Is Anyone Truly in Control Amidst the Ukrainian Crisis?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, focusing on the control of the situation amidst protests and violence. Participants explore the complexities of the protests, the involvement of various political factions, and the implications of international responses, particularly from the US and EU. The scope includes historical context, cultural divisions, and the dynamics of power among protesters and the government.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Historical

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express skepticism about whether the government or protesters are truly in control of the situation, noting the lack of unified leadership among the protesters.
  • There are observations about the concentration of violence in Kiev and the potential for cultural divisions to exacerbate the conflict.
  • One participant highlights the complexity of the protests, suggesting they are not simply pro-EU or anti-EU but involve various interests and strong nationalism.
  • Concerns are raised about the adequacy of US support for the protesters compared to past interventions during the Orange Revolution.
  • Some participants question the motivations behind the protests, pondering whether they are driven by popular will or influenced by foreign interests and local radicals.
  • There is a discussion about the escalation of violence, with some attributing it to government errors and a lack of compromise.
  • Participants note the historical and cultural complexities of Ukraine, suggesting that these factors may influence the outcomes of the current crisis.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus; multiple competing views remain regarding the motivations behind the protests, the control of the situation, and the roles of various political factions and foreign influences.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the complexity of the historical context, the ambiguity surrounding the motivations of different groups involved in the protests, and the ongoing uncertainty about the future trajectory of the situation in Ukraine.

  • #511
Nikitin said:
Lol devil's avacado. congrats, you're on my ignore list.
:cry:
"buying local population".. lol.
Don't laugh so quickly. A mouse whispered this tidbit in my ear the other day:
Ukraine orders its troops to leave Crimea, Russia offers better pay for them to change sides
March 19, 2014

The captain said he expects many of his compatriots to accept the Russian offer, especially those who consider Crimea home.

“The pay is five times that offered by Ukraine,” he said. “The pensions are five times better, and will be offered 20 years sooner.
...
The captain said the offers were set up to test any loyalty. For instance, 37-year-old officers were offered three-year contracts at $1,000 a month (in Crimea, $200 a month is a good wage) and told that at 40, they could receive $1,000-a-month pensions (again, Ukrainian pensions are less than $200 a month) and retire.
...

From a bit of research, it appears the average salary in Ukraine* is about $300 USD per month.
To put this in American terms, our average household income is ~ $52000 USD per year.
A 5 fold increase would yield the average American ~$250,000 per year.

Good grief. No wonder Seagal wants to be Putin's friend.

Half of my family is from Crimea
Excellent! I'm always interested in opinions of people on the front line of what's happening. Can you survey them, and share their opinions?
...
Honestly, I think ordinary Ukrainians are much better off if Ukraine stays neutral and retains good relations with both Russia and the EU. ...

I like this idea very much.

* An excellent article on the background of Ukraine, written this January, where they tell us not to call it "the" Ukraine. I like the writer's style. It reminds me of my own. Question, answer, question, answer, musical interlude, question, answer, question, answer, humor, serious finale.

Oh dear, what's this:
Max Fisher; "Some home news: Today is my last day at The Washington Post, and this is likely my final post."

:cry:
 
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  • #512
Does anyone know how the Czech Republic and Slovakia are doing?
And the Republics formerly know as Yugoslavia? (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Montenegro)

It might be time that these two kids had different rooms...

Ukraine on alert amid pro-Russian unrest

:eek:

skreeeetch....

What's this?

But an AFP reporter saw several hundred protesters surround a group of 15 ultra-nationalist Right Sector group members and force them to march down a steep hill on their knees in what appeared to be a humiliation ritual that drew no police response.

Never mind. My faith in humanity has been restored.
 
  • #513
DevilsAvocado said:
Not only silly...

The silliest, and oddest thing I read today, was that Viktor Yanukovych didn't learn to speak Ukrainian until he was in his 50's.

How would you feel if Fredrik Reinfeldt had not learned Swedish until a week before he was elected?

The second oddest thing I read today, was that Yanukovych would only speak to Putin via an interpreter. Ok. Maybe that was the strangest thing, given his native language is Russian. :confused:
 
  • #514
Don't laugh so quickly. A mouse whispered this tidbit in my ear the other day:
That's just the wage in Russia. Nothing to it, really. If the soldiers want, they can accept. If not they can decline and walk away. Still had no effect on the result of the referendum.

