NATO's new insane policy in the Ukraine.

[Jayjay]

If you're going to assert that America was responsible for the "coup," perhaps you should provide sources that actually say this, instead of sources that merely indicate that NATO was favorable to a more friendly Ukrainian government.


If that is your standard for what constitutes a "coup," then Russia is certainly guilty of sponsoring a coup in Crimea.

We discussed this to death on a previous thread. For starters, look up Victoria Nuland and "fuck the EU" where she conspires with our ambassador in Ukraine to install Yatsenyuk as premier.

Yes, it has been discussed to death, which is why it's odd that you keep repeating the same falsehoods that you did in those threads even after they have been refuted several times. Nuland wasn't conspiring to install Yatsenyuk as the premier, that suggestion came from Yanukovich.

Then look up Victoria Nuland and Chevron where she gives a speech in which she claims that the US had invested $5 billion in the democracy movement in Ukraine. What "democracy movement" could she mean for a country that already had a democratically elected government. Oh yeah, that's what we called those armed neo-Nazi protestors.

Nuland said that US has invested $5 billion since 1991. That's a time span of almost 25 years, over multiple different governments. Do you have evidence of any particular amount of that money going to neo nazis? No, of course you don't.

Victoria Nuland, by the way, is married to Robert Kagan a well-known neo-con whose brother, Frederick came up with the "surge" plan for Iraq. So those neo-cons who got Bush to lie us into war in Iraq and still busy running the show under Obama.

And they probably faked the moonlanding as well.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I agree. Until the American-sponsored coup, Ukrainians had no great desire to join NATO. That is not true of the US, however. The US sponsored membership for both Georgia and Ukraine shortly after the "Orange Revolution," (also almost certainly US sponsored), when, after winning the election, Yanukovich was prevented from taking office. Fortunately calmer heads prevailed. NATO then voted to admit Ukraine and Georgia at some unspecified time in the future. So we've been hankering to admit Ukraine to NATO for a long time.

Countries become interested in joining NATO when they see the Russian bear breathing down their necks.

 

[lpetrich]

lpetrich,
What should Russia do? return Crimea to Ukraine?

Yes indeed.

I've found another thing that Putin groupies might say (original by O. Avidenko):

Thank you, Putin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Putin two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Putin, our inspired leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.

The men of all ages will call on thy name, which is strong, beautiful, wise and marvelous. Thy name is engraven on every factory, every machine, every place on the earth, and in the hearts of all men.

Every time I have found myself in his presence I have been subjugated by his strength, his charm, his grandeur. I have experienced a great desire to sing, to cry out, to shout with joy and happiness. And now see me--me!--on the same platform where the Great Putin stood a year ago. In what country, in what part of the world could such a thing happen.

I write books. I am an author. All thanks to thee, O great educator, Putin. I love a young woman with a renewed love and shall perpetuate myself in my children--all thanks to thee, great educator, Putin. I shall be eternally happy and joyous, all thanks to thee, great educator, Putin. Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be : Putin.

O great Putin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.

 

[barbos]

lpetrich, Sorry, I don't follow.

 

[Will Wiley]

I agree. Until the American-sponsored coup, Ukrainians had no great desire to join NATO. That is not true of the US, however. The US sponsored membership for both Georgia and Ukraine shortly after the "Orange Revolution," (also almost certainly US sponsored), when, after winning the election, Yanukovich was prevented from taking office. Fortunately calmer heads prevailed. NATO then voted to admit Ukraine and Georgia at some unspecified time in the future. So we've been hankering to admit Ukraine to NATO for a long time.

Countries become interested in joining NATO when they see the Russian bear breathing down their necks.

When war breaks out we will have to get you to make the posters.

 

[Will Wiley]

lpetrich,
What should Russia do? return Crimea to Ukraine?

Didn't the Ukraine just return Crimea to Russia?

 

[Togo]

And any movement of those troops in Crimea outside of the terms of maintainace agreement, such as attacking the Ukrainian army, is still an invasion.
...
No, actually, invading another country and annexing parts of it is about as primary as you can get.

Putin did not attack Ukrainian troops.

Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian military bases, to stop them interfering with their seizure of government buildings and media centres. Shots were fired.

You really going to try and argue that it wasn't an invasion because being held at gunpoint isn't an attack? Seriously?

 

[barbos]

lpetrich,
What should Russia do? return Crimea to Ukraine?

Didn't the Ukraine just return Crimea to Russia?

Yes, they did.

 

[dystopian]

I'm not going to deal with your repetition of State Department propaganda.

I'm a European, I barely even know what your state department says, and I don't really give a shit. If what I'm saying happens to match what your state department puts out, then maybe that's because your state department isn't full of shit.

