Slashdot Mirror
Russian Military Forces Have Now Invaded Ukraine
SpzToid (869795) writes Those plucky "Ukrainian separatist's" ambition to join Russia have now been given Russian military support, as the Russian Army with long columns of armor have invaded Ukraine and have opened up a second warring front, in a big way. The Reuters report, interestingly, quotes a member of Putin's own advisory council on human rights describing the move as an invasion: "When masses of people, under commanders' orders, on tanks, APCs and with the use of heavy weapons, (are) on the territory of another country, cross the border, I consider this an invasion."
With hastily spray-painted Ukrainian flags!
Unfortunately for those living there a lack of control of Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia, and it always has been. This is Putin and his faction basically saying "Bring it Europe/US. What are you going to do?" They're gambling that Ukrainian sovereignty is less important to the US and Europe than getting in a shooting war with Russia, and quite frankly they're probably right.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6...
As someone else put it, Putin is aspiring to be a Dune character. Or more prosaically, he's learned a lot from watching US corporations and the US government manipulate the news cycle. Do something that will outrage the public, wait for the new furor, pull back a little, wait for the news to move on to some other subject, and try again.
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This is something we saw coming, at least since the incident with Crimea. What plans were made for this? Or are they all pretending to be surprised?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Wasn't it a wonderful, peaceful time, so long ago? Ah, those were the days.
Yeah, both Hitler and Putin put on good games before moving on to occupying what they believed their natural sphere's of influence in eastern europe.
And for good measure, Ukraine should "sell" its ownership in the Ukrainian section of the gas pipeline to a Nato country and then shut off the flow of gas.
Cutting off the flow of gas would hurt Europe a lot more than it would hurt Russia at this point. Entering the winter with your largest gas supplier no longer providing you with the gas that you use for heating would suck. And as gas is fungible, it doesn't matter to Russia if we stop buying it from them, unless everyone else stops buying it from them - if China doesn't join in with the boycott then it just means that they'll be buying more has from Russia because the price of everyone else's gas will go up.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This Russian move represents a serious deterioration of the world unity as we knew it, and is likely to affect most of us, directly or indirectly, and more or less severely. Yes I want to read here the various opinions on this crucial topic, moderated the /. way.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Can't help it, it kinda felt like Berlin 1936...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Once you appear weak, and unwilling to stand for your "red lines", your competition simply won't take you seriously anymore.
Nothing Obama (or the international community for that matter) is willing to do will aver Russia from its course. At this point, the questions to be settled will be around just how much of Ukraine manages to stay independent at all.
While people may have been all pissy about Bush, unilateral wars, and Team America World Police, the fact of the matter is that it was better than the alternative. "America, Fuck Yeah" sure looks better than "America, Fuck No" at this point.
People keep repeating this but I don't think it's true.
It will be difficult in the short term but the consequences of being under Russia (Or rather the robber barons that control the failed state that carries the name Russia) are becoming too big to ignore.
China and Russia really are not friends. China's not stupid. They don't want to be dependent on them either.
You don't want China deciding to flex their economic muscles by playing with the bond market next time America invades some random country, do you?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe that would be a nice object less as to why it's not healthy to be buried in so much debt. Or to be policing the entire damned world on our own dime, for that matter.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Yeah, supplying weapons and lunatics crazy enough to fight our enemy has worked so well in Afghanistan, let's do that again!
Ukrainians are a modern, western, civilized people. Arming them is quite different than arming religious fanatics looking to recreate the middle ages.
And besides, it did work. The Russian military suffered over 14,000 killed in Afghanistan and over 53,000 wounded. The Russians experienced actual battlefield military defeat. Not the political defeat the US is experiencing.
Wat?
I assume from your absurd statement that you consider invading Afghanistan and Iraq, then replacing their governments, is not "conquering"? Because ..... ? Because they installed a new government and then left, sorta, except they still routinely fly drones and air-strike anyone in those countries they see fit, which no truly independent country would tolerate.
Even if you use such a stupid definition of "conquer", you're attacking a straw man. I said invade, not conquer. It's indisputable that America has routinely invaded countries far away from their own borders over and over again. Any regime that boils down to "those who use military force against others gets sanctioned" would result in America being entirely cut off from the world economy for years. That clearly won't happen so this is just another case of American (and to some extent European) hypocrisy at work. Either do it consistently or don't do it at all. Preferably not at all - sanctions are based on the idea that punishing huge swathes of ordinary citizens on both sides will somehow bring about political change. How many people really believe the people are in charge of their governments foreign policies in countries like the USA?
Yeah, supplying weapons and lunatics crazy enough to fight our enemy has worked so well in Afghanistan, let's do that again!
Most Ukrainians are secular, and those who are religious are mostly Christians. I don't see much parallel at all to Afghanistan and the things that went wrong after we double-crossed them.
