War in Ukraine about to expand ?

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Jacoby,
Your concept of ethnic mandate does not hold water outside of Crimea, and even in Crimea the vote was not done reliably or with third party monitoring.



The identity of the Snipers of Maidan is still hotly debated, but currently is pointing to a Russian trained Ukrainian unit if not Russian soldiers themselves, acting under orders of Russia, perhaps to provoke the instability they wanted, to be able to do what they are doing now, which is intervene and gain control. For a moment and just consider Russia on its own. You can not believe a single thing the Russian government says, without outside verification, ever. It might be true, but it probably is skewed if not outright false. Truth is not a factor in Russian diplomacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan ... .2FSnipers

Does the US or EU have moral high ground? No, of course not. The US at least, completed the ruin of their credibility over the last 14 years. But they are not really pertinent to legality of the situation in Ukraine itself. Russia, is trying to annex a large portion of Ukraine to itself, none of which has even close to ethnic Russian majority, and in typical fashion is denying it every step of the way. One can pretend otherwise I suppose, but its a travesty.

It's not about an ethnic mandate, it's a people's mandate and the people on eastern Ukraine don't support the government in Kiev. Most of eastern Ukraine not just the ethnic Russians are much closer to Russia than they are Kiev. Look at the support base of Yanukovych in his previous election, the country is quite literally cut in half. If you lived in eastern Ukraine why wouldn't you want to be apart of Russia? Kiev has declared you terrorists and all that you have to look forward to is debt and austerity. Kiev is waging a war of attrition without concern of civilian life or even their own soldiers who suffer from lack of supplies and poor morale and backed up by radical far right groups like Right Sector.

I've followed the whole thing since the beginning and it became pretty clear early on that the least trustworthy people were the Maidan folks, everything they do or say is done with the idea of winning western support to their side against Russia. A dog farts in eastern Ukraine and it's Russia, they literally blame any and everything on them. They claim right now that they blew up some convoy of Russian APCs yet provide no proof, they make a lot of claims and never provide any proof. Follow the EuroMaidan twitter and it is like following Baghdad Bob. A lot of them are the ideological descendents of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and it shows in how they've conducted themselves. The US has ulterior motives in Ukraine and have spent over $5 billion in developing it's "democratic institutions", whereas Russia seems pretty upfront with what their interests are. Do you believe John McCain when he talks? Do you believe John Kerry?

The problem is that EU and US politicians keep provoking the Russians. If they hadn't started trying to draw the Ukrainians into the EU and NATO this might not have escalated so much.

That is not provoking them. Ukraine is a sovereign nation and Russia sabotaged its efforts to EU membership. Then they did the circus in Crimea and annexed it and now they're after half or all of the Ukraine. This isn't provocation, its simple old school land grabbing from the days of imperialism with a mix of cold war idiocy thrown in.

But how many Ukrainians have been born since the end of the war, and who have no connection to the Nazis? Also, it has to be recalled, the reason why the Ukrainians had sided with the Nazis was because they viewed the German army as liberators from Stalin's reign of terror.

How did Russia sabotage anything? Ukraine's democratically elected leader choose to forge closer relations with Russia instead of taking the deal offered by the EU, the EU was making political demands from Yanukovych and were spending millions working against him. The EU put Ukraine in a place where it had to choose between them and Russia, lets not pretend like Ukraine is some captive of Russia. When the Europhiles didn't get their way they unleashed a violent protest movement the eventually toppled the government.

The Ukrainian government is dominated by nationalists who espouse "cleansing" Ukraine of jews, gypsies and foreigners. The language used in the Ukrainian parliament is highly similar to that used in the pre-WWII era. I'm not sure Russia is much better under Putin but I really think it would be tragedy to expend young western soldiers (invariably from the US and UK) in order to get embroiled in a conflict between two bad regimes.

If it's true that the Ukrainian government has espoused such despicable policies, then I agree. But the sins of their grandfathers shouldn't be held against them.

Yes I don't condone Putin putting weapons in the hands of separatists, national boundaries need to be respected.

Is this a do as I say not as I do deal? The US and EU overthrew the government, why should Russia be held to a different standard? Isn't that also exactly what the West has done in Syria? You can't find the coup legitimate and then draw the line at separatism.

This is where you get things wrong: The elected leader did not 'choose' to forge closer relations with Russia. That elected leader was a puppet president of Russia.

Polls both public and within the political parties showed significant preference to be part of the EU yet, against those polls and against the majority vote of their political entities, this puppet president took the Russian offer. This is when all s**t flew into the fan and why the Ukranian people went into a revolt.

After the puppet president fled the Ukraine you started to see the depth of the corruption he and his cronies were in. Exorbitant wealth and mansions which would be impossible for them to have given their salaries and assets...the source of that wealth came from the Russian government which fed their lavish lifestyles and kept them in power. When they left the country their political track records were scrutinized and no surprise was it that a great amount of policies had been geared to benefit Russia exclusively and make the Ukraine economically dependent on Russia. This last part is critical since a sovereign nation does not do these things.

Again, the revolt was done for and by the people of the Ukraine... and you compare it to the alleged Crimean request to become Russian where Russia had troops already in place at the border, had agents and special forces already in Crimea AND had significant supplies ready near the border to support combat operations and civilian relief aid. This was NOT a the Russian government reacting to a situation, this was a planned and coordinated effort from their part. It takes weeks if not months to prepare this...which means they were pulling the strings in the Ukraine itself to cause a political unrest which they could take advantage of.

