in their own military. They are the ones fighting this counter-revolution - not the people they claim to be helping. This is by and large a Russian military intervention.

I would be interested in a citation. The last I saw, this claim was based on some photos that have been thoroughly debunked.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[maccodemonkey]

3) The EU/US fomented an overthrow of the government in Ukraine probably facilitated by covert operations in order to prevent the Eurasian Union from coming together with Ukraine as its economic crossroad to Europe.

Needs citation...

There was previously a lot of support for a Ukraine/EU relationship from the voters, and the government was previous moving ahead on one. Those are facts. Also, if the US had any interest in this sort of scheme, they likely would have tried to enroll Ukraine in NATO, which was a process that was no where near actually happening.

Which is why this needs to be backed up with some sort of proof.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[maccodemonkey]

The only US involvement was in the legitimization of the leader of the new government, which was the subject of the leaked wiretap by the FSB, where the American Ambassador says "f* the EU".

Except that was well before there was a new government... So a US "diplomat" trying to help organize a new government in Kiev while the old one is still in power is actually pretty clear evidence of US government involvement.

It was before the new government had formed, but a month after the unrest had started and the old government had last control, and at that time it was pretty clear a new government was going to form. Which is the sort of thing an ambassador would understandably have an opinion about.

It's not really proof of anything, besides the US at least watching what was going on, but certainly of no active involvement besides musing on if the EU might add sanctions.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[maccodemonkey]

Russia is sending in their own military. They are the ones fighting this counter-revolution - not the people they claim to be helping. This is by and large a Russian military intervention.

I would be interested in a citation. The last I saw, this claim was based on some photos that have been thoroughly debunked.

I'll do you one better and give you videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That look like civilians to you?

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[jbmartin6]

No. Perhaps I misunderstood your statement. Yes I understand the Russian military that was already in Crimea was involved there. What I was thinking of was all the incidents, unrest, and violence in other parts of the (eastern) Ukraine. your statement implies these are 'by and large' the Russian military, which as far as I can tell is not true.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[bigpat]

Just from what is public knowledge a US "diplomat" was caught on a wiretap discussing US efforts to organize a new government including leaders of the protest movement.... long before the previous government was driven out of the capital. So I don't see how this is a controversial statement that the US was helping to organize the protestors and form them into a government acceptable to the US and how that would be encouraging to the protestors. I mean we have an actual audio recording of a US diplomat doing so... it really doesn't get any clearer. In the past you would have to infer that the US had people on the ground... now you can actually listen to one on youtube.

Also, the prior Secretary of State made it clear that preventing the Eurasian Union from coming together was a goal of US foreign policy.... I believe the quote was "well that isn't going to happen" and add in Hillary Clinton's trademark sarcastic tone from the video. I was pretty surprised actually how blatant and open she was about preventing sovereign nations from entering into alliances even if those alliances might be competitive to the US. It really seemed like am attitude which was a throwback to the old Cold War. Like an old dog looking to pick a fight, just because.

So the part about the US trying to block the Eurasian Union is a matter of public record and stated US foreign policy. Again no extraordinary claim, just stated US foreign policy or at least a stated US position that likely reflects the thinking in the state department about the Eurasian Union and Putin's aspirations for a broader alliance. And the part about the US being knee deep in organizing the leadership of the protest movement into a prospective new government is a matter of public record now... not sure what further citation would be necessary from your perspective.

Or are you just quibbling over the use of the word "foment" versus a more benign word like "organize". Because I think it is clear that helping to organize the protest leaders into a new government would help to stir up and encourage those protests. Of course the protests were and are based on real internal Ukrainian problems and endemic public corruption, just as the discontent with the central Kiev government in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was and is real even with Russia's involvement. But I would still say that Russia is fomenting the protests and separatism there just as the US fomented the protests in Kiev. Which is why the motivations of Russia and the US are at play and not just the local aspirations of Ukrainians and Russians for a better local government.

Re:All about the Eurasian Union

[gman003]

We're not at the level of Yakunovich. Yet. Give it another ten, maybe twenty years or so at the rate we're going, and we'll have no choice but for revolution.

82% was always suspect

[jd.schmidt]

In addition to the massive difficulty in running an honest vote on such short notice, I have never found 82% of humans to ever agree on something so controversial. When I heard that number it was obviously and blatantly fake, even if a majority of people wanted to rejoin Russia there was no way that many people would agree to such a radical change.

Re:82% was always suspect

[ericloewe]

I suspect the whole thing was just some theatrical performance for Russian internal consumption. Nobody who's been through a decent number of truly democratic elections would believe such a result.

Last time, someone pointed out that it did happen at least once for a democratic vote to yield a 80-something% result, but it's certainly the exception.