We've been over that many times before. You're story just doesn't hold up. An agreement with the protestors had been reached prior to the coup, a point which you consistently ignore.

Probably because no such agreement had been reached; and the fact that you think it was only goes to show (once again) that you just don't know what you're talking about. You appear to be talking about the agreement that Yanukovych reached with the opposition (note; the opposition and the protestors being two entirely different things). What you also apparently don't know (or choose to ignore), is that it wasn't just many of the protestors that rejected this deal, but much of the pro-russian factions did as well.

I seriously doubt that Britain and France have enough nukes to devastate Russia,

Which means that once again, you just don't know what the hell you're talking about in regards to a particular topic.

First of all, it wouldn't take much to devastate Russia. A dozen or so well-placed nukes would not only kill more than 20 million Russians, but do so much damage to its economy and infrastructure that it would not be able to recover as a unified state. Of course, Europe has far more nukes than that. France alone has around 300 nukes, which is more than China has. The UK adds another 225. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy have American nukes stationed on their soil, which probably total about a 100 additional nukes; and I know for a fact that the Dutch military has contingency plans to seize operational control of those nukes in the event of an existential threat (doing so would be trivially simple), so I'm assuming the others do as well.

So thats either 525 nukes, or 600 or so. With that many nukes, Europe would be able to directly hit every Russian population center with a population of over 50,000 people, and still have half its arsenal unspent.

The notion that Europe doesn't have enough nukes to devastate them is nothing more than a delusional Russian power fantasy.

I would expect that in the short run at least, Russia has a decided tactical advantage in any war involving Ukraine.

That would be *very* short run. The combined military of the EU member states dwarves that of Russia. Russia can hold Ukraine in a war for only a little longer than it takes Europe to vote for military intervention.

If you think we have any vital interests in Ukraine, please state what you think those interests are.

Reasons for us to be interested in Ukraine:

• Having a stable, democratic Ukraine free to make its own decisions on our borders; which is of vital interest to us.
• An unstable, undemocratic Ukraine increases uncontrolled migration flow to the EU.
• An unstable, undemocratic Ukraine destabilizes the entire region, which includes EU member states.
• A stable, democratic Ukraine that isn't a puppet of Russia, gives the EU access to a sizeable open market directly on its borders.
• Ukraine has large amounts of highly fertile land, which could produce products for the EU market.
• Ukraine has large energy reserves of its own, even ignoring its role as an independent middleman.

 

[dx713]

I'm a European, I barely even know what your state department says, and I don't really give a shit. If what I'm saying happens to match what your state department puts out, then maybe that's because your state department isn't full of shit.

We've been over that many times before. You're story just doesn't hold up. An agreement with the protestors had been reached prior to the coup, a point which you consistently ignore.

Probably because no such agreement had been reached; and the fact that you think it was only goes to show (once again) that you just don't know what you're talking about. You appear to be talking about the agreement that Yanukovych reached with the opposition (note; the opposition and the protestors being two entirely different things). What you also apparently don't know (or choose to ignore), is that it wasn't just many of the protestors that rejected this deal, but much of the pro-russian factions did as well.

I seriously doubt that Britain and France have enough nukes to devastate Russia,

Which means that once again, you just don't know what the hell you're talking about in regards to a particular topic.

First of all, it wouldn't take much to devastate Russia. A dozen or so well-placed nukes would not only kill more than 20 million Russians, but do so much damage to its economy and infrastructure that it would not be able to recover as a unified state. Of course, Europe has far more nukes than that. France alone has around 300 nukes, which is more than China has. The UK adds another 225. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy have American nukes stationed on their soil, which probably total about a 100 additional nukes; and I know for a fact that the Dutch military has contingency plans to seize operational control of those nukes in the event of an existential threat (doing so would be trivially simple), so I'm assuming the others do as well.

So thats either 525 nukes, or 600 or so. With that many nukes, Europe would be able to directly hit every Russian population center with a population of over 50,000 people, and still have half its arsenal unspent.

The notion that Europe doesn't have enough nukes to devastate them is nothing more than a delusional Russian power fantasy.

I would expect that in the short run at least, Russia has a decided tactical advantage in any war involving Ukraine.

That would be *very* short run. The combined military of the EU member states dwarves that of Russia. Russia can hold Ukraine in a war for only a little longer than it takes Europe to vote for military intervention.

If you think we have any vital interests in Ukraine, please state what you think those interests are.

Reasons for us to be interested in Ukraine:

• Having a stable, democratic Ukraine free to make its own decisions on our borders; which is of vital interest to us.
• An unstable, undemocratic Ukraine increases uncontrolled migration flow to the EU.
• An unstable, undemocratic Ukraine destabilizes the entire region, which includes EU member states.
• A stable, democratic Ukraine that isn't a puppet of Russia, gives the EU access to a sizeable open market directly on its borders.
• Ukraine has large amounts of highly fertile land, which could produce products for the EU market.
• Ukraine has large energy reserves of its own, even ignoring its role as an independent middleman.

