I think Putin, Obama, Merkel and whoever else matters are all in contact with each other agreeing that an intact and running Ukraine is what everybody wants, even if Ukranians don’t.
Hope so. BBC now says Russia’s just suddenly started military exercises by the Ukrainian border.
Well, they probably don’t have a choice. There’s a lot of Russian equipment and I assume personnel there. They need to prepare to evacuate at least I guess.
This is very much an absurd distortion of the actual situation there.
Yes, it is true that Svoboda is anti-Semitic, and yes it is true that Ukraine has a long, unhappy history of anti-Semitism (as a Jew whose ancestors came from Galicia, fortunately before WW1, I know all about that).
However, they are not the main impetus behind the demonstrations, and they are not representative of the reasons for the demonstrations - which, BTW, included many young Ukrainian Jews, who much like “US senator John McCain” were willing to, as it were, hold their noses and demonstrate alongside them.
Why were ordinary Ukrainians, including young Ukranian Jews, willing to risk so much to demonstrate against the democratically elected leader, even though that meant marching alongside a (small minority) of undoubted bigots? Because said leader was a kleptocratic gangster attempting to manipulate the constitution to erase limits on his powers with one hand, while selling his country to Russia with the other; he’d amassed a huge fortune while the economy of Ukraine tanked.
Will any of the replacement leaders prove an improvement? impossible to say. Unfortunately, Ukraine has an engrained history of political corruption.
However, dismissing the demonstraters as paid thugs and fascists is simply a distorion. No doubt some thugs and fascists were among them, but they were taking advantage of a genuine uprising that had quite legitimate popular backing - and while that backing was most obvious in the West, it in fact existed in the East as well, even among Ethnic Russians. The only place where it appears to have faltered in in Crimea, which is a special case - the original inhabitants were ethnically cleansed by the Soviets and largely replaced with ethnic Russians, who look to Russia.
The Russian base in Crimea is on long-term lease and there is no current plans to renege on it.
I suppose that if the U.S. can keep Gitmo, the Russians can keep their base too.
The thing is that if their is a war then the price of popcorn in Beijing is going to increase astronomically. So, no war.
Oh and leave Europe in rather worse shape than it was post Black Plague.
plus people don’t go to war over silly little squabbles in the arse end of nowhere, especially in years ending in '14.
Nevertheless, it makes sense for Russia to plan some “maneuvers” nearby. I was just making the point that doesn’t signal an imminent invasion or occupation. At this point neither the West nor Russia wants to deal with a lawless civil war torn country with a crap economy and a racist, fearful bigoted population many of whom like to fire up the crowds with talk of killing the Roma, Jews and immigrants.
Again, this is a rather unfair characterization of modern Ukraine, which is undergoing unrest but is not currently torn by civil war; and while it admittedly has a crap economy, the Euromaidan types are hardly calling for pogroms against Roma, Jews or immigrants - rather, they are hoping to incline their country towards the West, rather than Russia (which likewise has issues with bigoted right-wing types, not least with the guy running the place!)
I’m not sure why holding “manuevers” “makes sense”, if it is not a threat of invasion. What, exactly, do you think Russia is hoping to accomplish?