Czcibor said:
With same bending of history I could insist that Poland is a continuation of Great Moravia and use that argument as justification to rule of Czech and Slovakia. I don't see how you could use this claim of being continuation of Kiev Rus, when the actually southern part of Ukraine, where indeed there not so weak Russian ties, are caused by very recent colonization of Crimean Khanate. The parts which kept their population more stable as continuation of their prior state, are the orange part of the country.
Read my post again. Poland has had no control over Czech for 700 years or so. There is no bending of history involved - if you seriously can't even acknowledge the deep connections between Ukraine and Russia, there is no point debating you.

I mostly mean this bridge that you are going to build. And syphoning funds there in increase of salaries and retirement money.
So far already some Crimean Tatars applied in Poland for political asylum.
Refer to what you like; nobody there was bought. Retirement and infrastructure increasing to a national minimum is natural.
I thought about banning something more serious than now. A case when Russia lost something, but not all access to trade.

Not different world. Just one size bigger corrupted oil rich autocratic kleptocracy, which would be indeed harder to contain.
How exactly is the west supposed to intimidate Russia into submission? And why should they risk many hundreds of billions incase of evonomic war? So they can appease hawkisk EE politicians?
No, I mean Chechen resistance movement. I mean for you fate of Ukraine is "just interesting", but you must remember than for me whether simmering colonial war in Caucasus would erupt sooner or maybe later may by the same logic be "just interesting".
Please don't get emotional. I never said I didn't care about Ukrainians - fate of average Ukrainians have always been important for me. But it is indeed interesting how you stubbornly call people who murder innocents (including kids and women) for "resistance". Hah, this discussion is a waste. goodbye.
 
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  • #515
Read my post again. Poland has had no control over Czech for 700 years or so. There is no bending of history involved - if you seriously can't even acknowledge the deep connections between Ukraine and Russia, there is no point debating you.
Except ex. Vladislaus II of Hungary (member of Yagielonian dynasty) who died 1516...

Some connection for sure. Like Britain and the USA, but it would not justify American invasion on Scotland.

Please don't get emotional. I never said I didn't care about Ukrainians - fate of average Ukrainians have always been important for me. But it is indeed interesting how you stubbornly call people who murder innocents (including kids and women) for "resistance". Hah, this discussion is a waste. goodbye.
No problem, I wanted to use LESS emotional language, but in this case I'd have to apply the same standards also to Russian. And call their rule in Caucasus a state terrorism, while Russian so called filtration camps in Chechenya, refer simply as concentration camps. OK?
 
  • #517
This whole discussion is missing the point of what the people who actually live there want to do. My sympathies for the Tartars to be sure, but if that's what the majority of the people who actually live there want to do... fair enough.
 
  • #518
ryan albery said:
This whole discussion is missing the point of what the people who actually live there want to do. My sympathies for the Tartars to be sure, but if that's what the majority of the people who actually live there want to do... fair enough.
Borders, like some aspects of the law, can not be set aside by a simple majority. I doubt, for instance, that you would extend that opinion to include the majority opinion in the US southern states circa 1860.

Anyway, the subject of local popular opinion has come up in this thread again and again.
 
  • #519
Yeah, there's the 'law' laid down by people who don't live there and want to impose their rule, and I do respect the law, but I don't think the US civil war has much to do with what's going on in Ukraine.

But that is an excellent point to be considered.
 
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  • #520
mheslep said:
a simple majority

Do you know what that, nowadays, really means?
 
  • #521
I had a read through this thread and all I can say is , even though the facts are about right most of the time , the conclusions are sometimes far off and extremely subjective or as forum members here before me already said , local.

stay focused but try to look from various perspectives , cheers.
 
  • #522
An ominous new phase in the ongoing Ukrainian revolution has been entered. Large parts of the east seem to be rebelling. The government is attempting to repress the rebellion with bullets, but the shooting goes both ways. Looks like big trouble ahead.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27008026#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

A Ukrainian officer has been killed in a gun battle with pro-Russian armed men in the eastern city of Sloviansk, the interior minister says.

Both sides suffered a number of casualties, Arsen Avakov said.

Pro-Russian forces took over Sloviansk on Saturday and have targeted at least four other cities, prompting Kiev to launch an "anti-terror operation".
 
  • #523
:cry::mad::eek::frown::bugeye::mad::cry:
 
  • #524
So this is pretty incredible:
FoxNews said:
Putin recognized for the first time that the troops in unmarked uniforms who had overtaken Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula before its annexation by Moscow were Russian soldiers...

