It’s not even the “ethnic Russians”. It is "Putin asserts that Russia has “the right to protect Russian-speaking populations" beyond its borders.”. Somehow if you know Russian, Putin thinks he has the right to invade to “protect” you.
Doesn’t that make you feel warm in the belly?
I’m certain there are English speaking Americans in Russia. I think they’re threatened. Time to invade and occupy Russia! We could start with Kamchatka.
No. We are talking about the actual physical movement of Russian forces massing for an invasion of a NATO country. Estonia is not going to be surprised. NATO would be quickly allowed to put troops there. All this would make an ultimatum for Russia to withdraw unnecessary.
I thought there was a gentlemen’s agreement that great powers can exercise strength in their spheres of influence. Maybe Russia is more of a medium power, but close enough. So the EU lost out on Crimea. They’ll probably get the rest of Ukraine anyway, no need to be greedy.
And for all the talk about Cold War 2.0, heck, maybe that’s a swell idea. Let Putin gobble up all the former Soviet states. Remove a couple million people from the workforce and dress 'em up in camo, inject another trillion or so in defense spending, and maybe the economy won’t be in the toilet. OK, wishful thinking, but at least that’s a stimulus Congress could actually pass.
Anyone know how much of Ukraine’s GDP came from Crimea? From a layman’s POV it seems like a rather valuable piece of the pie geographically.
“Get”? Russia is going to get Crimea, by an act of force, and Ukraine may at some point join the EU, but it’s not going to be “gotten” by it. Those two events aren’t even closely related.
It’s valuable but I was under the impression that it gets more than it gives in federal spending.
Are there enough Russian speakers in Mississippi to catch Putin’s interest?
Are you really haggling over verbs? If you give me a penny of your own free will, I got a penny from you. Teams get players in free agency. Great powers can get countries with soft or hard power.
But fine, if you think my post paints Russia as not brutish enough: Russia will conquer Crimea via force of arms, and the West will convince Ukraine to join them via glorious free enterprise so as to thereby increase their standards of living and civil rights.
I’m curious too. Wiki doesn’t have anything on it.
If Crimea became independent of both Russia and Ukraine, how would it fair economically? Tourism seems huge there. I could see taking a vacation in an independant Crimea, but a Russian-administrated Crimea? Not so much.
Here is an interesting op-ed piece.
The essential thesis: Putin’s heavy-handedness is actually uniting a very fractious Ukraine like nothing else could.
Putin’s rhetoric has all been one of ethnic warfare ‘fascists’, the need to ‘protect’ ethnic minorities such as ethnic Russians and Jews, etc. which assumes that the conflict is something like former Yugoslavia.
As the world can see, nothing of the sort has happened. Rather, Ukrainians of all stripes have in fact united - not under one leader or party, but simply against foreign domination, and against the abusive, manipulative propaganda aimed against them.
For example, Putin has claimed he is acting in part to protect Jews from Ukrainian anti-Semitism. The response:
Probably not but Israel and the West Bank have a quite a few.
Apparently Latvia and Estonia do not have even a remotely similar deal and situation as Crimea has with the Russian Federation, yet many here are stoking up fear that Putin is going to go after any country that has Russian-Speaking citizens that might need a bit of protecting.
And I haven’t seen anyone insisting that “The notion that the expansion of NATO was driven **entirely **by Western animus against Russia.” Key word being “entirely” since reality would dictate that its some of both with other motivations added in.
Who here things it was either ‘entirely’ based on fear or 'entirely based on Western pressure based upon their animus toward Russia that led countries to want to join NATO
George Soros is not connected to the US Government or any Government by his animus toward Russian leaders and the money he puts into ‘democracy projects’ certainly have an informal connection to Western Government’s to the point where ‘animus’ toward Russia is indistinguishable if its coming from Governmnet or Private sources and action.
Does Soro’s name pop up on many of this ‘crisis’ situations … I know he was connected in many ways to Sakaashvilli’s path to the Presidency of Georgia. Sakaaash was NYC lawyer before being encouraged to run for the Presidency of Georgia… Of course there was nothing odd about that at all.
After Sakaash … shelled and killed Russian Federation Peacekeepers and civilian in South Ossetia in a full scale military assault - Soros went very silent about the democracy project in Georgia.
There’s a lot Russian Speakers in D.C. and Virginia Beach during the summer season when the young Russians come here to work. D.C. and Virginia Beach is pretty well fortified so no telling where Putin will strike next.
If Putin is preparing to take Israel on that basis then It’s probably best we go to war right now over Crimea and nip it in the bud - don’t you think?
What are you arguing that must be done?
The more I look, the more obvious it is that this is going to cost Putin beaucoup $$$:
http://www.traveltoukraine.org/crimea/tourism-stats.php
So that’s a major part of the economy that’s going to dry up some.
So now Ukraine can claw back some of Russian gas sale money, plus retaliate when Russia threatens higher prices.
But we already knew that Ukraine is in a shit hole economy and Putin didn’t exactly grab the rich section. We can only assume that the port was worth it to him and his supporters. Until they have to start paying the bill that is.
The fear is coming from the leaders of Poland, Latvia and Estonia, not from us. 
It wasn’t us here that invoked article 4 of NATO, but Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
I’m sure a screed about Mr. Soros is a complete answer to this, somehow.
Ok, I’m sorry but this was quite possibly the most unintentionally funny thing I’ve read on this site.
Mace made a joke about Russian speakers in Mississippi and I continued with the joke.
Now you may resume what you were doing.
He was making a funny, not an argument.
The Jokes are part of your argument. I understand that. Serious talk is not in the cards I guess from the we need to ‘fear the worst’ for Putin crowd.
Going skiing for a bit… talk to you later…