I've said before I'm not any sort of political animal. But there's lots of headlines with words like sanctions, NATO and military in them.
So. Are the Russians coming this time or is it all a bit of sabre rattling? I just need to know whether to check under the bed before lights out really.
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With powerful global figures like Francois Hollande scowling, we can all sleep easily.
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This is a very good article.
www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-ukraine-crisis-global-analysis-idUSBREA2U09I20140331
Of course it all goes to rat poo if rasputin tries to go further west than Ukraine, because I figure thats when war breaks out.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 4 Sep 14 at 21:31
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Covered all their bases there.
Putin knows when to play safe and put the toys back in the box. He's not stupid. Western Ukraine isn't Georgia or any other southern caucasus state.
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>> further west
>> than Ukraine, because I figure thats when war breaks out.
>>
Exactly. Ukraine isn't NATO, and is sort of Russian in an historical sense.
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The US and the Russians don't spend $1000s of Billions on armaments without wanting to try them out every so often.
By proxy of course. No use Washington being bombed - as Afghanistan and Iraq found out.
And it distracts the population from the lack of economic progress at home.
See the Falklands and Argentina..
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US destroyer Donald Cook enters Black Sea rt.com/news/uss-donald-cook-montreux-716/
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>>The US and the Russians don't spend $1000s of Billions on armaments without wanting to try them out every so often.<<
Tis also a good way of thinning out the populous, and helps enhance the unemployment figures!
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>> >>The US and the Russians don't spend $1000s of Billions on armaments without wanting to
>> try them out every so often.<<
>>
>> Tis also a good way of thinning out the populous, and helps enhance the unemployment
>> figures!
But they usually do it somewhere far away, where important people can't get killed.
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"US destroyer Donald Cook enters Black Sea"
I wonder where the boomers and hunter-killers are gathering below the waves...
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>> "US destroyer Donald Cook enters Black Sea"
>>
>> I wonder where the boomers and hunter-killers are gathering below the waves...
Not in the Black sea, the Bosporus channel is only 46 feet deep at its shallowest. However loads of room in the eastern med. Where the US carrier fleet is now gathering. 600 miles to the Crimea as cruise missiles fly.
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"Ukraine isn't NATO, and is sort of Russian in an historical sense."
It's more complicated than that - your memory is way shorter than those of Eastern Europe; in fact, most Western Europeans have no idea of the complexity of political history over there. And people over there forget nothing.
In 1939 various territories in the east (Galicia, Volhynia and other bits and pieces) were incorporated into Ukraine when the area was divided between Germany and Russia by mutual agreement. What had been part of Poland before 1939 became German.
After the war Ukraine as we know it was stitched together to include the former Polish territories as well as the recently-incorporated eastern areas and Ukraine became one of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
As the USSR imploded in the 90s Ukraine declared independence. It had never existed, with those borders, as an independent country before.
As for Crimea, its early history included periods of independence and it became part of Russia in the 18th century. It was transferred from the Russian Republic to the Ukrainian Republic as late as 1954.
Until a short while ago I half expected Ukraine to split in two - West and East. Now I'm not so sure. But the bonds holding the country together are pretty weak.
Because we are an island and have not been succesfully invaded for centuries, so our borders have not altered, we don't understand what it's like over there.
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>> Because we are an island and have not been succesfully invaded for centuries, so our
>> borders have not altered, we don't understand what it's like over there.
We soon will.
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YAAAAAAAAAWWWWWNNNNNNNN
Only Nige can save us.
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They're coming all right and we can't / won't do a practical thing about it.
We are far too comfortable in our little local lives and so just haven't got the stomach for a fight.
It's a very different mood to 1939/1940, 1980's Falklands and Cold War period.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Fri 11 Apr 14 at 15:42
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>> They're coming all right and we can't / won't do a practical thing about it.
>>
>> We are far too comfortable in our little local lives and so just haven't got
>> the stomach for a fight.
>>
>> It's a very different mood to 1939/1940, 1980's Falklands and Cold War period.
Intervention in Ukraine looks probable but as others observe it's a split nation created by tides of WW2, Cold War and aftermath. The west has no real interest there and any threat to NATO from it's eastern provinces reverting to Russia, whose culture and language much of the populace share, is minimal.
The Baltics would be more dicey though.
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The west has no real interest there and
any threat to NATO from it's eastern provinces reverting to Russia, whose culture and language
>> much of the populace share, is minimal.
>>
>> The Baltics would be more dicey though.
>>
That's why the two are linked, many in the Baltics see the risk as higher than minimal. That's why taking some sort of strong line in the Ukraine and being seen to do that is important for NATO and there is a real interest there. We might not think there a chance of domino effect but countries new to NATO are asking for extra forces, they want to see some action over Ukraine. The two are interlinked
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>> As for Crimea, its early history included periods of independence and it became part of
>> Russia in the 18th century. It was transferred from the Russian Republic to the Ukrainian
>> Republic as late as 1954.
