I just thought I mention it. But I looked for it but can't find it and considering both Romania and Turky have been part of the NATO since 1952-2004... I might be getting old (I'm still under 30 tough). I've had the change to talk to some Ukranians they consider themself hardy people ready for war (I hope i've been talking to the wrong people). If anything can be teached out of this for the EU is that it should invest in a russian media channel for Russian speaking minorities whit at this moment get their worldview only from russian channels, and storys like lithuanias russian tv ban. Shows that they can not deal with it propperly on their own Ridiculing it (in a jon stewart way) and teaching proper history will get a better response then simply banning it. That said Ukraine should decide what it wan't to do with the easter Ukraine does it want's to end in a civil war or does it comply with a Swiss voting system without any ukrainian knowing exactly what that is. Their best bet I think is to talk with the eastern kantons and sort of agree with their request, and add a clausule that much of their rights are determined by the money flows basicly if the get subsidized by Kiev they can do what they want, if Kiev have to subsidize them they have to listen to Kiev. The system seems fair at first glance. it gives Russia a insentive to keep the oil price low It gives the east what it want's and a incentive to invest and fight coruption to reduce the subsidies so it can make more independed votes. Giving a stronger easter Ukriane economy means the changes it can get annexed by Russia increase in the long term whilst it increases ukraines total budget in the short and medium term. Russia gets a further insentive to increase trades with the east further increasing it's economy. The west (Ukraine) also get's the modernize and increase it's economy altough the will proberly trade more to the west efforts could be made to secure more assets in places like Odessa. THe west will dominate the east because of the subsidies (this is good because it keeps the west mainly wants Ukraine to remain intact) keeping the status quo Unity above all could marginalize extreme movements. War should be prevented (If war occured the flow of gas to Europe can not be ensured, if gasflow can't be ensured europe won't pay this would result in a collapse of the Russian economy (and cold winters in Europe) Europe would blame Russia, Russia would blame Europe and both have nukes
Not trying to attack you for making the point, I was more trying to say that if this is the sort of flimsy logical justification Russia provides for invading its neighbours, then there's not much of a point in trying to reason with them.
Yes flimsy logical justification I agree but that's the reality. Ukraine is actually on a clock they want ellections on may 25th and then theris the gas cut of in june. Even if they go to civil war they can't win before june, so if it's civil war and the oil will get cut of other nations will have to intervene/invade be it US, EU or Russia (and it will be that last one). To secure the oil line otherwise Europe will get cold and Russia goes bankrupt. A invasion will be inevitable atthat point. So they should give in to a Swiss system (thats what the east wants) that's basicly referendum afther referendum as I see it (they have abouth 50 voting sessions a year over 100+ topics and people send their vote with the mail)... This is absurd for such a corrupt country theirs a reason why this system is only used by 1 country this works for the Swiss but Ukranian aren't the swiss... A lot will have to be in the details. Further Putin could be shamed into letting the other half of the Crimean Tatars back into Crimeo (half still in uzbekistan) he could also be trolled for his progressive toughts on referendums and if he already set a date for a referendum in Chechnya and Tatarstan and possible a couple of others I can't remember right now... I wonder what his official response would be All that said I don't see the situation inproving until the election of may or until the june cut of then things will change drasticly and not for the better
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! In regards to joepistole's thing, "that forecast is piece of shit". The year now is 2014, population is 143,700,000 people. The current 0.23% population increase is projected to increase, sending Russian population on steady increase. Unfortunately for the Polish "Katastroika" sponsored Death scenarios for Russia...those scenarios will be in the fantasy land for them.
Lol, yeah everything you don't like is piece of shit in your opinion. But the fact is Russians have been leaving The Greatest Country in the World in droves. That is a fact! Putin will need to build another fence to keep people in The Greatest Country in the World...just as he has to send an army into Ukraine to keep them from leaving The Greatest Country in the World. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Just as your ex-Blackwater and now Academi private US army guys get sniped one by one and Mr. Brennan realizes the fault of the nation he serves for to ever have set foot in Ukraine, it will be too late as the whole Ukranian revolution farce will fall to pieces. Like I prophesied the 2nd step after Crimea, the funding of pro-Russian separatists has come to fruition. It is not long before the Western pawns of Kiev will fall into dirt. The West provocations in order to have Lockheed Martin and Raytheon money pockets full will not succeed, the Russian army will keep at bay. NATO escalation of fears for the sake of further increase of funding in this military organization will work in short term at most. The careful actions of Russian forces in both the South Abkhasia and Crimea pinpoint to a new nation, not of crude large force but of fast tactical systematic approach to the enemy.
