Ukranian Crisis

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gazzzwp

Member
I like how you start the story at the point convenient to your view point...



It's escalation if the conflict is internal between two parties of the Ukrainian population. And yes, Russia backed the rebels just like the US and EU backed the Kiev government.
Feanor the scale of the military support that the EU/US have given Ukraine was and still is non-lethal. You cannot compare that 'support' with the mass armoured columns and missile systems that have crossed the border from Russia.

Support from the West has been defensive only.

Support from the East has been offensive.
 

gazzzwp

Member
Hindsight is wonderful, but at the time it wasn't obvious. And to be honest, had things gone differently, there certainly could have been a danger of it. As is freedom of speech, political freedom, etc. have all been severely curtailed. Ukraine recently jailed a journalist for writing an article that condemns the draft and calls for a professional military, for example. Not to mention the arrests and round-ups of anti-Western political activists.



Conflating the two is certainly convenient. But the events in Crimea and in the east are quite different.



It's not a question of capitulation. It's a question of realizing the reality, and making the best use of what they had to secure the most for their people. Ukraine isn't going to join the EU this year. Or the next year. Or any time in the next decade (short of a miracle). It would cost Ukraine nothing to promise as much out loud, and could have gotten Ukraine everything.



Nope. There certainly wouldn't have. But Russia has been honing the military as an instrument of foreign policy for quite some time. And given the willingness of many western powers to use force in the third world, it's not surprising that Russia follows suit. What pisses off the West is that they did it in Europe, which the EU wants to keep from ever happening because it's close to home. If a French war in Africa or a British involvement in the Middle East goes bad, it's ok. You can pack up, go home, and it doesn't affect your population too much. If wars start being fought close to home, suddenly the first world has to deal with misery and bloodshed close to home instead of on TV. That's the real reason the EU is so furious.

To put it simply, Russia did in Ukraine a smaller and quieter version of what the US (for example) does all over the world, all the time. From Grenada to Panama, from Iraq to Libya. Using military power to settle political questions when soft power fails.



It's not Ukraine. It's the government. Ukraine is busy dodging the draft.
Sounds like Russia using US actions of over a decade ago to justify it's actions now.

Under Obama the US has been moderate, measured and cautious in it's foreign policy and demonstrates a nation that has come of age in this regard.

A good example was the restraint over the Syrian chemical weapons. Obama backed down and followed the Russian positive lead. You know the story I am sure.

The bombing in Syria has been measured and with co-operation with Arab states, and there is even the early signs of bridges being built with old foes such as Iran.

Very little evidence over the last 10 years that the US now follows an invasion and occupation policy.

Not true with Russia.
 

gazzzwp

Member
R


Nonsense. Russia is trying to draw the line on western expansion. They want the west to stay out of the ex-USSR. They don't want a larger conflict, they want an end to NATO and EU expansionism. They want guarantees that they will not be ostracized and excluded and since EU and NATO membership is off the table, they need to make sure that all of Europe doesn't turn into one giant power.
NATO is a defensive alliance. The bordering nations want security. There has been no nuclear strategic/tactical missiles placed in these new member nations to my knowledge. Only parts of the anti-missile shield which again is defensive.

Where is the objection to nations wanting security actually coming from?

Can anyone blame them after the terrible experiences of the USSR? If NATO were to suddenly place huge tactical nuclear missile batteries in the new member nations I could understand Russia's concern.
 
The only difference between this situation and Poland in 1939 is that the Germans were up front and open about their invasion..
Please don't pull the tone down by statements like this. It will flame this conversation.

I understand the point, but exaggerating to this level, isn't constructive.

Back to the Ukraine situation..
I guess will will understand further Rebel/ RF intentions, if/ when a new offensive begins towards Mariupol in force or north of this position.

..A detailed breakdown of the rebel forces.