Re:82% was always suspect

[jd.schmidt]

I think you are missing it. Of course LOTS of people in Sweden don't want to start driving on the opposite side of the street, in other words they voted for no change. The vote here was about both leaving your current country AND joining another one. Make no mistake, even if as many as 15% of your citizen want to join another country (if only 30% participated in the election it is safe to say that number is approaching 50%), that is a really big deal. Imagine if even 40% of Sweden wanted to unite with Denmark! But the reality is you will have people who wan to join Russia, those who want to become fully independent and those who want to no change, well and who knows what else. There is no way that many people would genuinely support such a huge change. Kind of like why Puerto Rico is still a territory of the U.S., you can't get enough people to agree on one plan (statehood, independence) so the status quo stands. As someone else said, voting for more autonomy in such a divided society is one thing, voting to join another country is something else.

Re:82% was always suspect

[jd.schmidt]

My first comment on the election results were this, I said it was a shame that Russia had obviously faked the results because there probably is some real underlying support for unification with Russia, but this fake vote will undermine legitimacy long term. Maybe I was lucky, but it sure seems like I was right. If about half of those who participated voted to join with Russia, there is obviously real underlying support for unifying. I never doubted this. The problem was so many people would never vote for such a radical change. Russia could probably have managed a plurality between stay with Ukraine, independence or Russian unification. Maybe they could have even pulled of a narrow majority in a mostly honest two choice vote. But that kind of support was too obviously fake.

Re:82% was always suspect

[Hypotensive]

Kind of like why Puerto Rico is still a territory of the U.S.

More like why Guantanamo Bay is a territory of the US.

"Let's take a vote! Yes, you too, Private Stevens with the big minigun there, you're an official resident! Do we want to be part of Cuba or not?"

Re:82% was always suspect

[jd.schmidt]

There was never a general vote of the whole population of Texas on independence, if there was it very likely would not have been above 75% because about 25% of the population was Mexican nationals vs. U.S. settlers. Also note it was a two step process, the original vote was for independence not joining the U.S. a much smaller incremental change. Had that been the vote at the start I suspect the support would have been even lower, though the net result may not have changed. Denmark is united with Sweden the same way Greece is united with Belgium under the E.U. Despite this I suspect most Greeks don't consider themselves Belgian.

Networks

[Etherwalk]

They are allowed to start counting the votes before the voting ends ??? We only spawn 5.5 time zones but that`s still not allowed and well enforced.

They generally are, although it's up to the particular state. More importantly, the *exit polls*, which are not the actual vote but in which people say who they voted for, come out relatively quickly and can influence later voting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Re:Networks

[PIBM]

Do the exit poll take into account the large amount of pre-election voting, which can be cast remotely, or a few weeks before the elections themselves, or are there no such thing in the US ? The last election here reported close to 50% of the voters had voted early.. I wonder how that would affect the exit poll results.

Re:Math is not an opinion

[sharknado]

I would say that math can indeed be an opinion. Much (most) of modern physics is based on math, and there is a lot of debate as to how mathematical models translate into the "real world". String theory is one example...some people believe it's real, some don't.

Of course, you don't have to get THAT complex to start seeing strange behaviours. For example, did you know that the sum of all positive integers (1 + 2 + 3) is -1/12? http://www.numberphile.com/vid... Do you agree with this result?

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[Arith]

I'm with you here. The others are right, adblockers, noscript, that whole noise is a good idea.
I'm at work, where I haven't gotten around to patching up my browser with the aforementioned. Definitely alot more ads roaming around. If I saw that video ad I'd be just as disgusted. So .. get yourself them plugins. You get this .. uh.. 'discussion' without the obnoxiousness..well not from the ads anyway.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[cdrudge]

Why do you need an ad-blocker on slashdot?

Because it's far more convenient to presume that EVERY site has ads and just run an adblocker on every site then it is to not run one and have to enable it when you visit a site that has them.

Any time I use a computer that's not my own I cringe when I visit a site I frequent and realize how awful the internet is with ads enabled.

Re:Math is not an opinion

[bobbied]

Figures never lie, but lairs figure..

Have any idea what you are talking about?

[Zeorge]

Sounds like you are playing a video or board game. Any ways, so many other countries from the "eastern block" have joined or are on their way to be part of the EU. Russia doesn't want to as it has its own resources and its own oligarchy in place and those people don't want to impact their lifestyle. That whole country is an oligarchy of monopolies that permeates everything from food to infrastructure. They'd have to give that up to join the EU.

Re:Have any idea what you are talking about?

[Altus]

The US doesn't want to join the EU either.

Re:Have any idea what you are talking about?

[unixisc]

The US would be better off in an economic union w/ Russia, rather than the EU. Whereas EU regulations would strangulate the US economy, Russian would loosen the grips that US government agencies have on the economy.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be implying that everyone is always on a computer which they are allowed to modify in any way.

A LOT of people read this site at work you know.
And many people have gotten promoted hard.

