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Sicamore

Ukraine and the current situation

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machoman127 said:

Our exalted Nubian Prince(so cool, so brilliant, so what) has to face the fact that in the eyes of the world he has been forced to drop trou and let the 'Russian Bear' bugger him without even the courtesy of a reach-around.

Nubian prince? What stake does sudan have in this debacle anyway?

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Oh, of course. Crimea is lost (or returned, depending on your POV) to Russia, there's no doubt about that. It's a bitter pill Ukraine and the West just have to swallow. The "lame" sanctions are a part of the dance, though. I don't think Putin will try to invade/liberate Kherson, Odessa, Donetsk or Kharkov, but that's what the sanctions are supposed to warn him about. As you say, it's a big game and it even has a name. I expect the West to play it properly and not allow another Munich Agreement via endless appeasement of the hungry beast.

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Quast said:

Nubian prince? What stake does sudan have in this debacle anyway?

You can't really apply literal logic to the origins of the insults conservative Americans throw at their commander-in-chief; it only makes things more confusing. Layman's terms? He's a Democrat, he's black and doesn't have a slave name, therefore they think he's not American and shouldn't have been allowed to run for office.

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Europe should really forget about Crimea. It wants to be Russian and it always was Russian, so let it go. Even let some of the east go, it doesn't matter. Target what is Ukrainian and bring that on side.

The sanctions aren't really about Crimea. They are about leverage. Leverage you can have excuse for now, against something later.

Putin is a canny statesman. He will take what he thinks he can get away with, and no more. He isn't stupid, or at least I haven't seen any evidence that he is yet. Nothing has really harmed him or his position.

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dew said:


Though ever since the fall of the USSR, it has been more like "one plays the bongos (or spins the records), and the others have to dance to them". Well, seems like a new bongo player/DJ is in town, and boy, can he beat/spin ;-)

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pritch said:

Europe should really forget about Crimea. It wants to be Russian and it always was Russian, so let it go.

Crimea became Russian the first time in 1783. Before, it was a Tatar khanate which was a client nation of the Ottoman Empire.

It has then changed hands a few time, what with the Crimean War and the Russian Civil War and WW2. In 1944, Stalin deported the entire non-Russian population (Tatar majority, plus the Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greek), causing the death of nearly half of them. In 1954, Crimea was transferred to Ukraine. Even if you ignore the interruptions, that makes it less than two centuries of having been Russian, while it had been before an Ottoman country for over three centuries. In more modern time, it had been Ukrainian for the last 60 years. But thanks to the ethnic cleaning 70 years ago, they have a majority of Russians there anyway.

The morality here is that you should always perform ethnic cleansing of the regions you conquer. This way you are morally justified in conquering them again.

Maes said:

Though ever since the fall of the USSR, it has been more like "one plays the bongos (or spins the records), and the others have to dance to them". Well, seems like a new bongo player/DJ is in town, and boy, can he beat/spin ;-)


Russia is a nuclear power with a large army; and they export gas that we need. Based on that, there is nothing that can be done. Military action is out of question (do you really want a nuclear apocalypse?) and real economic sanctions are also out of question (it'd hurt us just as much, if not even more). The only thing that can be done is relying on the fact that it's kind of the same thing the other way around; Russia will not take direct action against the EU or USA. So basically the result is that the countries in between the blocks, which are too small to be economically threatening and too weak to be militarily threatening, are fair game for everyone on a first come, first serve basis. The EU and USA are trying to play it underhanded, relying on "soft power" but Putin was all "fuck this noise" and went on with good old hard power, which is a lot more decisive.

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I know it's probably Cremlin propaganda/montage, but hey, it's hilarious....in a creepy sort of way.



Maybe she needs "one like Putin" to calm her down *grin*

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Maes said:

I know it's probably Cremlin propaganda/montage

Me and dad watched that and read about it at several places. We even saw the version without the English subtitles.
It is 100% authentic. Our spies work very hard. They rival the FBI.

