Elections aren’t going to cut it for long when a chunk of the country wants a referendum to underpin a separation process.
Someone really needs to talk down the ultra right-wing headcases who still think the east will accept rule from Kiev - those people know this is their one big chance to be restored to the bosom of mother Russia. Instead, the Ultra’s are being shaped into attack dogs. Yay USA.
#nicetanjoe
Not that specifically, no.
Sure, mistakes like that are embarassing for the State Department.
What a fantastic read! You are such a good source for the screwiest bloggers in the world. You truly demonstrate how trusting the “blogosphere” probably makes you as completely uninformed as trusting the “main stream media”.
Anyway let’s tear apart your stupid blog post from a guy whose biggest accomplishments in life are writing blog posts for fff.org:
A critical thinker probably would have stopped his blog post at this point but no he presses on into the hypothetical because his whole life is a hypothetical. Like the fact that he is a hypothetical journalist.
The U.S. Navy always has ships in the Black Sea of a certain tonnage and for up to 3 weeks at a time.
600 soldiers in NATO countries (it only take one!) but if Russia attacks a single NATO country then we’ll be in a war with Russia regardless of whether our soldiers were involved in the initial fighting.
Aggressively letting nations join your club. What a stupid thing to say. That’s just like war! The Russians are just upset because the number of nations they can kick around keeps being reduced. They justify their whining with Gorbachev’s fantasy over what he was told while the only thing he has to blame is his poor diplomatic decisions. Too bad for them. Let the Western empire grow unabated!
Restored to the bosom of mother Russia? Seriously? At any rate the news reports are that the groups don’t necessarily trust Russia and are only going for independence.
Of course since this is being orchestrated by Russia any new independent countries that would arise would fall under control of Moscow one way or another.
Ukrainian TV: schoolkids chanting “hang the Russians (separatists)”:
Putin just will not accept Ukrainian military moving against civilians - if those civilians are ethnic Russians. John Kerry needs to tone this down, and he needs to stop inciting that half wit puppet.
Putin inciting the separatists is totally cool though.
FFS, look at the level of indoctrination of those schoolkids - right-wing propaganda has effectively dehumanised ethnic Russians already.
The separatists are not in tanks trying to occupy a land in which (a) they are a tiny minority, (b) where they are not wanted, and © do not need a referendum on the future, especially given the hate rhetoric coming from politicians in Kiev.
Sorry, but the link you posted does not show schoolchildren chanting
You seriously think that Ukrainians are a “tiny minority” in Eastern Ukraine?
Let’s take Luhansk for example. Can you find out what percentage ethnic Ukrainians are in that area and cite it here? It should be fairly easy.
Once you do that, look at Dnepropetrovsk. Then Donetskaya oblast. Come back and tell us what you found.
ok, fair point I’ll retract “tiny”.
It does: clue “Hang the Russians”
Aha, sorry the video didn’t load at first so I had to go by the text :smack:
Either way, that’s very flimsy evidence. It’s a very worrying incident, but it certainly does not give Russia the right to intervene in a foreign country. If these isolated incidents were to turn into outspread violence against the Russian minority, things would be different.
How about retract “minority”?
Wel, that’s what Putin says. Apart from the ‘minority’ part.
It’s propaganda, as such it’s part of a strategy to dehumanise the ‘enemy’.
This is not exactly a new concept. In recent times, reminiscent of the early stages of the Balkans.
Predominantly Russian speakers are 70/30. Apparently that’s enough for them to be “hanged”.
What are you desperate to share with us?
“Russian speakers” is a red herring. Ethnic Russians are something around 30% in those regions. Ethnic Ukrainians are the majority. Yes, some Ukrainians speak Russian better than Ukrainian (especially after half a century of Soviet Union repressing the Ukrainian language). No, that doesn’t have to mean that they would want to separate from Ukraine.
Native tongue is a red herring. Who knew?
People paying attention to this situation.
When discussing ethnicity, definitely. Most Scots are native English speakers. Yet they will probably vote to separate from UK.
Same thing in Catalonia and the Basque Country. Particularly in regions where a national language has been imposed/encouraged for decades (both the Spanish regions and Ukraine are examples of that),
language =/= belonging.