Re:US elections are rigged too

[bobbied]

Citation please? There IS fraud in US elections, no question about that, but not enough to call them "rigged". (And I'm a right wing type who's side has been loosing elections a lot lately.)

Why are people acting surpised?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "Pro Russian Militants" or pro-Russian anything.

Russia is a corrupt cleptocracy run by criminals. The Ukraine is being annexed on the behalf of a handful of Putin's ultra-rich backers that sit to make untold billions off of the natural resources they can exploit there. (Or ship through there via a pipeline)

They failed at their attempt to usurp the government when the citizens wised up to what was going on. Facing the threat of the area joining the EU and cutting them out of much of the lucrative natural gas profits, they simply dropped all pretenses and are trying to take the place by force.

Fortunately Russia is effectively a failed state. So corrupt and screwed up that less than a month's worth of economic sanctions are making their house of cards criminal-run economy crater. Putin is also a bit of a coward. He'll give up in a few more months when his buddies who are no longer making money hand over fist start thinking about replacing him.

Re:Why are people acting surpised?

[guacamole]

There is no such thing as "Pro Russian Militants" or pro-Russian anything.

You are full of yourself if you think that at very least one third (namely, the southseast) of Ukraine are not pro-Russian. Why don't you educate yourself before posting? For example read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...

Russia is a corrupt cleptocracy run by criminals.

Completely baseless statement. Putin was the strongest, most organized and honest leader Russia had in about a century. He is the one who was cleaning up the Russian government from the criminals that took over in the 90s.

The Ukraine is being annexed on the behalf of a handful of Putin's ultra-rich backers that sit to make untold billions off of the natural resources they can exploit there. (Or ship through there via a pipeline)

Another completely baseless statement. Ukraine is a lot poorer than Russia. If anything, Russia has to subsidize Crimea and other annexed regions big time. There is no money to be made in Ukraine.

As for pipelines, Russia is already building an pipeline on the bed of Baltic to completely bypass these unstable Russophobic regions, like West Ukraine and Poland, to reach Germany directly. Once this pipeline is completed, all others become worthless.

Fortunately Russia is effectively a failed state.

Another baseless garbage statement. A failed state does not launch astronauts into space, field aircraft carriers, conduct Olympic games, or build oil platforms in the arctic.

So corrupt and screwed up that less than a month's worth of economic sanctions are making their house of cards criminal-run economy crater.

Those sanctions are toothless and have nothing to do with the real economy. Let me remind you that when the 2008 Georgian War started, the Russian stocks lost more than half of their value (a lot more than right now) immediate. Yet, they recovered in less than a year. The decisions of nervous western investors are pretty much meaningless. In less than a year, they will be begging to be allowed back into Russian stocks and businesses. Right now Russians are not going to cry a river over losing 1% of economic growth. The slowdown is temorary but annexing Crimea is forever. Big net gain for Russians.

Putin is also a bit of a coward. He'll give up in a few more months when his buddies who are no longer making money hand over fist start thinking about replacing him.

Another stupid and baseless statement. I follow Russian politics and I haven't seen any of key figures of Russian politics replaced within something like 7-8 years. It's exactly the same people running the show. It's actually getting boring IMO.

Re:Why are people acting surpised?

[Hypotensive]

The major resource in Ukraine is wheat (their flag is a wheat field against a blue sky), which doesn't ship through pipelines very well. However it's still extremely valuable to Russia which doesn't produce enough cereal crops of its own, and wheat's global price is going up and up. Ukraine was the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union.

And, of course, you need wheat to make vodka.

Re:Why are people acting surpised?

[slackware 3.6]

Crimea is "net big gain for Russia"...." If anything, Russia has to subsidize Crimea and other annexed regions big time. There is no money to be made in Ukraine."......make up your mind, idiot.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[scubamage]

Fair enough. Other than privacy implications i largely never bother with blocking ads (I don't mind vendors/content creators getting revenue from my using their services) unless I have a good reason. When i don't want to be tracked, tor+foxyproxy+adblock. I guess it all comes down to your tolerance of advertising :)

Media...

[PortHaven]

Does what it bloody well pleases.

That Shining City on the Hill

[ThatsNotPudding]

Well, at least no national election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore/ shenanigans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions#Diebold_and_Kenneth_Blackwell.27s_conflict_of_interest/ occur in God's United States!!

And I'd argue...

[PortHaven]

That we do not even have two parties. Just two names for the same party. So we can be given something to yell at...

Forbes NOT reporting

[radarskiy]

This is an op-ed column, not a news article. Many news organization disclaim all fact-checking on op-eds; I don't know Forbes' specific policy.

Re:Forbes NOT reporting

[guacamole]

Indeed. Gregory has been posting hysterical anti-Russian garbage for months now, together with a guy called Greg Sattel. These two are the primary anti-Russian neo-con mouthpieces at Forbes.