To add:

• A country having renounced its nukes having its territorial integrity protected and respected by the nuclear-armed countries it signed the agreement with strenghtens non-proliferation treaties.
• A country having renounced its nukes having its borders redifined by a nuclear-armed country with no reaction by the other parties of the agreement signals to the world that holding nuclear weapons is the only thing that makes one respected internationaly and that non-proliferation treaties are bullshit, thus encouraging all unstable states to get hold of their own nukes.

 

[barbos]

I think Fermi Paradox was finally and definitely resolved.
It's about nukes.

 

[boneyard bill]

Putin did not attack Ukrainian troops.

Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian military bases, to stop them interfering with their seizure of government buildings and media centres. Shots were fired.

You really going to try and argue that it wasn't an invasion because being held at gunpoint isn't an attack? Seriously?

Of course, it wasn't. When the troops are permitted to be there, it isn't an invasion. Did the US invade NATO when we put troops there? Crimea seceded. The Ukrainian military surrendered to the Russians. Putin prevented Ukraine from taking Crimea back militarily. That's not the same thing as an invasion. To call it an invasion exaggerates the situation.

 

[boneyard bill]

We discussed this to death on a previous thread. For starters, look up Victoria Nuland and "fuck the EU" where she conspires with our ambassador in Ukraine to install Yatsenyuk as premier.

Yes, it has been discussed to death, which is why it's odd that you keep repeating the same falsehoods that you did in those threads even after they have been refuted several times. Nuland wasn't conspiring to install Yatsenyuk as the premier, that suggestion came from Yanukovich.

Then look up Victoria Nuland and Chevron where she gives a speech in which she claims that the US had invested $5 billion in the democracy movement in Ukraine. What "democracy movement" could she mean for a country that already had a democratically elected government. Oh yeah, that's what we called those armed neo-Nazi protestors.

Nuland said that US has invested $5 billion since 1991. That's a time span of almost 25 years, over multiple different governments. Do you have evidence of any particular amount of that money going to neo nazis? No, of course you don't.

Victoria Nuland, by the way, is married to Robert Kagan a well-known neo-con whose brother, Frederick came up with the "surge" plan for Iraq. So those neo-cons who got Bush to lie us into war in Iraq and still busy running the show under Obama.

And they probably faked the moonlanding as well.

The problem with your points is that they are wrong. I not only made the charges, I documented them which is something you have never done with respect to your counter-claims. When you have dealt with the documentation that I provided you have either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented the material. So now you've made claims. Let's see your documentation for those claims.

 

[laughing dog]

Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian military bases, to stop them interfering with their seizure of government buildings and media centres. Shots were fired.

You really going to try and argue that it wasn't an invasion because being held at gunpoint isn't an attack? Seriously?

Of course, it wasn't. When the troops are permitted to be there, it isn't an invasion. Did the US invade NATO when we put troops there? Crimea seceded.

The Russian troops arrived before the secession vote. That means Crimea had not seceded when the troops arrived which means the troops were not invited by the gov't of Crimea (because there was no separate gov't). So, yes, it was an invasion. It is both factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest to claim otherwise.

 

[barbos]

Crimean parliament voted on secession before russian troops "arrival".
Russian troops "arrived" to prevent ukrainian "army" from doing something stupid like bombing civilian population before election. And don't forget all this happened after relatively small bunch of fucking nazi and general assholes forced democratically elected government out.
Now, all these technicalities are fun to discuss but you are certifiably insane if you think secession does not reflect what people wanted.

 

[dystopian]

And don't forget all this happened after relatively small bunch of fucking nazi and general assholes forced democratically elected government out.

You mean like what happened with the Crimean parliament?

The vote from the Crimean parliament you mentioned was done under the same kind of duress you dismiss the ousting of Yanukovych with. Or have you forgotten the fact that the vote was only held in an emergency session after 60 heavily armed men with professional training seized the parliament building?

Then, the *very next morning*, Russian troops invaded. The fact that they moved in so quickly after the vote is pretty much all the evidence one needs.