From Our Own Correspondent a couple of weeks ago included a despatch from Sevastopol. BBC reporter there had met and interviewed a man elected as President of quasi autonomous Crimea in aftermath of USSR imploding. His keynote policy was to reincorporate Crimea into Russia and his majority huge.
However, on arriving in Moscow to progress incorporation he found the Kremlin's occupants far more concerned with cutting trade etc deals with the west. Went home again with tail between his legs and Crimea became/remained part of independent Ukraine.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 11 Apr 14 at 16:06
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I suppose I must have just dreamt all that recent news of people in Ukraine wanting more links with the West.
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>> just dreamt all that recent news of people in Ukraine wanting more links with the West.
No one is stopping them from having more links with the West. They will have them soon enough.
All the clamour that kicked off this Ukraine trouble was fomented by western right-wing bodies left over from the chimpanzee Bush's administration. The coverage has been disgraceful rubbish right from the start.
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... and the current pro Russian disruption in Ukraine is led by who ..... Michalovic Mouse ?
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If it's pro-Russian it's 'disruption'. If it's anti-Russian it's Ukrainians innocently wanting 'more links with the West'.
Riiiight, as people here sometimes say.
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"I suppose I must have just dreamt all that recent news of people in Ukraine wanting more links with the West."
You didn't dream that. But it's not "people in Ukraine" - it's "some people in Ukraine" - mainly those in the west who remember that in the past they were culturally more linked with the west rather than the east.
And yes, I'm sure there has been massive interference from outside. The EU is as much intent upon expansion as Russia is. Financial blandishments have been offered by both sides to a country (Ukraine) that is basically bankrupt. And worse things have been done.
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“If it's pro-Russian it's 'disruption'. If it's anti-Russian it's Ukrainians innocently wanting 'more links with the West”.
Perhaps it's time to declare an interest.
I knew a fiercely independent old Polish chap who was born in a place called Lvov in Poland in 1920s and he was proud of his Polish roots. When WWII came the so-called liberating Russians took him and his family to Siberia. The journey took 6 weeks in railway cattle trucks and many, many Poles died on the way. (Plenty of detail in Deportation and Exile – Poles in the Soviet Union 1939 - 48 by Keith Sword).
Eventually, and after fighting for the British, he made his way to England after the war but could not return home when “peace” came because his birthplace was now called Lviv in Ukraine because the borders had been moved under Russian occupation. Churchill sold him and his comrades down the river at Yalta but he still hoped he might go to Poland to live one day, but what the Russians did in Hungary 1956 convinced him he could never return. To emphasise more, the Russians did it again in Prague 1968.
There must be many, although very old by now, who have seen and lived through the Russians taking over their homeland – do you really think they are pro-Russian. The young ones, born under Russian influence probably care a bit less as a result of indoctrination. Russia may now be apparently a free capitalist country but it is run by the same corrupt types as before and there is simply no hope of true freedom for the average citizen.
Putin is truly evil and we in the west blindly ignore it. Hey, we even let the odd Russian get poisoned in London without making a fuss because that might upset them.
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>> Putin is truly evil and we in the west blindly ignore it. Hey, we even
>> let the odd Russian get poisoned in London without making a fuss because that might
>> upset them.
..or...we let them get away with it, because there's sod all else we can do.
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Thanks DE, an interesting reminder of the tangled history of the place we call Ukraine. Nobody suggests those from Lvov and the west of the country are pro-Russian, for reasons your friends life explains.
Those in the east though are a different kettle of fish.
Culturally and linguistically (it appears) they regard themselves as Russian. They're deeply suspicious of the newly installed national government, some elements of which they regard as neo-fascist, and of its motives towards themselves. Moves by the new Kiev regime to remove Crimea's devolved governance and to impose the Ukrainian language over Russian were triggers for the Kremlin's intervention. No doubt they'd also ring alarms in other eastern cities.
Russia had naval vessels stationed on the peninisula under agreements dating back to fall of USSR. Any change that potentially undermined those agreements was going to be seen as a problem' in Moscow.
None of that excuses Putin's behaviour anywhere but neither is it is simple as a 'land grab'.
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Valid observations there, Bromptonaut.
It is a right old mess and try as hard as I can I can't really get my head around all the border permutations over the last few hundred years.
This is useful though:
www.worldology.com/Europe/europe_history_lg.htm
You can easily while away an hour or so looking at all the changes.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Sat 12 Apr 14 at 11:48
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DE: I take your point of course about yr Polish friend's experiences, shared more or less by many people in eastern and central Europe as the succession of evil empires rubbed up against each other losing and gaining small or large areas and causing untold suffering to huge numbers of people.
As others have pointed out though, Crimea has a long-established Russian or Russian-speaking majority population.
And while Vladimir Putin may be 'truly evil', he isn't the only head of government to be so regarded. In any case he's laughing at some in the West for their faffing and childish cold-war posturing, totally inappropriate to the world as it now is. Indeed Russia itself has sought 'more links with the West', and these have been and are being established.
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The Russians are coming - Stuu