OK comrade, and that makes sense to you? And then you wonder why you have to build walls and threaten people with guns to prevent them from leaving?
I think you should wonder on why you have to bring "freedom and democracy" with bullets and predator drones, since a country you live in has no walls and threatens no people...than why you have NSA and the most massive in the world prisoner population?
We'll for starters, we don't have to bring freedom at the point of a gun. That is one reason Putin has invaded Ukraine. And we have spy agencies like every other nation. But because we are the wealthiest and most powerful state we are a little better at it. Intelligence is key to self defense. That is why virtually every nation, including Mother Russia, has spy agencies. While the US has the highest incarceration rates, Mother Russia is not far behind. US incarceration rates are high because we have some pretty tough drug laws.
But comrade, after success of fearless leader in great revolution, vat vill ve do about Moose and Squirrel?
out of curiosity do you believe their is a good guy in this conflict? If so who and why would it be? (victems aren't necesairly good)
That depends on what you mean by good. If you believe in the right of self determination, them the Keiv backers are the good guys. On the other hand if you are looking for saints ,you won't find them there or anywhere. Ukrainians have suffered the pangs of Russian corruption for many decades now. They finally said no.
I know that. but that said Russias mayor claim is that the current Kiev regime are facists (ultra right) this is mainly because of the svoboda party inside it (that has become popular trough softenening their image and being very anti-corruption and pro EU so far so good that said they are still ultra nationalistic and pushing the native russian speakers away rather then helping the civil war basicly some of their inland policies could use some softening up. But this does mean that new elections are good and anyone opposing it as the bad guy
For starters, that Russian mayor is a self anointed mayor. He isn't a mayor. He is a Russian thug. Two, his claims are demonstrably false. There is nothing in the record to show the Kiev government is ultra nationalistic. And the government in Kiev has done nothing to oppress ethnic Russians. Russians cannot say the same.
This part is true and I agree A debatable part. Try googling svoboda with only search results from 2013 you can go further back if you like but the party has done it's best to move from the right to the center. example1 example 2 example 3 They also have a worse rep from their history (again they mellowed out) Euromaiden is not necesairly svoboda most of the ruling politicians now are members of the Batkivshchyna party tough The parlement did decide to forbid the Russian language the president did veto it, they also toppled a couple of pro russian statues and it was the total sum of all these things and the potential support from Russia that made the situation in the east possible (Crimea is a other matter) Russia supplied Ukraine with cheap gas, Russia would say they did that to help the Ukrainian goverment the reality however is that it didn't help the economy the cheap gas was at least partially in Russias favor for use of the naval base in sevastopol and a stable transit land. Russia would claim the problems in Ukraine where caused by a unbalanced trade with the EU (The EU should have bought a bit more ukrainian products (this is a half truth) The EU would say that their bill would have adressed the trade inbalance and more open borders would have allowed for investments in the Ukrainian industry They ould have said that the Russian help was like giving a fish and the EU's help would be teaching it how to fish. The EU would also say Russia ruled Ukraine over the price of gas, Russia will counter that the EU will rule Ukraine trought the IMF Both are right nobdy is happy
All I can really say is that from my perspective and that shared by most of the world, it looks fairly obvious that Russia is doing more than anyone else to ensure that whatever good guys there are in this dispute, they can't get anything done. If Russia had minded its own business in the first place and ethnic Ukrainians had started a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Russian speakers in the east, I would have taken Russia's side on the issue without hesitation. As it stands, I think the West wants clean, fair and open elections so we can determine what exactly it is that Ukrainians want, whereas it's Russian special forces and Russian-financed/transplanted rioters trying to prevent those elections from taking place. I think countries like the US would have less to gain from simply snatching Ukraine out of Russia's grasp as opposed to a compromise that works to everyone's satisfaction, but unilateral annexations, riots and abductions are not a compromise. Even now Germany spits on Canadian energy imports in favour of continued dependence on fascist oil and gas, so it's ridiculous to think the West somehow has it in for Russians.