"It's all nonsense, there are no special units, special forces or instructors in the east of Ukraine," Putin said.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/04/17/ukraine-interior-minister-says-three-pro-russian-protesters-killed-at-military/

Observations/Analysis (Opinions):
So he's admitted what most of us here already concluded: yes, those unmarked troops in Crimea were Russian. In stark terms, he's essentially admitted he invaded, conqured and annexed Crimea (though he still contradicts that, he's admitted to the details of it). Clearly, he must consider that issue settled, so it doesn't hurt him to drop the ridiculous pretext that the troops weren't Russian.

Then he says there are no Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Hmm...where have I heard that before? Oh yeah: two sentences ago! His boldness here is remarkable. IMO, he must be after one thing with these combined statements: he's asking for our tacit approval to annex the eastern portion of Ukraine.

Which the Obama administration appears to have provided:
CNN said:
White House officials now say that sectoral sanctions � those that cut off a portion of the Russian economy - will not be enacted unless Russia attempts a full-on invasion of Ukraine...

When asked why the United States won�t provide arms to Ukraine to assist in quickly quashing the Russia-backed elements, U.S. officials said they don�t want to risk a violent escalation or start a proxy war with Russia. The White House lauds the restraint that Ukraine itself has employed...

Obama said that Putin doesn�t want a military conflict, either, and emphasized that Ukraine should determine its relationships with other countries.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/16/sanctions-against-russia-for-ukraine-actions-working-and-more-may-be-on-the-way/?hpt=hp_bn3
What I'm reading in the subtext there is Obama is saying (paraphrase) "Go ahead and take what you want, as long as you do it covertly and lie about it so I can plausibly deny I can prove it crosses my red line. Oh, and Ukraine: you should continue letting Russia do this so the situation doesn't become more overt to where my plausible deniability is eroded."

In a bit of bad reporting by CNN (same article):
CNN said:
Sanctions against Russia for Ukraine actions working � and more may be on the way

Sanctions imposed against Russia are working as a deterrent, President Barack Obama and other White House senior administration officials said Wednesday in a detailed defense and explanation of the U.S. response to the escalating crisis in Ukraine...

�What I�ve said consistently is that each time Russia takes these kinds of steps that are designed to destabilize Ukraine and violate their sovereignty, that there are going to be consequences,� he said. �And what you�ve already seen is the Russian economy weaker, capital fleeing out of Russia. Mr. Putin�s decisions are not just bad for Ukraine, over the long term, they�re going to be bad for Russia.�
"Working" is the reporter's word, not Obama's. Obama says what the sanctions are doing (damaging the Russian economy...if we accept the cause-effect relationship), but he doesn't say they are "working". What's the difference? The purpose of the sanctions isn't to damage Russia's economy, it is to coerce Russia into stopping or reversing its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian people are not our enemy and the goal is not to hurt them. The best outcome here would be for the sanctions and threat of more to make Putin stop so that the sanctions can be lifted, minimizing the harm to the Russian people.

This is remarkable too:
Foxnews said:
Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked details of U.S. intelligence eavesdropping, asked Putin a question during the televised call-in show, Reuters reported.

According to the report, this exchange was the first known direct contact between Snowden and Putin since Russia granted Snowden asylum last summer.

Snowden reportedly submitted his question in a video clip and it was not immediately clear if he was speaking live or if it had been recorded earlier.

"Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" Snowden said, also asking whether Putin thinks improving the effectiveness of investigations justifies "placing societies .. under surveillance."...

According to Reuters, Putin said Russia regulates communications as part of criminal probes, but "on a massive scale, on an uncontrolled scale we certainly do not allow this and I hope we will never allow it."
Putin is using Snowden for propaganda. The purpose of this question is to poke the US in the eye by claiming Russia is less of a Big Brother than we are. Snowden is not a POW: he is in Russia illegally and by his own choice. That makes this treasonous, even if Snowden is too stupid to realize why Putin wanted the question and/or was coerced into giving it. Not that we'd do anything about it: the precedent is (old, but probably still relevant...) Jane Fonda's actions in Vietnam.
 
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  • #526
Fuggin people! It all about respect.
 
  • #527
Still, the 'modern world'... much respect for the people who actually live there...
 