Also, we wouldn't economically abandon Ukraine afterwards; all of Europe already have trade ties, and nobody is against trading with them or investing there, post-war. Heck, I've got sunflower oil from Ukraine in my kitchen right now. Afghanistan went sideways because we promised them they could be in the modern family of nations if they drove out the Russians, and that was a lie. They were abandoned to their mud huts.
And NATO is a guaranteed source of truth, because? Western militaries never ever have faulty intelligence? This is a military organisation that has always been in opposition to Russia. I'm not sure that's a "confirmation" any more than something announced by the separatists is. I don't trust either of them and neither should you. Perhaps Russia is invading. If it's a real invasion then we'll see soon enough.
Anyway, my "ludicrous claim" is simply what western media are reporting, including the BBC. Here's their story. It leads with "Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has accused Russia of deploying its troops in the east of his country" ... which is exactly what I said the Slashdot story wasn't claiming but should.
Well, for the US an open conflict started by China in our bond market, that would naturally leave them frozen out of it. They enjoy buying our bonds, so they'd be cutting their own nose. And as the largest bond holder, they'd be destroying their own investments. Our continued bilateral economic friendliness is a basic requirement for China to get any return on those investments.
When they're the biggest bond holder, attacking the market would risk losing their investment, and for the US, our risk is that we would have to write off a bunch of debt. We'd come out ahead in the long term; they could trash our federal budget for a couple years, but most of the US economy is private and independent of the government.
Also, in the short term the dollar would drop, and China would have increased costs in keeping their currency pegged low against. Likely it would rise. That would lower the value of their giant pot of cash, which would be growing quickly without bond purchases. They would be stuck with shrinking liquid assets where they used to have an increasing investment portfolio.
So, no. The whole situation is an object lesson in not buying somebody's debt if you want them to be your enemy; you'll only be able to afford them as friends. China may not be our "best" friend, but their economic friendliness runs deep. Trillions of dollars deep.
The majority of Ukrainians wanted to be in the EU, but Yanukovych wouldn't be able to continue raping his country for billions if that happened. It was his pay off for following Putin's orders.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
And for good measure, Ukraine should "sell" its ownership in the Ukrainian section of the gas pipeline to a Nato country and then shut off the flow of gas.
Cutting off the flow of gas would hurt Europe a lot more than it would hurt Russia at this point. Entering the winter with your largest gas supplier no longer providing you with the gas that you use for heating would suck. And as gas is fungible, it doesn't matter to Russia if we stop buying it from them, unless everyone else stops buying it from them - if China doesn't join in with the boycott then it just means that they'll be buying more has from Russia because the price of everyone else's gas will go up.
No Russian economy depends on this income, it make up a significant part of their entire national GDP, meanwhile Europe has been finding other alternative sources of energy in case Russia would cut of the supply again as they did after the sanction put on them for the invasion of Georgia. And the gas is not fungible, it would take over a year to build new pipelines to other countries, especially China is a long long way away from the gas going to Europe. Russia would be completely and utterly fucked without the gas, in Europe it would just hurt the home owner who has invested in natural gas heating to save money, they would not be saving money anymore.
That is typical, always blaming the others. The reason why Bulgaria sucks is not because of Russians. Estonia was a part of the USSR and is way better off. No, the inherent and prevalent corruption is the actual reason. Don't blame Russians, blame yourselves. Besides, being on the wrong side in both WW1 and WW2 also was kind of a stupid decision, don't you think?
Although, you probably don't, since you seem to consider Russians subhuman, just as Hitler did.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It is interesting that everybody just repeats this. The source of the "confirmation" is Ella Polyakova, which is a chairman of organization Soldier's Mothers and opposition politician. She has an advisory role on human rights. This is a person with an axe to grind at the very least. It is hard to take her as some official spokesman of the Russian government and definitely not someone in-the-know about the situation. All the articles make her seem like some member of Putin's inner circle of advisors.
The amount of disinformation that is coming from Russia, but also Ukraine and the NATO command is vast and it is very hard to sift through it to get to the truth. Very likely Russian troops are somehow involved in the conflict, but trust me that if Russia started an invasion of Ukraine, they could take Kiev the next day. So Occam's razor applied, this is not an invasion.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Very likely Russian troops are somehow involved in the conflict
Given that Ukraine actually captured a group of Russian paratroopers, showed them on TV, and the Russians admitted they were in fact Russian troops, yes, I kind of think there are Russian troops in the Ukraine.
I worked with Ukrainians, and i worked with Russian, and we worked all together. Most of the normal people on both sides have no problem friends to each other, or being married with each other.
I am deeply worried about some polititians (on both sides) being more conderned about economics than about saving the lives of many civilians, and soldiers. Russia could have stopped a long time destabilizing the region, and the West made some big mistakes about 9 months ago in not giving Russia guarantees for their safety and constructive influence, and instead of insiting in finally "winning" the cold war.