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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."
In Soviet Russia, border crosses troops!
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... has some photographs if you care.
However...A Big Part of the issue was Ukraine wanted to join the EU and NATO, however the Ukrainian president at the time decided to side with Russia while most of the country wanted to be with the EU.
So we are in kinda of a gray zone here.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actually, the handover of USSR's stockpile of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine wasn't in exchange for defense, but rather in exchange for a promise from Russia that Russia will never use its military weapons to attack or intimidate the Ukraine. (See the Budapest Memorandum, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... )
Clearly, that agreement has been broken by Russia. Of course, I doubt any powers are going to try to exacerbate the situation by either providing the Ukraine with nuclear weapons or suggesting that Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons, but based on my understanding of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine is well within its rights to do so now that Russia has breached the agreement.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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
Finally they will be able to find those WMDs that the Ukranians are hiding!
Appeasement only makes the aggressor more aggressive.
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...
I dunno, the opening ceremonies seemed kind of ominous to me.
(Bonus points: The CAPTCHA for this post is 'worried')
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.
You do realize Moscow pays people to post in these forums right?
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?
what we have is actually only quotes from Kiev
The BBC and many other outlets have published NATO confirmations that at least 1000 Russian soldiers have entered Ukraine in this invasion. This directly contradicts your ludicrous claim, but you already knew that.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
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.
Arming Afghanistan wasn't the problem. Arming them in secret (so most of the population had no idea that the USA was spending half a billion dollars a year on helping them fight the USSR and felt abandoned) and then cutting off the money as soon as the USSR pulled out and leaving the country a mess, rather than helping to rebuild schools and so on was the problem.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Ukraine is well within its rights to do so now that Russia has breached the agreement.
I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 2014, it's a little hard to come by.
Russia and China just signed a big longterm gas and oil deal. Any amounts over that, in a scenario where Russia doesn't have other buyers, and China would be able to push the price down as far as they wanted; barely over cost.
Also, China is 9th in the world in natural gas production, and they don't use much; only 5% of their energy usage in 2012.
And they've been working hard to diversify their energy supply. They're not going to stop buying from the countries they just signed trade agreements with. Those are real victories much bigger than a short-term discount. They're also not going to convert factories to a new fuel source just to be supplied by Russia, because Russia is not an honest player; everybody knows, especially the Chinese, that they will raise your prices if you don't act like their puppet. China doesn't like being told what to do. At. All.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
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.
Recent Ukrainian events summed up for those that care:
1954 Crimea was given as a "Gift" to Ukraine by Russia/USSR and Nikita Khrushchev (an ethnic Ukrainian) as a symbolic gesture commemorating the 300th anniversary of Crimea becoming part of the Russian empire.
1991 Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia
1994 Ukraine signed a treaty with Russia and the USA to disarm its nuclear arsenal in return for a treaty that guaranteed Russia and USA would come to their aid if they were ever invaded.
2010 Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych was elected president. He had been a minister of an eastern Ukrainian province. The US and Europe had supported his opponent, and Russia had supported him. Likely both sides illegally influenced the election with money and espionage. In the following years, there is little doubt he ran the country in the ground, he was a terrible president.
2014 The Ukrainian parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove him from the presidential office. A poll in April showed his approval rating at 5% This event was likely assisted by the US and Europe and was basically a Coup de'etat. Russia freaked out and had Russian agents already in place in Ukraine start stiring up violent unrest. They've basically been in a state of civil war since. Russia is providing troops and hardware, the west seem a little more reluctant to provide direct support.
Russias primary goals are to keep the strategic port in the black sea open and prevent Ukraine from joining the EU.
Wow that is some pretty powerful Russian propaganda you have been drinking there. Calling normal peaceful Ukranians "fascists"? Check. Calling it a "violent overthrow" despite it not being one? Check. Calling the government "ultra nationalist"? Check. Blaming the US despite them having nothing to do with anything? Check. Russians have a "right to use force"? Check.
Thanks for popping in Putin, but your deluded views aren't welcome here.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
No, the current regime of Russia is a text book Nationalist Socialist regime. Russia is currently a text-book Nazi state. So the factions in Russia which are Nazi are not minor. They are the government.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Don't forget that before this whole mess, the Ukrainian president was going to the EU hat in hand asking for 15 Billion Euros to pay off debts paid to Russia and to fix its infrastructure. Speaking of which, their infrastructure is in complete shambles. When Russia first took Crimea a couple days later the Russian minister of fiance was bitching about how much is was going to cost to fix Crimea (something like 15 Billion over 3 years).
So by all means, if Russia wants to take over Ukraine an incur the expense of actually fixing Ukraine... excellent, I suspect very quickly the whole thing will be a pyrrhic victory.
Also, while they're expending their military forces trying to keep the Ukrainians from engaging in an insurgency against them, we're going to keep putting the screws to them on the global market, causing their currency to go into an inflationary spiral.
As of right now, the Europeans have been hesitant about criticizing Russia too heavy because of fears about their gas supply. However, I can't imagine the Europeans will say nothing if Russia rolls in the tanks. Possibly we'll start shipping NG to the Europeans to further undercut the Russians? Who knows.
However, now that Russia has banned food imports from the EU and the US. How long before the standard of living starts spiraling downwards? I don't imagine that Putin would starve his own people, but who knows?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Hurghada - odprawa paszportowa:
-Nationality?
--Russian
-Occupation?
--No, just visiting.
(from a friend in Poland.)
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