Re:Forbes NOT reporting

[CanHasDIY]

The smart money is on assuming all editorials lack fact-checking. Otherwise they wouldn't be called 'editorials.'

What does it matter?

[Improv]

Without consent of the Ukrainian government, such a vote would not mean anything more than, say, if my neighbourhood in Brooklyn voted to secede. The current Russian occupation of Crimea is not valid.

Re:What does it matter?

[guacamole]

Wow, cry me a river over this. Let's expel all whites from the north american continents. Let's declare Kosovo a part of Serbia. Let's declare South Sudan a part of Sudan. Let's join the East Timor back with Indonesia.

Of course most countries will not recognize a vote by separatists. However, that does not make the vote less valid (see Kosovo). People should decide where they belong, not some nationalists in Kiev.

Re:What does it matter?

[Hypotensive]

People should decide where they belong

The entire point of this article is that the people didn't decide.

On the other hand...

[bhartman34]

I tend to think that Snowden's probably just not that bright, and Russia was the only place he could escape the consequences of his actions.

Re:On the other hand...

[Vicarius]

If you recall, Snowden absolutely didn't want to stay in Russia. He just got stuck there and nobody else would give him an asylum. He was simply abandoned by other "free" democratic countries.

Re:On the other hand...

[steelfood]

Let's call things the way they are. He was abandoned by the First World and got stuck in the Second World. Some states in the Third World wanted to help (but unlikely for altruistic purposes), but they being of the Third World, were largely powerless.

Snowden got himself stuck in a Cold War struggle between two superpowers.

As opposed to the shining example of US democracy?

[npongratz]

17.8% of the U.S. population voted for George W. Bush in 2000 [0]. 21.0% of the U.S. population voted for Barak Obama in 2012. [1]

Seems to me not very far off from the abstract's note that "15% of all Crimeans voted" to secede. If it's legitimate in the US, why not elsewhere?

[0] Yes, Al Gore did better by winning 18.1%.

[1] Percentages calculated mainly using Wikipedia's numbers, which admittedly are not a primary source, but I'll guess are probably "close enough" to make my point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table (for 2012 population)

25% voted for our president

[neurovish]

US voter turnout in presidential elections has been about 5x% of the voting age population for decades, and we are the "shining beacon of democracy" for the world.

Bullshit

[Katatsumuri]

Modded insightful by other "Russian World" enthusiasts, apparently.

Ukrainian new unelected leadership is more like Hitler.

Putin's annexation of Crimea repeats Hitler's early annexations one for one, including the "referendum" part.

"Right Sector", the hardcore right-wing faction, is low in head count and public support (1-3%) and has zero representation in the current government. The more moderate but still nationalist-driven "Svoboda" has about 5% support and also not much power. The rest are normal politicians by Western standards.

The current government was temporarily appointed by the parliament, which was the single possible solution after the previous president had failed to suppress the protests and fled the country. A real election is scheduled on May 25, and Russia is trying hard to prevent it in order to prolong the current suspended state.

No-one was "abolishing equal rights". There was a move to revoke a controversial language law introduced by the previous administration, but the temporary president (whom you criticize) has blocked the move, demanding that a new, better version of the law should be negotiated and accepted by the parliament first.

Please stop trolling here.

Re:Bullshit

[Katatsumuri]

Once again, the "abolishing" did not happen. Imagine people who felt that Ukrainian unity and sovereignty was under threat from that law, people who felt repressed by the previous administration and promised to their voters to fight. I am not advocating one way or another, but I understand why they tried to revoke that law. I'm also glad that they managed to moderate themselves.

I also don't want to delve into whether Crimea was a "gift". In any case, Russia recognized Ukrainian borders in the 90s, and even promised to protect them. And now we have an aggressive takeover.

It is sad to see how some people support revising of historical borders using military force. If this becomes popular, the world will be a very violent place. There are so many regions that changed owners throughout history.

Re:Bullshit

[Hypotensive]

Crimea has always been Russian

It was a part of the Ottoman Empire for considerably longer than it was part of the Russian Empire (1485-1783 = 298 years versus 1783-1954 = 174 years).

Re:Bullshit

[Darinbob]

Crimea was not "always" russian. The Russian population started to rise once czarist Russia gained control.

Re:Bullshit

[Teancum]

Russia has long held a policy of "Russification", in other words a deliberate attempt to push the cultures of its client states and homogenize the culture to basically become Russian. This was going on in every one of the former Soviet republics, which is why there are such strong ethnic Russian groups of people in those areas.

The USSR was expecting to still exist right now, and a cultural shift can sometimes take a century or more. Unfortunately for the USSR, it fell apart and this cultural shift was incomplete, including in the Ukraine. As these former Soviet Republics start to charter their own cultural course, what remained was just the worst of all possible situations. Some Russian families have lived in these places for several generations and call places like Crimea home, hence why deporting them isn't a viable option either.

