Russia has invaded Ukraine. How will the West respond?

[Gyrate]

@NotfooledbyW

Perhaps you have a firm way of knowing that, Putin “is manufacturing crises to justify war and territorial expansion” but I am near considering that you do. To specifically ‘justify war’. That tells a lot that you threw that phrase in there.

Well, I personally have no special knowledge, but my friends with Ukranian connections have been speculating how long after the Olympics it would take for Putin to make a move on Ukraine since before Yanukovych left office, so make what you will of that. Most of them thought he’d give it three weeks - such Pollyannas!

[BrokenBriton]

^^ I know he’s the new evildoer, but Putin didn’t overthrow the democratically elected government last week, nor did he fund the opposition that did. Crimea is a reaction to that event.

[Gyrate]

@BrokenBriton

^^ I know he’s the new evildoer, but Putin didn’t overthrow the democratically elected government last week, nor did he fund the opposition that did. Crimea is a reaction to that event.

Hardly “new”, and “evildoer” is too two-dimensional and cartoonish for what we’re talking about here. Putin’s ambitions for Russia have been evident for over a decade.

And Crimea was only a “reaction” to that event in the same sense that the US invasion of Iraq was a “reaction” to 9/11 - the events were an excuse to do what the Russian/US governments were poised and ready to do already.

[NotfooledbyW]

@John_Mace

You’d say? YOU’D SAY??? Based on what, exactly?

We’re not interested in what you would guess about a region that you know next to nothing about.

When have you verified your opinion/guessingb to be based upon factual information as to the nationality of every paramilitary dude operating on the Crimean peninsula the past week. You think every one is a Russian invader? Prove it?

[NotfooledbyW]

@Gyrate

Well, I personally have no special knowledge, but my friends with Ukranian connections have been speculating how long after the Olympics it would take for Putin to make a move on Ukraine since before Yanukovych left office, so make what you will of that. Most of them thought he’d give it three weeks - such Pollyannas!

You did not address my question/point. Did Putin manufacture the violent overthrow of the elected government in Kiev? And are your friends ok with handing some positions in givernment now to known fascists?

I have friends from Ukraine too. One is Russian speaking who lived in Kiev where she was treated like shit when she lived there.

[Marmite_Lover]

Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet tells EU’s Cathy Ashton about claim that provocateurs were behind Maidan killings

The leak came a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the snipers may have been opposition provocateurs…
The Estonian foreign ministry confirmed the leaked conversation was accurate. It said: “Foreign minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence.” Ashton’s office said it did not comment on leaks.

**During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified her as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.

“What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” Paet said.**

“So she also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”

**
“So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition,”** Paet says.

Ashton replies: “I think we do want to investigate. I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton says.

Russia Today, reporting the call, said: “The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders, according to a leaked phone conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister, which has emerged online.”

Last month, a recording was leaked in which US state department official Victoria Nuland was heard venting the White House’s frustrations at Europe’s hesitant policy towards pro-democracy protests. Speaking to the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland was heard to say “fuck the EU.”

[Marmite_Lover]

Washington

While calls mount on Capitol Hill to robustly punish Russia for its incursion into Crimea, some officials in the back halls of the Pentagon are privately pushing for restraint.

That’s because senior US military officials are well aware that a key supply line in and out of Afghanistan runs through Russia.

That supply line, known as the Northern Distribution Network, or NDN, brings food, water, and building materials that keep US troops in Afghanistan fed and America’s longest war going.

http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/graphics/2014/0304/0304-asupplyroute-map-g1/18171793-1-eng-US/0304-ASUPPLYROUTE-map-g1_full_380.jpg

[Gyrate]

@NotfooledbyW

You did not address my question/point. Did Putin manufacture the violent overthrow of the elected government in Kiev?

I thought it was implied, but the answer is no. Nor do I think the Bush administration manufactured 9/11.

And are your friends ok with handing some positions in givernment now to known fascists?

Depends on who you’re calling a “fascist”, but if you mean actual fascists, no. What’s that got to do with the right of Russia to occupy the Crimea at the drop of a hat?

I have friends from Ukraine too. One is Russian speaking who lived in Kiev where she was treated like shit when she lived there.

I’m sorry to hear that. Evidently she should have called in Putin to rescue her.

[Marmite_Lover]

Besieged Ukrainian troops in Simferopol Crimea now running short of food and asking for help.

Some tatar locals passing food through to them at back entrance to the base.

Reporter on scene in Simferopol
Al Aan TV Dubai

[NotfooledbyW]

Perhaps the thead could be retitled:

Russia has set up a joint security force protectorate to enable a referendum on Crimean autonomy and separation from Ukraine - because Khrushchev fucked up when he gave a piece of Russia away and the Russians living there did not have a say living under Soviet oppression and dictatorship at the time.

If anyone can shorten that to fit I’d appreciate it.

[Gyrate]

Won’t someone please think of the Crimeans?

[Marmite_Lover]

What will be very interesting to watch is how the USA and EU support the democratic right of the Crimeans who will hold a referendum to choose their future.

Will they fill their TV and media with Crimeans rights or not to democratic choice if it means in favour of Russia?

OR

is democracy only good if it is in Western interests

[Terr]

@Marmite_Lover

Crimea referendum asking people if they want to join Russian Federation will be March 16th

I am sure the Russian guns will ensure the right result of the referendum.