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188DarkRevived said:

Me and dad watched that and read about it at several places. We even saw the version without the English subtitles.
It is 100% authentic. Our spies work very hard. They rival the FBI.

Ha, "your" spies.

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BaronOfStuff said:

Ha, "your" spies.


You're right, when was the last time the Russkies did anything WITHOUT copying/stealing it from the West? That includes SPYING! Oh, wait... well, you could say that with Snowden they spied their way to superior spying. Isn't that what spying is all about, after all? ;-)

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You think he was talking about Russia's spies? I'm disappointed. I hoped he was talking about his dad's personal spy network.

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Well, Ukraine bit the IMF cake. Who knows if it will be tastier than Russian shit ;-)

I liked this bit:

Ukraine's new leaders on Wednesday announced a radical 50 percent increase in the price of domestic gas from May 1, meeting an unpopular condition for IMF aid that Yanukovich had refused before he was ousted last month.


How long before more and more Ukrainians, whether pro-Russian or not, will say "Tovarisch Putin, come in and liberate us too" or at least "Please, Tovarisch Yanukovich, come back!".

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Pretty soon Frau Merkel will handpick a few "Super Mario" Goldman Sachs executives to be the new leaders of Ukraine and usher in a new era of austerity and financial orthodoxy. War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! Recession is good!

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Gez said:

You think he was talking about Russia's spies? I'm disappointed. I hoped he was talking about his dad's personal spy network.

Well, considering that he's got a huge library of news sources at his fingertips, I guess you could say that it's a private home-based spy network of his own. :p
But I was actually referring to the Russian Secret Service overall.
Every country deserves to have one.

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Maes said:

Putin did the most reasonable thing, but don't take my word for it. Listen to this man instead.

He kind of did, geopolitically. Giving up Crimea in the fifties was a dumb move on the soviets part, it was such an advantage security wise and the peninsula is essentially the Plymouth Rock of Russia.

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At this point, the question is: would it be "better" for Russia to allow itself to be completely encircled by hostile nations (many of whom close allies of its enemies and members of NATO), rather than breaking the ice, making the first move and face the current "sanctions"? Would it really be better to do nothing?

Putin played and won, apparently. The West, in turn, had a "cheap" underhanded card to play (destabilizing Ukraine), which might favor them in the long run. They played it, but even if they "lost", they didn't really lose anything of value themselves (sorry, Ukrainian people), since they had invested so little in it in the first place.

The only clear-cut loser in this "deal", so far, is the Ukrainian people: they got a destabilized country, neo-fascists in power, internal divisions accentuated, ruined relations with an important partner (Russia) and dubious new "friends" (the USA? the EU?), with the IMF at their doorstep and none of them has really promised them any better than "tears, blood and sweat" for the long-term future. Again, my sympathies to the Ukrainian people. You have just been used as a pawns in a proxy underhanded political and economic war, and all sides will milk you for all that you're worth, some more tactfully, some more bluntly, but in the end you're still going to be milk-cows.

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Maes said:

At this point, the question is: would it be "better" for Russia to allow itself to be completely encircled by hostile nations (many of whom close allies of its enemies and members of NATO), rather than breaking the ice, making the first move and face the current "sanctions"? Would it really be better to do nothing?

China and Saudi Arabia are not liked by the majority of the planet either, but we are forced to deal with them to survive economically. Russia is currently the same. Unless we run a pipeline from the Arabian peninsula through Turkey, you're forced to deal with Russia.

The only clear-cut loser in this "deal", so far, is the Ukrainian people: they got a destabilized country, neo-fascists in power, internal divisions accentuated, ruined relations with an important partner (Russia) and dubious new "friends" (the USA? the EU?), with the IMF at their doorstep and none of them has really promised them any better than "tears, blood and sweat" for the long-term future. Again, my sympathies to the Ukrainian people. You have just been used as a pawns in a proxy underhanded political and economic war, and all sides will milk you for all that you're worth, some more tactfully, some more bluntly, but in the end you're still going to be milk-cows.