Re:Bullshit

[stoatwblr]

In the case of Crimea, "russification" was pushed along by deporting the entire Tarter popularion off to Siberia.

Most have now moved back, but they're second class citizens in their own ancestral lands.

Lost of neo-con half-lies and garbage

[guacamole]

Forbes reported on Monday that The President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights very briefly and supposedly by accident posted the actual results of the Crimean secession vote.

Forbes is one of the primary neo-con internet mouthpieces. They have posted an incredible amount of ridiculous, 100% emotionally driven, and 0% fact-based articles on the Ukraine conflict.

Moreover, the claim that's based on a website that was taken down is pure garbage. At least give us an archive version, please?

There is no way for this claim to be verified as no foreign observers were allowed during the voting process.

Foreign observers were allowed in Crimea, and I have seen many on TV, from Finland, Serbia, etc. If Americans, Germans, or British refused to attend, that's their problem.

The vote is reportedly being conducted again during the 'May 11 referendum on the status of the so-called People's Republic of Donetsk.'"

The vote is NOT conducted AGAIN. That's a different referendum, concerning a different territory and has nothing to do with Crimea.

Re:Lost of neo-con half-lies and garbage

[quantaman]

Moreover, the claim that's based on a website that was taken down is pure garbage. At least give us an archive version, please?

Not quite, but I can give you a Russian version and some discussion of that version in English.

In Russia Everyone Votes

[WillAffleckUW]

Those who don't vote are sent to Gulag, Comrade!

In other news

[Luckyo]

Previous blog post claimed that there was over 120% voting in Sevastopol. This was based on naked lie by the blogger, who listened to the official audio and decided to mishear "1.5 million total" as "1.7 million total" and draw conclusions based on that.

This was quoted by many Western media outlets, which were left red-faced (but didn't post any significantly noticeable retractions) after original video was pointed out to them by many in their readership who understood enough spoken Russian to point out the obvious lie.

I guess this is take two.

So? Isn't election fraud a tradition in Ukraine?

[edxwelch]

I believe the guy who kicked this whole thing off was elected by a rigged vote.

Forbes DID NOT report this

[guacamole]

Let me point out that the article was based in the op-ed column by Paul Roderick Gregory, who referred to a web piece that we can no longer find ourselves. This guy has been posting anti-Russian articles, often quite ridiculous ones, about once a week of Forbes's web site. In my view, this guy is simply a neo-con mouthpiece and has zero credibility.

Re:Forbes DID NOT report this

[mi]

In my view, this guy is simply a neo-con mouthpiece and has zero credibility.

Whether or not he is trustworthy, the numbers he is quoting are a lot more reasonable, than Putin's. Because a turn-out of 83% is simply unheard of. As is the 97% agreement — on anything. Heck, if you ask a million people, whether or not the 1st Commandment is humane, and you will not get 97% of respondents agreeing...

Unless you live under the rule of Saddam Hussein or Kim's dynasty or someone like that.

None of it matters, though — even if the referendum was honest and open, the results are invalid. Russia, for example, would never accept a vote of residents of Kurill Islands on joining Japan — especially, if conducted under the guns of polite Japanese "peacekeepers". Likewise the US would not accept a vote by Southern California to break away and join Mexico — especially if some future Santa Ana already occupies the land in question...

Re:Forbes DID NOT report this

[Cyberax]

Here's a list of independence referenda, quite a few of them have 80%+ turnout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... It is NOT unheard of.

Ukraine's very own independence referendum in 1991 had 85% turnout with 92% voting for independence.

Re:Forbes DID NOT report this

[mi]

It is possible. Just very unlikely... The guy, who proclaimed himself "Prime Minister of Crimea", for example, only got 3% of the vote in the last normal elections.

Had Russia been so confident in success, they wouldn't have occupied the peninsula before the referendum.

Re:Forbes DID NOT report this

[Cyberax]

And Svoboda party got 50% of government positions, even though they got less than 5% of popular vote. Things get crazy after revolutions.

Re:Vote Verification Smokescreen

[amorsen]

Denmark, every time. As long as e-voting can be prevented despite the efforts of Trine Bramsen and other subversive forces.

Clash of Civilization

[prefec2]

The real problem is that Putin wants an Eurasian union as a way to re-establish the Russian empire and the EU and even more the USA think in terms of Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" which will become a self fulfilling prophecy (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...).

The Forbes author misquoted the finding.

[guacamole]

Here is a google translate version of the actual report on referendum:

"
According to almost all survey participants and citizens :

- The vast majority of inhabitants of Sevastopol voted in a referendum to join Russia ( 50-80 % turnout ) , in Crimea on different data for joining Russia voted 50-60% voter turnout with a total of 30-50 % ;

- Inhabitants of Crimea voted not so much for joining Russia , as for the termination, in their words, " corruption and lawlessness thieves dominance Donetsk henchmen ." Inhabitants of Sevastopol to vote for annexation to Russia . Fears illegal armed groups in Sevastopol were higher than in other regions of the Crimea ."