[Marmite_Lover]

Putin photographed taking notes as President of the United States of America speaks

[NotfooledbyW]

@Gyrate

I thought it was implied, but the answer is no. Nor do I think the Bush administration manufactured 9/11.
Depends on who you’re calling a “fascist”, but if you mean actual fascists, no.

What’s that got to do with the right of Russia to occupy the Crimea at the drop of a hat?

I’m sorry to hear that. Evidently she should have called in Putin to rescue her.

No maybe some Ukrainians should learn how to respect a minority in their nation that had no say in determining that they would be governed by an antagonistic ethnic majority. Blame the victim. Nice!

[Marmite_Lover]

If Scotland gets independence in it’s referendum this year and the north of England then hold a referendum to join Scotland and break away from England.

Will the US place sanctions and stop issuing visas and other measures to the leaders and people of what would be that new rogue state North of England?

This whole US democracy thing is now getting very confusing…

[RedFury]

What Obama Didn’t Say About Ukraine

@James Carden

…The American media narrative suggests that the Maidan putsch was justified on the grounds that the aspirations of the Ukrainian people were dashed by Yanukovych’s decision to decline a trade deal with the EU at the Vilnius Summit in November; Yanukovych was corrupt; and Yanukovych ordered the shooting of protesters in Maidan.

Wholly neglected by both the American media and by statements emanating out of the State Department is any semblance of concern for the aspirations of the people of eastern and southern Ukraine who—as we are seeing in Crimea right now—most emphatically do not see the overthrow of their democratically elected president by radicals in Kiev as something to be celebrated. The fact that the next presidential election was scheduled to take place 12 months from now rarely gets a mention, as does the fact that the quasi-fascist Svoboda Party now has in its control the deputy premiership, three ministries, and the prosecutor general’s office.

What this means for the future is unclear, but we may hazard a guess as to how Russia may respond based on the actions of our own country in the 20th century. When even relatively weak, far-off countries were headed by governments that various U.S. administrations felt to be less than friendly, the United States rarely hesitated to act. Even a cursory accounting for U.S.-led or financed acts of regime-change would include the overthrow of: Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953, Guatemala’s Guzman in 1954, Chile’s Allende in 1973, Congo’s Lumumba in 1964, and Panama’s Noriega in 1989. Closer to our shores, the risible Castro was subject to numerous attempts on his life during those brief yet glorious Camelot years. And of course there was Grenada in 1983.*

And so an emergency—which is what this is—begets emergency meetings of the UNSC and disingenuous pronouncements on respecting the “legitimate aspirations” of (at least some of) the Ukrainian people from the U.S. government and its chief executive, who evinces neither an interest in nor a desire to come to terms with the fact that Russia, like the United States, has legitimate national interests it is intent on protecting. Rather than a realistic approach to foreign affairs, we get treated to the embarrassing spectacle of senior U.S. diplomats attempting to square the circle, professing full-throated support for democratic processes, except, of course, when they don’t.

*For good measure I’ll add the CIA backed coup that deposed the democratically elected Professor Bosch in '63 in the Dominican Rep – just because I live there.

[Gyrate]

@NotfooledbyW

No maybe some Ukrainians should learn how to respect a minority in their nation that had no say in determining that they would be governed by an antagonistic ethnic majority. Blame the victim. Nice!

I’m not blaming the victim; I’m mocking your argument that the answer to the minority issues in Ukraine is immediate invasion by a foreign power.

[Gyrate]

@Marmite_Lover

If Scotland gets independence in it’s referendum this year and the north of England then hold a referendum to join Scotland and break away from England.

Will the US place sanctions and stop issuing visas and other measures to the leaders and people of what would be that new rogue state North of England?

This whole US democracy thing is now getting very confusing…

You certainly sound very confused. This is a ridiculous hypothetical by any standard.

[Malthus]

@Marmite_Lover

Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet tells EU’s Cathy Ashton about claim that provocateurs were behind Maidan killings

This was addressed upthread. Mr. Paet appears to have been, quite simply, lying. The doctor he talked to told him no such thing.

Olga Bogomolets said she had not told Mr Paet that policemen and protesters had been killed in the same manner.

“Myself I saw only protesters. I do not know the type of wounds suffered by military people,” she told The Telegraph. “I have no access to those people.”

But she said she had asked for a full forensic criminal investigation into the deaths that occurred in the Maidan. "No one who just sees the wounds when treating the victims can make a determination about the type of weapons. I hope international experts and Ukrainian investigators will make a determination of what type of weapons, who was involved in the killings and how it was done. I have no data to prove anything.

"I was a doctor helping to save people on the square. There were 15 people killed on the first day by snipers. They were shot directly to the heart, brain and arteries. There were more than 40 the next day, 12 of them died in my arms.

“Our nation has to ask the question who were the killers, who asked them to come to Ukraine. We need good answers on the basis of expertise.”

Mr Paet’s assertion that an opposition figure was behind the Maidan massacre was not one she could share.

“I think you can only say something like this on the basis of fact,” she said. “Its not correct and its not good to do this. It should be based on fact.”

She said the new government in Kiev had assured her a criminal investigation had begun but that she had not direct contact with it so far.

“They told me they have begun a criminal process and if they say that I believe them. The police have not given me any information on it.”

I note that Redfury has not commented on this. I ask once again: Redfury, does this change your opinion? Or not?