The DNR fields:
DNR Republican Guard Regiment
1st Motor-Rifle Brigade Slavyansk
3rd Motor-Rifles Bde Gorlovka
OBON Kalmius, Arty Bde
5th Motor-Rifle Bde Oplot
7th Bde Slavyansk
1st Independent BTG Somalia

The LNR fields:
2nd Independent Bde
4th Independent Bde
1st Cossack Regiment

bmpd - ÐžÐ±Ð¾Ð·Ð½Ð°Ñ‡ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ñ Ð¸ знаки на технике Ñил ДÐÐ* и ЛÐÐ*
Interesting and thank you for the unit designations. Thought the troublemaking 'thug' Cossacks were booted out? Looks approx 12-15k across both LNR and DNR in numbers
 

stojo

Member
NATO is a defensive alliance.
Which was keeping a country in Asia occupied for 14 years, bombed another European country, and occupied part of it, shredded yet another country in Africa into peaces... etc.. And all that in last 15 years.

Not a bad score, fora a defensive alliance.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
Which was keeping a country in Asia occupied for 14 years, bombed another European country, and occupied part of it, shredded yet another country in Africa into peaces... etc.. And all that in last 15 years.

Not a bad score, fora a defensive alliance.
The 14 year adventure in Asia was the wrong target, the Bosnia mess was unavoidable due to media coverage of war crimes, and Libya, in hindsight, was probably a mistake.
 

gazzzwp

Member
Which was keeping a country in Asia occupied for 14 years, bombed another European country, and occupied part of it, shredded yet another country in Africa into peaces... etc.. And all that in last 15 years.

Not a bad score, fora a defensive alliance.
As you suggest - 14/15 years ago or more.

The great cosmic clock rolls on and reform has taken place.

As I said look at Obama;s record. Moderate, cautious, diplomatic.

Your point is totally invalid and out of date.
 

Hone C

Active Member
NATO is a defensive alliance. The bordering nations want security. There has been no nuclear strategic/tactical missiles placed in these new member nations to my knowledge. Only parts of the anti-missile shield which again is defensive.

Where is the objection to nations wanting security actually coming from?

Can anyone blame them after the terrible experiences of the USSR? If NATO were to suddenly place huge tactical nuclear missile batteries in the new member nations I could understand Russia's concern.

I think what concerns Russia is the rapid expansion of NATO and EU influence into Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union pushed the frontiers of Russia back in the West to where it had been in the 17th century, on the Northern European plain where it has always been most vulnerable to invasion. Russia is indefensible without buffer states in Belarus and Ukraine. This is not to say they have to incorporate them into some kind of Empire, just deny them to other external, potentially hostile, influences.

NATO may be a 'defensive' alliance but statesmen have to evaluate potential threats on the basis of capabilities and not stated intentions, as Russia has painfully learned in the past. It didn't really surprise me to see the Russian, US, or European responses to the fall of the Yanukovysh government, and to be honest, I'm not really too interested in all the 'who did what to whom first' stuff that is being posted; nations will pursue their own self interests. That's how these crisis's arise in the first place, when the legitimate interests of rising, declining and established powers come into conflict. Some countries, like Ukraine, just have the misfortune of existing in places where larger neighbours will impose limits of their sovereignty. Just my 5 cents mate. :)

I do take issue with the defining of weapon systems as purely defensive though. IMHO weapons can be used for either offensive or defensive purposes. Even something such as a anti-missile battery can be offensive at the operational or strategic level. And, as it comes along with US personnel, it implies a physical as well as political commitment to the host nations defence, which is what the Russians obviously resent.
 

BlueRose

New Member
Under Obama the US has been moderate, measured and cautious in it's foreign policy and demonstrates a nation that has come of age in this regard.

I'm not sure about that, he has launched several operations: Libya(Which is now in turmoil), Yemen, and a large drone campaign in Pakistan which claimed the lives of several civilians. I get your point, past is past. Though no side can claim pure, wholesome, virtuous and innocence.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
I'm not sure about that, he has launched several operations: Libya(Which is now in turmoil), Yemen, and a large drone campaign in Pakistan which claimed the lives of several civilians. I get your point, past is past. Though no side can claim pure, wholesome, virtuous and innocence.
Correct me if I am wrong but Libya was a European initiative that the US had to support, both politically and materially (allies didn't have enough PGM). I am no Obama fan but blaming him for the Libya mess is incorrect IMO (at the start anyway). The "Arab Spring" sucked in all Western bleeding hearts and the resulting public pressure ended the dictators but replaced them with something worse.
 