And Egypt and Libya also lost, miserably. Protip, planet: Don't act like enlightened college kids and protest for change. Recent track records haven't proven to be quite promising.

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Gez said:

Pretty soon Frau Merkel will handpick a few "Super Mario" Goldman Sachs executives to be the new leaders of Ukraine and usher in a new era of austerity and financial orthodoxy. War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! Recession is good!

Peace for our time.

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Well, it seems this is going the way of Cyprus: just a grey, bitter eternal stalemate based on a fait accompli, which has already stopped being front page news, as the world moved on, not even a month after the event's most dramatic moments.

This can even result in a Peace Nobel prize for Putin, as he basically stopped a civil war from erupting with minimal losses, and even if begrudgingly, forced all involved parties (including the West) to turn it down a few notches and return to their grey, economically-based underground, slithery undermining work, rather than trying to play directly with fire and set the powder keg alight.

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Maes said:

Well, it seems this is going the way of Cyprus: just a grey, bitter eternal stalemate based on a fait accompli, which has already stopped being front page news, as the world moved on, not even a month after the event's most dramatic moments.

This can even result in a Peace Nobel prize for Putin, as he basically stopped a civil war from erupting with minimal losses, and even if begrudgingly, forced all involved parties (including the West) to turn it down a few notches and return to their grey, economically-based underground, slithery undermining work, rather than trying to play directly with fire and set the powder keg alight.

Putin is more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than Obama. He's arguably stopped an American/Syria conflict as well.

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I've actually read an interesting (Czech, sorry) article that marked this as a potential bitter loss to Russia in the long run, because US/EU have actually banded together eventually. The NSA eavesdroppings, protests against legislating corporate untouchability in the TTIP, US troops leaving Europe for the Far East, all of that seems easier to sweep aside in order to show an unified front against the evil Russian Empire. And even Ukraine is scared into unity, read inclination towards the West. Russia may be gaining territory, but they're most certainly not gaining any allies.

And planting seeds for a second Cold War is hardly something you award the Nobel for. Although... yeah, let's not underestimate Norwegians.

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dew said:

Although... yeah, let's not underestimate Norwegians.

Norwegians are alright. They're like Swedes that aren't yet complete panty waists.

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Seems to me that "Czech article" was written directly in Langley, Virginia ;-) Don't worry, we get plenty of those in Greece too, all with the same "Yeah, but in the long run Putin will lose!", "Putin got a worthless rust belt", "Putin spread his credibility thin" etc. rhethoric. Well, if that's so, then why don't you let him have Crimea without putting up so much of a whiny display? :-p

dew said:

I've actually read an interesting (Czech, sorry) article that marked this as a potential bitter loss to Russia in the long run, because US/EU have actually banded together eventually.


Even moreso than they are now? The only problem is that the US/EU relationship is heavily asymmetrical, and there's no question as to who's calling the shots/who's spying on who. How could it become any different without actually turning it down a couple of notches, or, on the contrary, declare the EU officially a US protectorate?

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Well pro Russian militants are under full assault by the Ukraine military. Now Putin says this is a Ukrainian problem. Almost all of the Russian forces on the border have left. Guess he was all hot air. Or the sanctions are starting to hurt. Over 100 Russians killed in the last week, Vladimir has gone silent. What's next? The people in Donetsk were left out in the cold after asking for annexation and help fromthe Russian military. Now dozens are dead with no red stars in sight.

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imp1979 said:

Well pro Russian militants are under full assault by the Ukraine military. Now Putin says this is a Ukrainian problem. Almost all of the Russian forces on the border have left. Guess he was all hot air. Or the sanctions are starting to hurt. Over 100 Russians killed in the last week, Vladimir has gone silent. What's next? The people in Donetsk were left out in the cold after asking for annexation and help fromthe Russian military. Now dozens are dead with no red stars in sight.


Putin is doing the smart thing. The warmongering government of the US is looking for any reason to start a war with Russia. If the Russia gov was to make any move into Donetsk, the US gov would instantly launch an attack on Russia with every EU nation in toe. So innocent Russians would be killed in mass as well as the people of Donetsk.

