Ukraine

tszirmay wrote: King of Loss wrote: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/06/ukraine-crisis-great-power-oil-gas-rivals-pipelines A good article about this whole crisis. It's all about the oil and the gas!!!! ITS ALWAYS about the Oil and the Gas!  Except Afghanistan , let us not forget , one of the only places on the planet where 4 nuclear powers meet, explaining why the USA and UK are around checking out the neighborhood!

King of Loss wrote: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/06/ukraine-crisis-great-power-oil-gas-rivals-pipelines A good article about this whole crisis. It's all about the oil and the gas!!!!

Empirical attitude is as old as Mother Russia herself ! It was the czars that invaded first Central Asia and then the Far East, invaded Mongolia, tried to occupy Iran and Afghanistan, as well as swallowing the Baltics. It tried eating Finland but the hard-nosed Finns spanked them hard (twice) . Losing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany was a hard, hard blow that is still bitterly felt. 

rogerthat wrote: Blacksword wrote: The bear is awakening and it's no coincidence that it is doing so at a time when western countries are cutting military spending, are over stretched militarily abroad, up to their eyes in debt and despite modest cosmetic upturns in GDP, are running an ultimately unsustainable economic model based around the acruement of ever increasing mountains of debt. Russia knows that the wests options for dealing with this crisis are limited. A military response is not on the table for blindingly obvious reasons. We can hurl sanctions at the Russians but these days they can easily respond in kind. The EU gets a third of its gas from Russia and these days our stock markets - unlike the cold war years - are joined at the hip. Russia collapses, the EU collapses, then the US then Asia. Russia are holding more aces than many of us realise. Putin is a shrewd character with alove of the way things were back in the good ole days, and he is clearly trying to cut himself another slice of Soviet pie, and in reality there is Bo Diddly we can do about it. If this Ukranian adventure goes well for Russia then expect to see them trying to claw back some other former territories in the years ahead. Expect also to see the west start to squander more on its military in response. I suspect Russia is getting jittery about us sticking missile defence sheilds in their former territories, helping to overthrow their allies in the Middle East and encircling them by attempting to pull eastern European states into the EU and/or NATO. The plan is coming apart for the wests 'New World Order' if you can call it that. We are having a run in with our competitor for world dominance, but it won't result in an actual world war. World wars will be fought in the stock markets, and by proxy in the form of manufactured coups and civil wars. Yeah, a calculated assault by Putin no doubt.  I can hardly admire his intentions to say the least, but the timing is brilliant.  I think he is going to play a wait and watch game, see how much squatting he can get away with and expand the Russian empire inch by inch all over again.

Looks like the usual "football-hooligans-like" war.
Then:

don't forget what happened to Yulia Timoshenko and to her husband before her

don't forget the kind of silent dictatorship that Yanokovic and friends were about to put in place

but also...

don't forget the abolition of Russian as second official language in Ukraine as first act of the new government.

There can be a design behind, but there's also a lot of stupidity.


A joke: If Putin accepted to host Yanukovic in change of Crimea, do you think that "Sicily" will be enough to convince him to keep Berlusconi, too?

Russia masses 80,000 troops on Ukrainian border as well as large amounts of military hardware..

DM article

Edited by Blacksword - March 13 2014 at 08:39

The bear is awakening and it's no coincidence that it is doing so at a time when western countries are cutting military spending, are over stretched militarily abroad, up to their eyes in debt and despite modest cosmetic upturns in GDP, are running an ultimately unsustainable economic model based around the acruement of ever increasing mountains of debt.

Russia knows that the wests options for dealing with this crisis are limited. A military response is not on the table for blindingly obvious reasons. We can hurl sanctions at the Russians but these days they can easily respond in kind. The EU gets a third of its gas from Russia and these days our stock markets - unlike the cold war years - are joined at the hip. Russia collapses, the EU collapses, then the US then Asia. Russia are holding more aces than many of us realise. Putin is a shrewd character with alove of the way things were back in the good ole days, and he is clearly trying to cut himself another slice of Soviet pie, and in reality there is Bo Diddly we can do about it. If this Ukranian adventure goes well for Russia then expect to see them trying to claw back some other former territories in the years ahead. Expect also to see the west start to squander more on its military in response.

I suspect Russia is getting jittery about us sticking missile defence sheilds in their former territories, helping to overthrow their allies in the Middle East and encircling them by attempting to pull eastern European states into the EU and/or NATO. The plan is coming apart for the wests 'New World Order' if you can call it that. We are having a run in with our competitor for world dominance, but it won't result in an actual world war. World wars will be fought in the stock markets, and by proxy in the form of manufactured coups and civil wars.

Edited by Blacksword - March 10 2014 at 12:30

Tuzvihar wrote: ^ Actually, it's neither Ukrainian nor Russian but Tatar. Russians conquired it and later the Soviets threw them out and killed. But some of them returned. And it's true that Crimea was given to Ukraine after the II WW by Nikita Khrushchev (an Ukrainian BTW).

60% of Crimeans are Russians

LSDisease wrote: Actually Crimea is Russian. It became a part of Ukraine during the cold war period and USSR reign.

Yes, this is correct.  Khrushchev had a great affinity for Ukraine as he governed the "republic" under Stalin.  The ceding of Crimea to Ukraine was of course mostly symbolic in the days of the USSR.  However, the region has always been critical to the Soviets and Russians mostly due to the naval base that hosts their Black Sea fleet.  I'm sure Russia would love to simply "have" the base rather than lease it from the Ukrainians.

Actually Crimea is Russian. It became a part of Ukraine during the cold war period and USSR reign.