BlueRose

New Member
Correct me if I am wrong but Libya was a European initiative that the US had to support, both politically and materially (allies didn't have enough PGM). I am no Obama fan but blaming him for the Libya mess is incorrect IMO (at the start anyway). The "Arab Spring" sucked in all Western bleeding hearts and the resulting public pressure ended the dictators but replaced them with something worse.
You're most certainly correct, it was a joint initiative by both; with the U.S. providing most of the material assets. I'm not trying to fully blame him, just making an analogy showing that no side can claim innocence, since world troubles seem perpetual at this moment in time.

Adding on to the last update:
Azov POW giving a detailed interview to journalist which entails Western Arm deliveries, Nationalist Ideology/programming, how little information Ukrainian Media and general briefings they don't seem to get. He also goes into Foreign Mercenaries, and instructors serving amongst their ranks. One of the most detailed yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOv_KSWRRc

Conditions of UA POW prisons, very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=621-LBhvz-I

Abandoned and Destroyed positions of the Ukrainian 128th Mountain Infantry Brigade. Note the large amounts of abandoned Ammo and Vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1EELlsorA
 

gazzzwp

Member
I.e. do nothing, wait, think and then decide to still do nothing.
The point I'm making is that the old stereotype of the US launching in head first into battle is an outdated one.

Has the US become too pensive? Over Ukraine maybe; rightly so in my opinion.

As people have stated here (including myself) Russia has all of the key cards and has the least to lose with a plummeting economy.

Being a European I have no wish to see us be dragged into a costly war.

I don't think the US will maintain it's restraint for much longer though.

Time will tell.
 

stojo

Member
As you suggest - 14/15 years ago or more.

The great cosmic clock rolls on and reform has taken place.

As I said look at Obama;s record. Moderate, cautious, diplomatic.

Your point is totally invalid and out of date.
No. What I said is during last 15 years, not 15 years a go.

And, If you failed to notice, one out of three examples I mentioned, happened during the Obama's watch (just three and a half years a go).

But I guess, its not a big deal, after all -- the guy is Nobel laureate.
 

stojo

Member
Correct me if I am wrong but Libya was a European initiative that the US had to support, both politically and materially (allies didn't have enough PGM). I am no Obama fan but blaming him for the Libya mess is incorrect IMO (at the start anyway). The "Arab Spring" sucked in all Western bleeding hearts and the resulting public pressure ended the dictators but replaced them with something worse.
EU was utterly incapable of performing a military intervention on that scale, without US participation. After all, that was publicly admitted by European officials.

Intervention would have never happened without US military involvement.

And there was no real reason US had to participate. Some decades a go, another American president Eisenhower refused to support British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt, as a matter of principle.

Nothing bad happened to the glorious nation of USA. On the contrary...
 