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I don't know if someone mentioned "mark my words, after a month nobody's going to talk about Crimea anymore" but this seemed to be the case.

Putin already achieved his main goal elegantly and cleanly 3 months ago, which was securing his access to the Black Sea without the region falling into the hands of a potentially pro-NATO Ukraine. The rest of East Ukraine in neither important enough nor in the the appropriate conditions to repeat the same stunt twice, let alone forcing a direct invasion, but perhaps its "ideal" state (for Russia) is keeping it in a perpetual state of instability.

As for "sanctions", they have become the new international politics buzzword. It sounds ominous and scary, but if anyone is full of hot air, it's the Westerners "applying" them in a deliberately toned down, almost symbolic manner.

Those "sanctions" are designed not to cause true harm or tensions. Did anybody stop buying Russian gas and oil, which is their main export? Nope, they didn't, ergo the sanctions are not serious, but more of a ritual, symbolic gesture, with their real targets being the so-called "international community"'s opinion. "Hey look, we [the Good and Morally Superior West] are here, and we impose sanctions on those who've been naughty (but please don't anger them seriously, they might fuck our shit up)".

For that matter "sanctions" were imposed even against Boko Haram (to whom and to what, I cannot fathom, though).

If I was to take a guess, I'd say that the East of Ukraine will ultimately gain a "soft" form of independence, remaining Ukrainian territory but with strong regional autonomy, in the best case. At worst, we'll have another "frozen conflict" than can drag on for decades, with the region remaining de-jure Ukrainian, but de-facto in a conflicted, disputed state, with all of the involved actors trying to act upon it by proxy.

As for "forgotten conflicts", did anybody remember Abkhazia and the whole South Ossetia story? Abkhazia is, de-facto, Russified (but not formally annexed) Georgian territory, and in 2008 the "international community" reacted pretty similarly to Crimea: whining, "sanctions", "concern" etc. but 6 years later, nobody gives a shit. Of course, Abkhazia was enough of a 'small country with a funny name' lost in the depths of Central Asia for the West not to give two shits about it.

Ukraine is closer to the EU, OTOH, both geographically and politically, and undeniably involved with the USA and NATO, so now everybody seems to give two (or even three) shits about it. But a few faits accomplis can fix that.

Satyr000 said:

So innocent Russians would be killed in mass as well as the people of Donetsk.


I think the nuclear blasts and radioactive fallout would get pretty much everybody in the EU and beyond, if such a thing as a direct US attack on Russia ever materialized, even if it started off as a conventional attack. BTW, even the most hardcore Cold War NATO scenarios didn't really envisage the possiblity of a conventional strike on Russia by part of NATO. The reverse however (e.g. a wall of Russian tanks invading Europe by the easter plains) was a frequently played scenario. And the proposed defenses against it were not pretty.

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Satyr000 said:

Putin is doing the smart thing. The warmongering government of the US is looking for any reason to start a war with Russia.

lol no.

The USA's approach to starting a war with Russia or China is "don't".

The Cold War military effort in the USA focused on two things:
1. Defense: be able to repel an invasion of NATO countries in Europe
2. Deterrence: be able to nuke the Hell out of Russia

It did not include attack. The US military is not equipped to attack a large country with a relatively modern military. Recent American wars? Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq again. Enemies were tiny countries with outdated military, or a large country without an actual military, just groups of warlords here and there without tanks or air support.

A conventional war with Russia would be a stalemate. Russia is too big to be occupied by the Army, and the US military doctrine of relying on air superiority would be seriously challenged by the defensive measures Russia has at her disposal, in particular the stealth jets are only stealthy to X-band radar (those tiny radars that can easily fit in a fighter) but are easily detectable on VHF radars. And said stealth fighters are hangar queens which asphyxiate their pilotes. The B-2 stealth bombers are too expensive to be risked in conflict with an enemy that actually has the means to detect and intercept them.