Russia's retroactive pricing of natural gas after stealing Crimea is like the Mafia forcefully taking over some guy's sandwich shop and then demanding he pay them back for all the sandwiches they bought there when he was running it.
out of curiosity Ukraine gave up 1080 nuclear warheads in 1991 (a souvenier from the USSR) in return both the VS and Russia (edit also great brittan, CHina and france) would respect ukraines national borders. What's the change they still have at least 1? Apart from the nukes, Ukraine also had 18 closed cities nicknamed atomgrads. Even if they couldn't make 1 or 2 dissapear in the accounting their might be enough seperate parts to build one, their would certainly be the hardware, personel and expertise present to do it. And delivery hardware like the SS8 SATAN was developed in Ukraine. You might think if one country is capable of building a nuclair capability in secret it would be Ukraine, aftherall better to have them and never need them then need them and not having them. Who know maybe someday some of them doesn't keep to the agreement.
Speaking of "propaganda" Throughout the Ukraine crisis, there has been a suggestion that Russian forces were on the ground stirring up some of the unrest, first in Crimea and now in some eastern cities. On April 20, the New York Times had a front-page scoop that offered firm evidence of this. Or maybe it didn't. The Times story, by Andrew Higgins, Michael Gordon and Andrew Kramer, seemed to nail it down: Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces–equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings. This evidence that has "endorsed by the Obama administration"– a pretty unusual phrase–forms the basis for the Times report. How those photos came into the possession of the Times wasn't fully explained until the follow-up piece (4/23/14), which cast considerable doubt on the photographic evidence. "Scrutiny Over Photos Said to Tie Russia Units to Ukraine" is how the Times put it in the headline, and the paper's revised account–not on the front page–led off with this: A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny. The piece doesn't exactly have the feel of a correction; only very careful readers are likely to grasp that the Times is speaking about a story that it splashed on its front page. It acknowledges that the photographs had been "provided by American officials to the New York Times, which included that description of the group photograph in an article and caption that was published on Monday." Specifically, what has "come under scrutiny" are two of the most important images in the set. One shows a man in Ukraine who is supposedly also photographed among Russian forces in Georgia in 2008. "Some observers have asked whether the man photographed in Georgia is the same person photographed in eastern Ukraine," the Times explains. The paper goes on: Another question has been raised about a group photograph of uniformed men who are identified in the Ukrainian submission as a "sabotage-reconnaissance group" that reports to the "General Staff of the Russian armed forces." The group photo is a pretty important part of the story. As the Times notes, "the dispute over the group photograph cast a cloud over one particularly vivid and highly publicized piece of evidence." As in "highly publicized by us." The person who took the group photo–which is labeled as being taken in Russia–claims it was taken in Ukraine. Why the first Times account didn't express more skepticism about the origin of these photos is anyone's guess. ABC correspondent Alexander Marquardt weighed in on Twitter (4/21/14) (h/t @billmon): Veteran journalist Robert Parry (Consortium News, 4/21/14) expressed doubts about the Times' scoop as well . What did he make of the new story? As Parry (4/22/14) put it, the piece is "what you might call a modified, limited retraction." He added: In the old days of journalism, we used to apply the scrutiny before we published a story on the front page or on any other page, especially if it had implications toward war or peace, whether people would live or die. UPDATE: New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has weighed in (4/24/14), writing that the original piece, "with its reliance on an administration leak, was displayed too prominently and questioned too lightly.' http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/04/23/is-nyt-walking-back-russia-photos-scoop/ Ahh. Propaganda information not questioned too lightly? By the NYTimes. Sounds about right. 'Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that the assertion that the photograph in the American briefing materials had been taken in Russia was incorrect. But she said that the photograph was included in a “draft version” of a briefing packet and that the information has since been corrected. This photograph, she said, was not among those presented by Mr. Kerry in Geneva.' Of course that was after it had been splashed all over the front page. And though they were so obviously incorrect the US government continues to assert that they have evidence anyway, though they just don't show it. The NYT takes no responsibility since it seems now they take their information (calling it news) from the US government. 'Maxim Dondyuk, a freelance photographer who was working in Slovyansk principally for the Russian newsmagazine Russian Reporter, said that he had taken the group photograph there and posted it on his Instagram account. “It was taken in Slovyansk,” he said in a telephone interview. “Nobody asked my permission to use this photograph.” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that the assertion that the photograph in the American briefing materials had been taken in Russia was incorrect. But she said that the photograph was included in a “draft version” of a briefing packet and that the information has since been corrected. This photograph, she said, was not among those presented by Mr. Kerry in Geneva. Still, Ms. Psaki asserted that there was considerable classified and unclassified information that had led the United States and its Western allies to “make a connection between the Russians and the armed militants” in eastern Ukraine. “We don’t have a shadow of a doubt about the connection,” she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/w...otos-said-to-tie-russia-units-to-ukraine.html Of course we know that the US government would never ever lie about something as serious as evidence. *cough* Iraq *cough