There is a lot of bickering on here, with folks trying to put blame on one party or another. But, as in most hotly contested disputes, things are not black and white, as people usually tend to categorize them. It helps to know (and analyze) the facts before rolling down the path of barking out at each other small, insignificant to the larger picture facts.
There are some facts to remember, that are foundational to the problem. Ukraine's economy and the well being of the masses has been miserable after the collapse of USSR. More importantly, there has been no positive dynamics in the situation - people like to see things moving in a positive direction. So, were Ukrainians unhappy with Yanukovich's government? Yes, broadly, from east to west. That's a fact. Were the Ukrainians unhappy with his predecessor's government? Yes, just as broadly and passionately, from east to west. And the same goes for all post-USSR governments they had. That's a fact. And the shitty socio-economic situation in the country is the fundamental reason why. And what happens when a populace is unhappy with their quality of life? All kinds of antagonistic voices start to emerge and feed into the discontent. And the biggest of these voices in Ukraine is the nationalistic one. It's always been a part of the Ukrainian culture - to blame others for their misfortunes. Even the national anthem proclaims something like "we will defeat our enemies and then we will start to live well". Don't know why, probably because of the unfortunate history of the people that were subjugated, intermixed, assimilated, beaten by all of the neighbors around them for centuries. But, as a consequence, it transforms into nationalism, chauvinism, and all kinds of ugly emotions. In Soviet Union it was the Jews that were the source of all evil (now they're mostly gone from there) - which is, btw, a big part of why all the extreme right wing trash like Right Sector exist. Now that the annoyingly successful Jews are gone, the nationalists turned to Russia as the source of all their misfortunes. In the beginning of this blame campaign (late 80s - early 90s) it was Russians eating all of Ukraine's food (Ukraine was the Soviet "breadbasket", owing to it's unusually rich soils and mild climate). Later, when everyone realized that "the bread" ain't making them rich, it was the gas that the Russians have and they don't (and have to buy from Russia). Then the nationalists' blame got more generalized, as in "they are in the east, we are in the west, they are holding us back because they are not rich like Europeans to the left of us, they are messed up like the east to the right (or whatever) of them".
Back to the Yanukovich time. The nationalistic anti-Russian sentiment in this country had nothing to do with the majority of population, at least with the majority outside of the western Ukraine. But as mentioned above, what everyone was unhappy about was the government's (current and past) inability to cope with the problems. And Yanukovich - that asshole was particularly easy to get angry about - he's a former convicted criminal, corrupt, lying. Basically he was just like every other leader of Ukraine, plus with an official criminal record, making him only superficially different from his predecessors, but very susceptible to public antipathy. And on top of that, he happened to be from the party favored by the Kremlin. Easy food for the nationalists (and the western "friends") to feed to the public.
So what happened? The public anger against the corrupt government turned into an uncontrolled revolt, bringing together the extreme nationalists, ordinary citizens, and intelligentsia with a SEEMINGLY united goal. This situation was (and still is) exploited by the west with a disgusting hypocrisy. Again and again American and European officials keep emphasizing how the will of the Ukrainian people was manifested in the government overthrow of last year. The will of the people. How is it that the leaders of the countries with centuries-long experience of representative democracy come out on world stage and proclaim with a straight face the will of the people in a country so deeply divided on the very subject of what that "will" resulted in? Across the entire country, starting with a small minority in the west, and ending with a large majority in the east, an unignorable part of the Ukrainian citizens felt betrayed, alienated, and marginalized by what happened as the result of Maidan. The will of these people was NOT manifested in that revolution. Their general desire to have a better government coincided with that of most Ukrainians, but a violent overthrow of a fully legitimate and democratically elected government (confirmed as such by all western observers) with a nasty nationalistic sentiment at the center of it, with installation of a government heavily populated with Russia-hating nationalists - that was NOT the will of nearly half of the country. But the shameless lie about the will of the Ukrainian people keeps being used by the west as the basis for justification of the revolt's legitimacy.
Just as shameless as the Russian justification of annexing Crimea - protection of citizens from fascists. Even though Russia got much better lately at adopting the western PR tactics of using moral high ground for justifying aggression, it was still an ugly act of aggression. But this was also not black or white kind of a situation. It would be weird if no one in the Kremlin asked themselves why US for so many years has been so keenly interested in democratizing the countries lying on Russia's borders. Of all the undemocratic countries in the world, why is Georgia, with a couple million people population, or the similar sized Baltics, or bigger but still average-sized Ukraine - are all at the heart of US foreign policy of democratization? Is it the genuine concern for the well being of these people? Or maybe it's abundant natural or geographic resources? Nope. Their geopolitical importance is in the dick-measuring contest that is an ugly leftover of the cold war. The more allies US has on the Russian borders, the weaker is Russia's geopolitical position. People on this forum have been arguing about NATO expansion. Can anyone blame the eastern Europeans for being scared of Russia and wanting to protect themselves with NATO? Given the history, no. But the more important question is this: why did the big players in NATO, the western Europeans and US, so eagerly want the eastern Europeans to join? In the early 90s they were given a golden chance to destroy the cold war attitudes which lost their core source - the ideological differences. Instead, they expanded eastward a military alliance that was born to defeat Russia, not exactly a very skillful way of forming trust. Then many major disagreements on foreign policies with Russia of the 90s were resolved in a similar fashion - largely ignoring Russian interests as irrelevant (it's good to remember that "the evil lunatic" Putin was nowhere near the power at that time). What did they expect in the west? That Russia would continue to be so weak as to be treated as irrelevant? What if it became stronger again, like it did later on? How was that policy of the 90s going to play out in that case? It's hard not to call those policy makers idiotic. Or simply so bureaucratic and inertial was the NATO apparatus that they just kept rolling on with the outdated policies of the cold war.
And now they have a proud and pissed off Putin on their hands. Really pissed off. Doing what he thinks he needs to do to stave off NATO from the Russian borders. With a typically Russian heavy-handed approach that irks off the West so much. There's nothing to conclude this with, it's just tragic that the people in Ukraine have to suffer because of these geopolitical chess games and dick-measuring contests.
 