Also, the Russians are crazy so a direct fight against Russia wouldn't stay conventional for long. Hello, and welcome to the nuclear apocalypse.

The Soviet side, however, is a different story. One of the lessons learned after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that, although NATO considered nuclear weapons use in an invasion a possibility, to the Soviets, their use was a foregone conclusion. Every Soviet war plan unearthed from Warsaw Pact archives assumed liberal use of nuclear weapons — up to 300 or more.

Maes said:

As for "sanctions", they have become the new international politics buzzword. It sounds ominous and scary, but if anyone is full of hot air, it's the Westerners "applying" them in a deliberately toned down, almost symbolic manner.

Those "sanctions" are designed not to cause true harm or tensions. Did anybody stop buying Russian gas and oil, which is their main export? Nope, they didn't, ergo the sanctions are not serious, but more of a ritual, symbolic gesture, with their real targets being the so-called "international community"'s opinion. "Hey look, we [the Good and Morally Superior West] are here, and we impose sanctions on those who've been naughty (but please don't anger them seriously, they might fuck our shit up)".

If anything, they have pushed Russia into getting closer to China. They've signed a deal for gas exports.

Fundamentally, it is as symbolic as the sanctions. The quantities of gas, and their payment, that are being planned are nearly insignificant, so it doesn't prevent Russia from exporting as much gas to Europe as before. However, it shows that Russia will not let herself be isolated that easily by Washington and NATO. It says that if actual sanctions were taken (not just measure where some oligarch's offshore account is frozen), then Russia will have the mean to retaliate in kind by ceasing to export gas to energy-hungry Europe and not suffer too harshly from the resulting trade deficit since China will be here to happily gobble all the extra gas. And it'll be a lot harder to isolate Russia and China together than Russia alone. Isolating China in particular is very difficult in the economic sector, especially given how the West has massively de-industrialized itself to outsource production to China.


However, the Ukraine situation is still not optimal for Russia. Russia desperately wanted to build a free trade zone around herself, the Eurasian Economic Union. Ukraine was capital for it to really work, because Belarus and Kazakhstan are kind of anecdotal, and the potential future members of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan aren't all that exciting either. Ukraine was key to the success of the Eurasian Union.

The problem is, Ukraine has always been the gateway between Europe and Russia. The Europhile and Russophile traditions in Ukraine are hold (much older than the current conflict) and to ask Ukraine to choose between being a hopeful future member of the European Union and hopeful future member of the Eurasian Union was an unsolvable dilemma. Yanukovich chose Russia, and it resulted in protests in the europhile west because it blocked access to the European Union. Protests which turned into riots when they were repressed. But you can bet that if Yanukovich had resisted Russian pressure enough to choose the European Union instead, you would have had protests and riots as well, starting from the East.

What should have been done to avoid the conflict would have been for Brussels and Moscow to negotiate with Kiev together for a conciliatory status that would have allowed Ukraine to join both, even if only in a necessarily limited capacity. Instead, though, Brussels delegated to Warsaw everything to deal with the EU's approach to Ukraine, and Warsaw hates Moscow's guts so...

By losing Crimea and potentially losing the Donbass, Ukraine is purged of a large part of its Russophile base. Ukraine joining fully the EU in the future becomes likely, and that prevents the Eurasian Union from becoming what it was truly meant to be. So while it may look like a Russian victory because they secured Sevastopol, on the larger scheme of things, they've actually lost a lot. Ukraine was a lot more important for Russia than it is for Europe.

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Gez said:

So while it may look like a Russian victory because they secured Sevastopol, on the larger scheme of things, they've actually lost a lot. Ukraine was a lot more important for Russia than it is for Europe.


So, even by doing everything "correctly", Russia still loses? It's a bit hard to believe, as the alternative of them not doing anything and losing access to the Black Sea altogether would be worse not only for Russia, but for everyone, on the long run, as Russia is one of the few actors that can still guarantee a multi-polar world.

Unless the US and the EU rigged the game and played their cards so well that Russia really got cornered so badly that anything it does will, in the end, boil down to mere "damage control".

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