So let's sum up the timeline:

• There are eyewitness reports of Russian military convoys in Crimea dating to February 23rd.
• On February 24th, the Crimean prime minister declared that Crimea would carry out all Ukrainian laws. The same day, pro-russian demonstrators demand that a Russian citizen is installed in Sevastopol as mayor, while also recruiting for militias. The city council refuses. Somehow, Chaly, a Russian citizen, becomes mayor, despite the fact that local statutes do not allow for a mayor in sevastopol, as the role is filled by the chairman of the city state administration. Local political advisors condemn this as a Kremlin backed coup.
• February 25th, hundreds of members of Crimean Front block parliament demanding an independence referendum.
• February 26th, near the supreme council of crimea building, approximately 4000-5000 tatars and euromaidan supporters clash with around 600-700 pro-russians. On the same day, Russian troops took control of road access to sevastopol and set up a military checkpoint.
• February 27th, 60 armed soldiers storm and occupy the Crimean parliament and force an emergency vote to terminate the Crimean government and replace the PM with Aksyonov, a member of the Russian Unity party which had only managed to score 4% of the votes in the last election (thereby indicating that their politics really weren't as popular as people like you are claiming). The gunmen cut off outside communications, confiscated MP's phones, and multiple MP's later claimed that they were physically threathened and that votes were cast for them and other MP's who were not in the chamber. Almost immediately following the vote, Berkut units (remember these guys? The special police forces that had been blamed for most of the 100 civilian deaths and who had already been dissolved days before) with heavy armament, took control of the access routes from Crimea to the rest of Ukraine.
• February 28th, Russian soldiers seized local airports. A Russian naval ship blocks port access, trapping the coast guard. Russian helicopter gunships enter Sevastopol, as do planes carrying Russian troops.

Anyone who looks at this rapid chain of events and doesn't see Russia's hand in it from the beginning, is incredibly naive. Plus, it's clear that Russian troops were already conducting illegal operations there prior to the (obviously illegal) vote.

 

[dystopian]

The problem with your points is that they are wrong. I not only made the charges, I documented them which is something you have never done with respect to your counter-claims. When you have dealt with the documentation that I provided you have either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented the material. So now you've made claims. Let's see your documentation for those claims.

What documentation? You have provided no such thing. All you've provided are vague interpretations of a phonecall; interpretations that are themselves unsupported by any independent documentation. To people like you (conspiracy theorists), a fact like Nuland being married to a man who'se *brother* came up with a plan to reinforce troops operating in a theater that has SHIT ALL to do with Ukraine, constitutes actual evidence. To sane people, it constitutes... nothing. Pointing out things like that is the equivalent, as Jayjay was implying, of pointing out that the head of Nasa at the time was married to a woman who'se brother had a friend who'se husband had connections in Hollywood... and therefore the moon landing was faked in a studio.

 

[dystopian]

Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian military bases, to stop them interfering with their seizure of government buildings and media centres. Shots were fired.

You really going to try and argue that it wasn't an invasion because being held at gunpoint isn't an attack? Seriously?

Of course, it wasn't. When the troops are permitted to be there, it isn't an invasion. Did the US invade NATO when we put troops there? Crimea seceded. The Ukrainian military surrendered to the Russians. Putin prevented Ukraine from taking Crimea back militarily. That's not the same thing as an invasion. To call it an invasion exaggerates the situation.

Sigh.

SIGH.

Do you imagine that if US forces stationed in say a NATO base in Germany decided to roll out the tanks and occupy the Reichstag that it wouldn't be an invasion? Because not only would that be fucktardedly wrong, but I know a few (read: all of them) Germans who'd stab you if that really happened and you'd use this kind of logic on them. I don''t know how many times it has to be said before the Putin fangirl squad understands this: No, the fact that the Russians had a lease for a military base in Crimea... does NOT mean they had the right to then go and do the things they did. Those things represent a very serious breach of the lease agreement. It became an invasion the moment they breached those terms.

However... since apparently all that matters to you in terms of whether or not it was an invasion is whether or not the troops were already there to begin with... I don't suppose you've considered the fact that not all of the troops that took part in the invasion actually WERE stationed in Crimea before the invasion, have you?

 

[Togo]

Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian military bases, to stop them interfering with their seizure of government buildings and media centres. Shots were fired.

You really going to try and argue that it wasn't an invasion because being held at gunpoint isn't an attack? Seriously?

Crimea seceded. The Ukrainian military surrendered to the Russians.

Incorrect. First, Russian troops invaded Crimea. They went out of of their military bases, breaking their lease conditions, sieging Ukrainian military bases and taking over government buildings with armed troops. That's an invasion. THEN these same troos organised a snap referendum, which are you arguing is legitimate, even though you claim that armed protestors in Kiev invalidates not just that vote, but all the subsequent elections across the country.

-On what basis is Russian troops firing on Ukrainian military bases not an invasion?
-On what basis do you call the Crimea referendum, run by armed soliders of a foreign power, legitmate, when you cite the protestors in Kiev as making the votes and elections held subsequently illegitmate?

 

[Togo]

Crimean parliament voted on secession before russian troops "arrival".

Do you think the referendum was just for decoration, or was it held because a rump of the Crimean regional Parliament doesn't have the authority to seceed from the country?