Musashi_kenshin

Well-Known Member
Nothing bad happened to the glorious nation of USA. On the contrary...
Yes, America has a good track record of letting everyone else do the dirty work and then coming in at the last minute to scoop up most of the glory.

Not that I would wish it on the US, but sometimes I think they need to go through something like the Blitz to understand what the consequences of isolationism are. The September 2001 bombings is nothing compared to what Europe has been through in the last century.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Sounds like Russia using US actions of over a decade ago to justify it's actions now.
What? So because some time went by, we just pretend it didn't happen? Russia is doing what western powers always have been. Today Obama is moderate, tomorrow a Republican comes to office and it changes. Russian foreign policy is stable and generally predictable.

Under Obama the US has been moderate, measured and cautious in it's foreign policy and demonstrates a nation that has come of age in this regard.

A good example was the restraint over the Syrian chemical weapons. Obama backed down and followed the Russian positive lead. You know the story I am sure.
He backed down because not to do so would make him look like an idiot. It wasn't US moderation, it was Putin outplaying the US. It was a brilliant piece of foreign policy maneuvering on Russia's part, to save their long time ally Assad. Given that Assad is a brutal dictator, and Gaddafi was a relatively moderate one, the US looks hypocritical and downright corrupt for bombing Gaddafi's Libya into a failed state, while letting Assad stay in power and even supporting him by striking ISIS positions in Syria. It doesn't demonstrate American benevolence, it demonstrates the disgusting nature of international politics in general, and American foreign policy in particular.

Very little evidence over the last 10 years that the US now follows an invasion and occupation policy.

Not true with Russia.
What? The US just gets a pass on everything that happened in the past, as soon as a new president takes office? Are you even serious?

NATO is a defensive alliance. The bordering nations want security. There has been no nuclear strategic/tactical missiles placed in these new member nations to my knowledge. Only parts of the anti-missile shield which again is defensive.

Where is the objection to nations wanting security actually coming from?
The concerns Russia has are political not military.

Can anyone blame them after the terrible experiences of the USSR? If NATO were to suddenly place huge tactical nuclear missile batteries in the new member nations I could understand Russia's concern.
It's not a question of blame. It's a simple question of what Russia wants, and why, and whether they will get it or not, and at what cost.

Trying to put politics in moral terms is lunacy.

As you suggest - 14/15 years ago or more.

The great cosmic clock rolls on and reform has taken place.

As I said look at Obama;s record. Moderate, cautious, diplomatic.

Your point is totally invalid and out of date.
Silly nonsense. Libya was wrecked into a failed state by NATO intervention in 2011. Not to mention that the consequences of NATO actions in the post-Soviet period are still felt today. Finally, NATO is not run by Obama. And countries aren't judged by their presidents. Countries are institutions whose policies are expected to be consistent over the long term. It does matter that Obama is softer on foreign policy, but ultimately you don't get to pretend like nothing from the very VERY recent past applies, simply because a Democrat takes office.
 
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