And drive vehicles with Russian military license plates, and with Russian military unit insigniae badly painted over, and carry weapons only issued to Russian troops.
Malthus’ posts a link: (Putin’s Press Conference Proved Merkel Right: He’s Lost His Mind
Being scared XT joins the conversation by assigning a CT to posters that did not post them.
We see lot’s of narrative from this pair. They are making the argumenta for others and knocking them down. Knocking down ‘land grab’ CT’s by submitting land grab CT’s of their own. We don’t see much in direct quotes of who is actually saying all those crazy, neo-liberal things.
And XT plunders on:
I’m not buying this guy’s analysis.
Firstly, I don’t think the US was pulling former Warsaw Pact members and former USSR “Republics” into NATO. Those guys asked to join, and not surprisingly so after living for years under the USSR’s domination. What were we supposed to say: No, you’re too close geographically to Russia, tough cookies! Had Russia been a better neighbor, maybe those countries wouldn’t feel the need to seek allies in Western Europe and the US.
Secondly, he implies that US “operatives” were somehow a critical factor in the events leading up to the ouster of Yanukovych, but offers no actual evidence let alone proof.
Don’t you know we’re the eye behind every spycam, the hand behind every coup? We’re the Darth Vader of the world and everything that happens that someone considers bad is our fault?
I’m seriously amazed at the sheer number of people who are willing to jump into Putin’s lap and cuddle up to Daddy over this thing. I may be a lefty, but I never trusted the USSR and I never trusted its successor, Russia, and I CERTAINLY don’t trust Putin. And Yanukovich appears to have been something of an uberkleptocrat and an ultracorrupt politician and I don’t understand the sympathy he’s garnering over his ouster. It’s like yet another symptom of both the extreme right and the extreme left simply losing their everloving shit.
On my iPhone so it’s a pain to link. Go back a page or two and you’ll find a fully sourced post of mine where detail are given to the ‘salaries’ paid to many of the protesters.
Of course you may continue to disregard your lying eyes.
To you, sure. But I notice none of us are having much luck convincing the more reticent posters in this thread of just how deeply involved the US was in the events leading up to the putsch.
Nor is that likely to change.
Who gives a fuck if the US meddles? We’ve learned a few lessons of our own. Hey, how about you don’t totally fuck over your minority groups? That makes us the bad guy?
The text for the Crimean referendum has been released… and it’s impossible to vote no.
Ok, if this report is accurate(and that’s a big “if”) and not propaganda then the vote is a complete farce.
I was also wondering about this part.
Ok, so does that mean people are going to be under the impressing they’re being videotaped while they vote?
Good Lord, I’m reminded of the elections under the Assads where people a different colored piece of dye painted on their fingers after they vote to indicate who they voted for while Ba’ath Party officials watch over the proceeding and if the wrong colored dye is applied ask the people if they’re sure they made the correct vote.
Ukraine dictated the suspension of Crimea’s independence and Constitution in 1992. Going back to their desired post Soviet breakup status clearly puts the West’s arguments in a bind. The Ukraine government suspended Crimea’s Constitution in 1992 right after Crimea passed it.
The referendum from the link posted:
How, exactly, would a NATO “exercise” prevent an indigenous minority from rebelling? Would NATO troops offer to threaten such rebels?
I note the article makes many assertions of Western meddling and offers exactly no proof of same.
The notion that the expansion of NATO was driven entirely by Western animus against Russia, and not by the fears of the countries at issue of Russia, is patently absurd - particularly right now, when the leaders of Latvia and Estonia are, quite literally, thanking their stars that they have NATO membership (because guess what? They have lots of ethnic Russians, too!)
The local government would deal with the rebellion, the exercise would prevent Russian troops from interfering. You know, the point is to stop Russian expansion.
Do those two countries have a major Russian Naval presence and agreement to put 25,000 troops there to protect those assets. If they seemingly go from constitutional crisis to crisis every time they elect a president?