Now note that the report states that voter turn out was _likely_ between 30 and 50%. These are not even official figures. So why does Forbes's Paul Roderick Gregory say that only 30% were voting? Clearly the guy is low balling the numbers. Next, the report says that 50-60% voted for joining Russia. So once again, why does Paul low ball the numbers? The guy has zero credibility. He has been posting hysterical, anti-Russian pieces on Forbes about once a week.

Re:The Forbes author misquoted the finding.

[D-Fly]

Glad somebody pointed this out. The Forbes writer, and the Slashdot headline and introduction are extremely, and in the case of Forbes intentionally, misleading. Who knows, the numbers may well be true. But to say that "Actual Results were Leaked" is a crock of shit; this is just some Putin-sock-puppet human rights "council" *speculating* on what the true numbers might have been. Sort of funny that his own people are saying this, but not actually informative. Makes you more suspicious of Forbes than anything else.

Re:The Forbes author misquoted the finding.

[Hypotensive]

Even if he "high ball"ed the numbers, the absolute maximum that could have been achieved is a 30% vote. Which is not a 96.77% vote, which is what was "counted". Therefore the vote was totally bogus and its results are not valid, even if it had been legal.

I'm about to say something horrifying...

[Mysticalfruit]

I'm going to set aside for a moment what Ukraine becoming part of Russia would mean for the Ukrainian people.

From a smash mouth point of view, I think it would be hilarious to watch Putin choke on the chicken bone that's Ukraine. He backed a leader that for more than 10 years bled the country dry and left it in financial ruins. The Russian minister of finance has already been bitching about how much it's going to cost to fix up Crimea's infrastructure.... Just wait until he gets the bill for Ukraine. With the west financially pulling out of Russia not to mention their dwindling tax base, combined with the 50B that Russia just spend on the Olympics... They're not in a great financial position to suddenly start pouring 10B+ a year into Ukraine. The Ukraine government is still trying to get it's hands on the 15B from the EU/US... Let Russia pick up that bill.

Now, with that all said, Russia taking over Ukraine would be ruinous for the Ukrainian people.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[nitehawk214]

How do I delete my account?

You could edit all your posts and write "copyright 2014" then issue Slashdot a DMCA notice. But that might not work.

You could edit all your posts....

Oblig ....

[PPH]

... In Soviet Russia reference.

Re:US elections are rigged too

[CanHasDIY]

Citation please? There IS fraud in US elections, no question about that, but not enough to call them "rigged". (And I'm a right wing type who's side has been loosing elections a lot lately.)

IMO:

"None of the Above" isn't an option; ergo, rigged.

100% of the referendum results published...

[Issarlk]

...by both sides are false. That's the only thing we can be sure of.

Re:Vote Verification Smokescreen

[PPH]

Florida. November 7th 2000. No, wait ......

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[scubamage]

This is what it looks like. It doesn't always show up on the front page, but it's in the right sidebar when it does.

In Russian Crimea...

[Virtucon]

In Russian Crimea, ballot counts you!

Re:As opposed to the shining example of US democra

[Lluc]

17.8% of the U.S. population voted for George W. Bush in 2000 [0]. 21.0% of the U.S. population voted for Barak Obama in 2012. [1]

Seems to me not very far off from the abstract's note that "15% of all Crimeans voted" to secede. If it's legitimate in the US, why not elsewhere?

[0] Yes, Al Gore did better by winning 18.1%.

[1] Percentages calculated mainly using Wikipedia's numbers, which admittedly are not a primary source, but I'll guess are probably "close enough" to make my point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://www.multpl.com/united-s... (for 2012 population)

You assume that every citizen of the US is eligible to vote. Some are underage, some are ineligible due to being in prison. If you look at the correct numbers, you get:

Eligible voting population: 221,925,820
Total votes for Obama: 65,915,796
Percent of population voting for Obama in 2012: 29.7%

Crimea vs Donetsk/Kharkiv/Luhansk

[unixisc]

Unlike Crimea, where Russians are a majority, in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv, Russians are a large minority, but not even a plurality. Yeah, there are enough of them to force Kyiv to accept an arrangement where Russian is an accepted official language at least in East Ukraine, but not enough of them to make that region a part of Russia w/o military annexation without a referandum

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[sharknado]

I did say it might not work :)

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[Dachannien]

You seem to be implying that everyone is always on a computer which they are allowed to modify in any way.

This. I'm at work right now, and the best I'm allowed to do here is run Chrome (the alternative being IE). No Firefox, no NoScript (which is what I normally use at home).

