My thinking is Putin wants to force concessions without the full blown political and monetary costs of an annexation.
Not sure what you mean by “near.” Central and South America are pretty far away actually. Anyway, what other nations do or have done doesn’t excuse Russia’s current behavior.
No wonder Lukashenko gets along so well with Putin.
So you think the proper response is an armed conflict?
Ukraine got totally fucked by a Russian nuclear reactor that went tits up and devastated their national economy. Then they got fucked by corrupt thieving oligarchs and and a totally corrupt political system and they’re sick of it. Russian media propaganda keeps telling them, “it’ll be better with the same system but with us!”
Same ol’, same ol’.
Too bad Ukrainians would like to try the system that actually works, once they shake off the Russian system.
This schtick belongs in The BBQ Pit. You are more than welcome to champion Mr. Putin or to challenge the actions of Mr. Obama or those in the West, however, your insistence on using the most obnoxious and insulting language when you do so is clearly an example of trolling.
You were already told to refrain from using race-baiting language to describe Obama, so we now move on to a formal Warning for your “monkey noises” slur.
Beyond that, you are now on notice that the rest of your silly insults are not appropriate outside The BBQ Pit. Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
I don’t know, is Kiev going to let them go their own way peacefully?
I’m entirely missing your point.
I didn’t say Belarus was politically free, I said they had excellent relations with Russia (and I could add that Armenia has reasonably good relations with Russia as well). That was intended as a response to someone’s remark to the effect that ‘Russia’s neighbors don’t get along with her’. Clearly some don’t, but some do.
I’m not sure how Belarus’ internal political arrangements are relevant to that (though I would mention that Belarus has the fourth highest standard of living of all the former Soviet republics, and has the lowest level of economic inequality of all of them, and one of the lowest in the world. At least in some ways, they seem to be doing a lot better than the Ukrainians).
Belarus suffered much more from the Chernobyl disaster than though Ukraine did, and is actually probably the most pro-Russian of the former Soviet republics. And is by most measures doing better than the Ukraine.
Are you saying nuclear disaster = prosperity???
You should work for the Nuclear Energy Institute. That’s almost as outlandish as their usual anti-renewable claims.
I’m saying that neither Chernobyl, nor Soviet domination, is a good excuse for the problems of Ukrainians today, nor is it a justification for them to piss and moan about the evil Russian bogeyman.
What is their excuse? Human fuck up? Let them fix that, thank you. They don’t need Russian dragging them down into fuckup-land.
Russia is better off than the Ukraine, in terms of standard of living. As is the Russians’ ally, Belarus. If the New Russians break away and join Russia, they’ll be going from a poorer country to a richer one. Not quite ‘dragging them down’.
Russia is “better off” because Europe buys their oil. They got nothing beyond that; they wouldn’t have that if the West didn’t give it to them.
Russia’s policy is to keep Ukraine unstable enough to make it impossible for them to join NATO. And it’s pretty easy for Putin to keep doing that. Every time the West threaten actions against Russia he withdraws a bit of support for the rebels. But as soon as the world loses a tiny bit of interest or is distracted by some other crisis a few months later Putin will put meddling fingers back into the pie and give the rebels a nice boost and the tools to keep going for a few more months or years. I imagine he can keep that up for quite a few years. All he wants remember is to keep NATO away from Russian borders.
It all wouldn’t exist with Western largesse. Why do we support the existence of that ass? That’s what we need to get over. Russians pride themselves on deprivation. Maybe we should quit subsidizing them for a few decades until they get over their own “super power” pride issues? Nukes don’t equal super power. Olympics? World Cup? Whatever. Let’s quit pretending they’re more significant than Greeks.
Eh, I don’t know. I don’t think Ukraine is remotely NATO material - russia or no russia. Only the U.S. is quite so pushy against Russia to take in the basketcases. The NATO members on the border know it’s a nonstarter.
Whether or not the description of those dynamics is exactly right (and it probably is) it’s indisputably true that Putin wants Ukraine to be politically aligned with Russia, as part of the centuries-long ongoing Russian geopolitical hegemony in the entire region.
Doesn’t NATO membership require not having on-going border disputes and certain progress in human rights and economic non-idiocy? Ukraine’s got a bit of ways to go. All that’s left is a cold war proxy war with Russia but what’s really to be gained from it?