Well, technically, NATO membership would dissuade, not prevent, Russian interference. It is after all entirely possible Russia could ignore the fact Latvia and Estonia are NATO members and just invade them anyway.
Whether they’d run that risk is of course another matter, but we sure as hell don’t want them to try, as the options are
- War, or
- Basically giving up NATO.
NATO’s response to the Crimea fiasco needs to be not trying to fight in Crimea, but demonstrating the capability to fight elsewhere. My concern is that the NATO of 2014 isn’t the NATO of 1987. The NATO of 1987 was not only the greatest armed forces ever assembled, but one that was clearly and unambiguously prepared and willing to go to war to defend its constituent countries, and quite specifically prepared, on an ongoing basis, to fight Soviets. There was hardly any doubt a Soviet attack would have provoked a massive response.
Today’s NATO is a club with more members but fewer soldiers and less ongoing military cooperation. It’s also a defensive alliance wherein some of its member states would be rather difficult to defend. NATO in 1987 was basically focused on defending West Germany, that being, if you look at a map of it, really the only logical place a Soviet conventional attack could take place in substantial force. (They could have attacked elsewhere, but not with the same effectiveness) West Germany was also, conveniently, a great place for NATO to assemble a substantial forward defense - the West German army alone was both very large and extremely well equipped - and easily resupplied by the rest of the alliance.
By way of comparison today’s NATO is much easier for Russia to attack and much harder for us to defend. Honest question; what happens if Russia invades Estonia? Estonia’s a quarter Russian so Putin would have his supporters, like the sycophants we’ve seen in this thread, happily supporting him. But more pertinently, could NATO do anything about it? Estonia itself has a very small army that Russia would roll over in a couple of days, and then what? What practical access do we have to Estonia? Immediate defense would have roll through the other Baltic states, which Russia easily could, and quite logically should, then attack to interdict that movement. Or you could come over the Baltic Sea, which , again, is a trip a lot closer to Russian guns than NATO’s. Any scenario you present makes it easy for Russia to make a move, and also makes it really easy for the war to escalate quickly.
Unless NATO begins right now to demonstrate the preparedness it demonstrated in the Soviet era, don’t for an instant think this sort of thing can’t happen.
Y’know, a few months ago I’d have said Russia taking such action against the “fascists” of Estonia was preposterous, but then I’d have said the same regarding the invasion of the Ukraine.
What’s the saying “History is littered with wars everyone knew would never happen”.
And the Russia of 2014 isn’t the Soviet Union of 1987. The European allies of NATO alone easily out spend Russia, and their forces are a generation ahead technology wise. If you add in the U.S., then it doesn’t even become a contest. If Russia is stupid enough to invade Estonia, then it takes NATO a few days to a week to get air superiority. Then the Russian troops in Estonia will be cut off from their supply lines and systematically destroyed.
The Russian move isn’t indicative of strength or new found aggressiveness. It’s indicative of Russian weakness.
I am not a fan of this “shows weakness/strength” stuff but I think Russia grabbing Crimea does not show they are willing to invade a NATO country nor NATO’s unwillingness to defend itself.
Eta: unless some NATO country is hosting a massive Russian military base I don’t know about.
I agree, but what you or I think is irrelevant.
It’s what Putin thinks that is, and a few months ago had Angel Merkel said Putin lived in a different world I’d have scoffed at her.
Not anymore.
It is the presence of large numbers of Ethnic Russians who provide a plausible pretext for Russian interference, not the presence of naval bases, that appears to be the common denominator in recent Russian aggressions.
As far as I know, Georgia did not have a Russian naval base, either. The situation in Georgia is almost a carbon-copy of what is going on in Crimea, with the exception that the Georgian version was far more violent (the Ukrainians are not co-operating with Putin’s ‘script’ by reacting with violence and atrocity - apparently, much to Russian surprise).
Sound familiar?
Now look at Estonia and Latvia:
They are right to be frightened.