To other posters: I'm aware of, and sometimes read, Soylent News. Thanks for the other various suggestions as well. Sniff you jerks later!

Not so fast

[nbahi15]

Most people? What does that mean? My wife speaks Russian, her whole family speaks Russian and identify as Ukrainian. It seems that there is the danger here of conflating Russian speaking with I want to live in Russia. You're also suggesting the issue comes down to austerity vs. free money.

The truth is these people are largely poor, they live in the midst of a toxic media environment (most don't speak English), and the they are so inundated with propaganda from Russia that you can no longer determine what is truth and what is fiction inside the country. There is a strong feeling in Ukraine that they want to end corruption and move forward, possibly beyond the Russian sphere, but it is difficult to find that exit.

I would describe the whole EU association agreement as an attempt to hitch their wagon to a not-so-kleptocratic star. Austerity isn't the overriding concern, but in the case of the East right now people are being told the boogie man, AKA Nazi, neo-facists, are coming from the West to steal their children, rape their wives and generally ruin their day.

How did they get the data?

[xfizik]

If the results posted by Forbes were indeed true, I just don't see how this "President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights", which is somewhat famous for its opposition (even maybe fake sometimes) to Putin, would have access to such sensitive data. It just does not make any sense. And yeah, it was "posted briefly", but long enough for Forbes to get a copy of it at just the right time. Too many inconsistencies.

Re:How did they get the data?

[mi]

And yeah, it was "posted briefly", but long enough for Forbes to get a copy of it at just the right time

According to TFA, Forbes got their information from a Ukrainian site. They may have gotten a tip-off from Russia's Liberals — such as from Svetlana Gannushkina, who is mentioned in TFA by name. It is not too far-fetched for members of the body "somewhat famous for its opposition to Putin" to try to "get the truth out".

The information could have been posted long enough for Ukrainians to take a screenshot... That would explain all known facts.

Re:How did they get the data?

[xfizik]

Oh, thanks for pointing out the ukrainian source. Now I am 100% convinced that this whole story has no credibility whatsoever.

Re:How did they get the data?

[mi]

Darling, you've declared me "crazy" once already. Why are you still responding to my posts? Can't resist? I, certainly, am not replying to you again — other than to point out your earlier name-calling.

As for the subject matter, unlike in your Motherland, Ukrainian news-sites are not government-controlled — and thus it is possible for credible information to appear there...

Re:How did they get the data?

[xfizik]

When it comes to reporting on anything related to Russia, ukrainian media are exceptionally biased. It has always been like that and has only gotten worse in the last few months. To believe otherwise is ..., well, ... crazy.

"IF this becomes popular...?"

[mmell]

When has historical revisionism not been popular?

Source?

[Cyberax]

All the sites refer to TSN.ua which is a bit, shall we say, violently anti-Russian. In reality, foreign journalists have not detected any major incidents of fraud during the referendum.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[steelfood]

Some people surf anonymously and sign in only if they need to post. Sometimes, it's intentional. Sometimes, it's because the browser doesn't keep cookies between sessions.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[nitehawk214]

Ok, then I take exception to the "might" part of your statement. :)

The Russian article is still there!

[quantaman]

The Volokh conspiracy has a link to a Russian version of the article which is somehow still up (and it sounds like it's an official government agency).

It sounds like this isn't so much an accidental leak as a deliberate shot from a Russian government agency that isn't fully Putinized. Either way to all the people who were doubtful about the missing article's existence... well there you go.

In other news ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... the latest five year plan is going smashingly, and steel production is up 5000%.

Hello, it's Russia.

Re not that divided fundamentally

[AHuxley]

If the results presented here where true, a pro West, pro NATO side would win "every" national election too. History shows that not to be the case. More slashdot sockpuppet dreams.

Re:Re not that divided fundamentally

[stoatwblr]

The ousted president went in on a ticket of closer relations with the west.

He'd have gotten away with the continued corruption if he hadn't torn that up and gone with russia without consulting the electorate (and such a decision is enough of a change in policy to justify a referendum)

Re greater autonomy

[AHuxley]

The East is pro Russian as they know what awaits for them under a national pro EU gov. More of the same lack of services, more of the same 'deals'.
Like many regions in the post 1990 EU/East bloc region better to vote to get out and elect you own regional people than trust been ruled via the EU or locals supported/funded by the EU/USA.>

Re autonomy

[AHuxley]

They knew what autonomy would result in. The clear vote was for autonomy. After autonomy you join the side that will look after most of the people who voted.
If not the vote for autonomy would have failed....
Many countries has split, reformed, joined larger nations over history based on the wishes of the local population.
Other vast populations have been gifted away by gloabal powers eg UK/US/Soviet deals at the end of WW2 who got what part of Europe.
At least the locals got a clear vote for autonomy this time.