  • #528
Messy, confusing, distressing and very dangerous (also for American journalists). :frown:

Published on Mar 16, 2014
Ukraine: Defending the Homeland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FF03oC5zno
http://www.youtube.com/embed/0FF03oC5zno

Published on Mar 29, 2014
Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine (Dispatch Twenty)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhbbKoSH88c
http://www.youtube.com/embed/YhbbKoSH88c

Published on Apr 9, 2014
Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine (Dispatch Twenty Two)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wetleAB1XmY
http://www.youtube.com/embed/wetleAB1XmY

Published on Apr 18, 2014
Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine (Dispatch Twenty Seven)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mywTyAhlJM
http://www.youtube.com/embed/8mywTyAhlJM

Published on Apr 20, 2014
Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine (Dispatch Twenty Eight)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNig07RtWxA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/VNig07RtWxA

Published on Apr 23, 2014
Ukrainian mayor: We detained VICE News reporter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMQBEH6kgwg
http://www.youtube.com/embed/HMQBEH6kgwg

Published on Apr 24, 2014
Pro Russian checkpoint on fire in Slovyans'k, April 24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZKB6TB4Utk
http://www.youtube.com/embed/yZKB6TB4Utk

Published on Apr 24, 2014
Ukrainian Special Forces in Slovyans'k, April 24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1XEAyKpDZg
http://www.youtube.com/embed/c1XEAyKpDZg
 
  • #529
DevilsAvocado said:
...confusing...

Is it really so confusing? In the spirit of idealism, fun and mischief, another color revolution has been tried in Ukraine. And now it appears to be blowing up in fire and blood.
 
  • #530
Ehh... fun and mischief... I'm completely lost... :rolleyes:
 
  • #531
DevilsAvocado said:
Ehh... fun and mischief... I'm completely lost... :rolleyes:

The fun part was at the beginning. But sometimes revolutions continue on long after the fun stops.

The mischief was tantamount to taunting a bear with a wooden sword.
 
  • #534
*** CRAZY DANGER ***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7OdLRz6T1c
http://www.youtube.com/embed/p7OdLRz6T1c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGTF-RY2XrQ
http://www.youtube.com/embed/IGTF-RY2XrQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qnHEunjmVk
http://www.youtube.com/embed/4qnHEunjmVk

Sweet mother of Cheesus... CIA invented the Internet in order to control the World? :eek::bugeye::eek:

So why the h**l is Russia using this utterly dangerous western stuff?? :confused:

Have they lost their freaking minds?? :mad:

Russian Troops Testing Ukraine Border
"[...] from their current positions, these troops could launch a complex invasion and be inside Ukraine in less than 12 hours."
 
  • #535
... meanwhile in another very distant part of the universe – packed by a delicate mixture of wacky paranoia, crazy conspiracy theories, and refined mass hysteria ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOnwdmpButo


And, of course – the very sharp refusal to answer the brilliant and crucial question is THE PROOF!


Sigh... I thought this kind of deranged behavior was strictly reserved for strange obscure guys in tin foil hats... not suitable for nuclear nations...
ManWearingTinFoilHat.jpg
 
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  • #536
Peace in Mississippi
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/First_peace_badge.jpg/140px-First_peace_badge.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osBZq5RQxrM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0o25M-4OV4

The seven hostages are unarmed military observers from the OSCE-countries Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Czech Republic and Poland. The self-proclaimed mayor in Sloviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, said the observer team included a Kiev spy (proof; he had a map).

Ukraine crisis: 'International monitors seized' in Sloviansk

I'm going fishing...
 
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  • #537
Pythagorean said:
US finally getting involved?

DevilsAvocado said:
*** CRAZY DANGER ***


Now might be a good time to consider your worst case hypothesis.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenth...sis-could-escalate-to-use-of-nuclear-weapons/
"improbable though it may seem, doctrine and capabilities exist on both sides that could lead to nuclear use in a confrontation over Ukraine. Here are four ways that what started out as a local crisis could turn into something much worse."
 
  • #538
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27222023#
Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov has admitted his forces are "helpless" to quell unrest driven by pro-Russian activists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
------------
Mr Turchynov added: "Our task is to stop the spread of the terrorist threat first of all in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions."

My advice to Mr. Turchynov would be to forget the east, and rush all available resources to Odessa. Without access to the Black Sea, Kiev's aspirations are much diminished.
 
  • #539
Dotini said:
The fun part was at the beginning. But sometimes revolutions continue on long after the fun stops.

The mischief was tantamount to taunting a bear with a wooden sword.

How does working out the politics of their own country, without threatening others countries, become a taunt?
 

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