They did and now Crimea is theirs and they are keeping the Ukraine very destabilized by supporting the 'rebels' which can only benefit Russia in two ways: 1- The rebels 'win' and Russia gets to annex more Ukrainian territory 'legit' or 2- The internal strife keeps the Ukraine and the world too busy to address the Crimean crisis irregularities which would result in a very public revealing of how planned the whole thing was and this would ruin Russia economically from sanctions and kick Putin out of power when he loses public support.

Either way, Russia (and Putin) win big time. The only reason he is able to do this is because the EU nations have become the modern equivalent of Neville Chamberlein when they prefer to allow bullying nations from doing whatever they want as long as they don't get targeted and the US is not economically capable of sending large military forces to the Ukraine.

Putin knows now that NATO is a joke and the EU does not have the balls to counter him...instead they hide behind words and whine nonstop. If I was Obama I'd tell the EU to DO something about this or NATO is not worth supporting anymore.

How is Yanukovych any more of a puppet than Yatsenyuk or Tymoshenko? Poroshenko, the chocolate king? lol The fact is that Yanukovych was democratically elected by the majority of Ukraine. Ukraine is and has been a deeply divided country for a long time now, the western half speaks Ukrainian wants to integrate in Europe while other half speaks Russian wants to stay close to Russia. He made a decision that aligned with the constituent that elected him.

The EU gave Yanukovych a deadline to make political concessions on condition of signing an association agreement, if he didn't make the concessions then the EU would pull the deal. The EU said that the Customs Union agreement between Russia and Ukraine was incompatible with association with the EU, they were forcing Ukraine to decide between the EU and Russia. Russia wasn't the one putting conditions and threatening to pull the deal all together if they didn't get their way.

You can't claim that the coup represents the wishes of the Ukrainian people when it quite clearly doesn't for a good portion of the county, the removed the democratically elected president that the east elected with overwhelming majority. Look at any map of the elections Ukraine has had since independence and you'll see the obvious divide. It's was artificial country and we're seeing that play out now, one side was always captive to the other. The best solution is to allow self determination and for each side to go their separate ways.

As for Russia military presence in Crimea, it housed the Russian Black Sea Fleet which has been there since the 1700s. A good portion of the Ukrainian military defected, basically their entire navy. Pretty much everybody from the east of the country didn't find the coup in Kiev to be legitimate. Most Ukrainians themselves don't want to fight, their leaders force them by conscription and upped the maximum age for military service to 60 years old. They've allowed literal Nazis to form battalions to fight in the east on their behalf.

The US has no business in Ukraine, it should not be involved at all. How can we condemn Russia for supposedly doing all this stuff when the US does the exact same thing? It doesn't make much sense, we've encroached on Russia for more than 20 years now, we've tried to isolate them from all their former and allies and surrounded them with enemies and wanted to put missiles on their border yet we liken them to Hitler when they finally have enough of it.

Putin stopped the US from going to war in Syria and he's housing the hero Edward Snowden, the US doesn't forgive or forget. This is payback, just the next phase of it in a longtime trend. The Cold War is over, Russia doesn't pose a threat to the US but the US hasn't dropped their threat against Russia.

Crimea happened long after the EU had been stirring up trouble over there. You Ukraine is sovereign nation, but that is only on paper. In the real world Ukraine is well within the Russian sphere of influence, as is Georgia as we have seen in 2008 (or so). Georgia was invaded and parts occupied to this day, and no one talks about it anymore. Apart from some angry letters that the Russians threw in the bin NOTHING WAS DONE.
The EU and US and Russia, all of them guaranteed the sovereignty of Ukraine. Now you see what those guarantees are worth. All three didn't make good on their promise.
I agree in principle that the Ukrainians should be free to choose what way their country goes. But in the real world that often doesn't work out. Crimea and Donetsk are simply not important enough to people in the EU or US to have a military intervention, even if such a thing were feasible. It's sad that in the 21st century we are still talking in Victorian terms like sphere of influence, but that is still how it works. Look at Cuba, during the Cold War and today even the US considers that to be within its sphere of influence.
The unification of Germany was agreed to by the Soviets on the understanding that NATO would not go further east than former East Germany. Look at how much that agreement turned out to be worth.
I'm also against the economic sanctions against business. They are just destroying the economy of Russia and the EU and are not helping at all. So many Dutch and Polish businesses are hit disproportionally and no one helps them. They should be compensated, it's not their fault our politicians are fools. Where are our EU and US allies now? They are just grinning because we got hit by the sanctions and not them. The upside is that I can now buy food for next to nothing, but of course long-term it will hurt our economy badly.

Just because we passed the 100 year anniversary of WWI. Just because so many nations are behaving in a similar, nationalistic, militaristic manner.

FWIW, Georgia started its war against Russia by attacking Russian UN peacekeepers and launching an invasion into South Ossetia. Georgia and their pro-American president Mikheil Saakashvili likely were acting under auspice and approval of the US when they launched that attack. The fact that war somehow got spun into Georgia being the victim by western media should tell you a lot about what they're doing in Ukraine right now. The US has been aggressively putting the squeeze on all Russian interests since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Ye I have posted the contradictions of this issue before. The UN seems to congratulate countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia or the Phillipines for committing crimes against humanity in the name of stamping out separatism. It seems nobody is particularly worried about the genocide of the Rohingya in Burma, Tutsi in Rwanda or indigenous peoples in South America either.

The moment there are little blonde haired children (Afghans, Kurds, Albanians or Bosnians) in refugee camps then suddenly there is an urgent need to send troops to countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia or (in the latest case) Ukraine. It's not just about oil.