Re no such thing

[AHuxley]

Re "pro-Russian anything".... given the Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2012 results and the ability of a Russophone party to attract and keep a good ratio of votes....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Depends on the site

[AHuxley]

A lot of external and domestic US gov propaganda is now very legal and very well funded.
On sites like slashdot an AC with a certain style, lets say a "sockpuppet" will get a story posted and then attemt to shape the comments to relfect their needs/views.
The end gain is a rush to support Western mil and gov actions, weapon sales and loans for eastern parts of the expanding EU, front foundations pushing for color revolutions around/in Russia.
A lot of interested well funded groups are now into the "newsworthy" side of web 2.0 as the resutls are very useful.
Gas deals to cover weapon sales and ever new loans from the region.
Counter to that you have a internal German view to just let the gas flow from Russia as Germany cannot afford not to have energy for jobs and exports.
As for Russia they have been invaded so many times, they know how to absorb, halt, roll back every costly European dream of endless free raw materials, food, workers from the east...
The gain is in the mix of gas exports and weapons sales. To get the EU off generational Russian gas contracts and onto another energy new exporter...
For that you need endless flood of propaganda that every web 2.0 user can understand and relate to.

Re:Trolls in the comment section

[quantaman]

I've noticed the same though there's another phenomena as well, Americans who support Russia because they see Russian power as to counter American Imperialism.

It's actually sadly ironic. They try to show how they're anti-US, against US imperialism, and they really care about the rest of the world. They do this by taking crisis in another country and advocating for a position that involves large scale death and suffering of foreigners because they don't care about any criteria except how it affects the US. Neither do they understand how it's racist to insist that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protesting over months are all simply American stooges.

Timing of this "leak" is interesting

[boorack]

It seems to be apparent bullshit for everyone who actually was on Crimea these days (except for some western propagandists^H^H^H^Hjournalists who tried desperately to find someone discontent there). Timing of this "leak" is also interesting: just days before referendum in Doneck region will take place.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[sharknado]

Well, there's always the possibility that you have access to the site's comments database. :) Or you could put the copyright in your signature.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[aybiss]

I've been here for about 10 years (I think), and I have never received (nor given) a single point. Go figure.

I would blame my script blocker, but I haven't had that as long as I've had Slashdot.

Democracy

[bombman]

As Stalin so eloquently put it;

"You know, comrades,", "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

Re:As opposed to the shining example of US democra

[npongratz]

I made the same assumption as found in the statement "15% of all Crimeans voted".

Further, arbitrarily limiting the voting population doesn't make an election result any more legitimate.

Whether it's 21% or 30%, the result is not materially different. The overwhelming majority did not vote for the "winner", yet each individual in this overwhelming majority is forced into subordination to the winner.

And how reliable is this report?

[whitroth]

Given the total one-sidedness of western media on coverage of the Ukraine. "Oooh, he said 'fascist', we've got the cooties!", when one of the three groups of the current government *are* outright right-wing fascists.

Oh, and while you're at it, can someone explain to me how the current government making a military assault on the seperatists is different than the previous *elected* government's use of snipers and the police forces? Oh, that's right, this government's using the military against its own people....

            mark

Re:Here you go:

[ericloewe]

If that is the best citation you can come up with, it's a good thing you're just another stupid AC.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[nitehawk214]

The only way I would be able to do that is if I was the church of Scientology.

Re:In-window popup autoplaying video ads with soun

[scubamage]

I feel the same way! I have the ability to disable ads but I never bother. If people are looking to monetize their website and they offer a decent enough product for me to go there over and over I don't mind them making some money for their efforts.

I find the whole thing interesting

[BoFo]

First the results were suspect because the margin was so high. Now the results are suspicious because they were not as originally reported, but here a plurality (55% of those who voted) was only a minority of Crimea's population. The bottom line, of course, is we are to mistrust the results no matter what.

What percentage of Ukraine's population was necessary to take to the streets and overthrow the elected government and appoint their own oligarchs?

The shrill nature of US media reporting on the issue and the aggressive pushing of the narrative that Russia's "invasion" of Crimea fomented the crisis is very suspicious. They act as if the crisis began in February, 2014 when the people had been in Maidan square for months.

It ignores the role played by Victoria Nuland, wife of the co-founder of PNAC Robert Kagan, who was caught on tape on 28 January 2014 discussing who should be in charge of an interim government after a coup. Coincidentally, the chips fell exactly as planned. The media ignores the pressure put on Ukraine to accept a deal from the EU (and IMF) rather than the better deal proposed by Russia and accepted by Yanacovych.

The media is acting, in my opinion, in a fashion reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq War debacle.

Re:As opposed to the shining example of US democra

[Xest]

What does it matter? Are you saying that if one nation doesn't get democracy exactly right then it's okay for other nations to invade their neighbours and annexe their territory? I'm struggling to see what your point can possibly be other than this because otherwise it's just not relevant.