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Ukraine III

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DimitryZ said:
Armed hostilities in Donbas is a Russian operatives' engineered astroturf "uprising" that they started right after invasion of Crimea in 2014, to deflect world attention.
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Made all the more interesting by the following:


By January 2013, more than half of the ministers appointed by Yanukovych were either born in the Donbas region or made some crucial part of their careers there, and Yanukovych has been accused of "regional cronyism" for his staffing of police, judiciary, and tax services "all over Ukraine" with "Donbas people". Over 46% of the budget subventions for social and economic development was allotted to the Donbas region's Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast administrations – 0.62 billion UAH ($76.2 million) versus 0.71 billion UAH ($87.5 million) for the rest of the country.

(Yanukovych Wikipedia entry)
 
gustav_errata said:
Made all the more interesting by the following:


By January 2013, more than half of the ministers appointed by Yanukovych were either born in the Donbas region or made some crucial part of their careers there, and Yanukovych has been accused of "regional cronyism" for his staffing of police, judiciary, and tax services "all over Ukraine" with "Donbas people". Over 46% of the budget subventions for social and economic development was allotted to the Donbas region's Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast administrations – 0.62 billion UAH ($76.2 million) versus 0.71 billion UAH ($87.5 million) for the rest of the country.

(Yanukovych Wikipedia entry)
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They get nothing from Ukraine now, pittance from Russia and are "governed" by Russian criminal gangs. The same fate has befallen Russia's previous conquests in Georgia - horrible, Gaza Strip like entities created and maintained by Russia to explicitly keep Ukraine and Georgia unstable and bleeding so they can't be considered for EU or NATO membership.
 
mandryka said:
Yes he's closer but it doesn't follow that the routes to attack Russia aren't easier to defend. I don't know, that's why I'm hoping that a geographer will answer. And controlling Ukraine means that no weapons targeted on Russia can be located there -- that extra distance from Russia may make it safer. Again I don't know, because I know nothing about weapons.

I'm sure he's pissed off a lot of Ukrainian people in the process.
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I just can't understand his thought process. Maybe NATO is just an excuse to describe his fear that a brother nation going the same way as Poland and the Baltic Republics (increased standard of living, lower corruption, prospects for EU membership etc.) would end up giving his voters very wrong ideas, thus weakening the kleptocracy he spent the last 20 years refining. Maybe he is simply unable to think beyond 19th century concepts of empire, buffer zones etc. Maybe he is another leader with an inflated sense of personal destiny (to restore Russia to peak "greatness"). Maybe The Donald spooked him by sharing contingency plans with him. Or maybe he's just gone beyond paranoid.

A malevolent NATO would not even need to launch ICBMs. A Tomahawk (range 1000 nm, or about 16 degrees of latitude) fired from the Baltic Sea could reach Moscow. So could a cruise missile fired from Poland. Both actions would most likely mean the end of the world as we know it.

The whole thing is bonkers.
 
gx502 said:
Yes for sure I do have a very heavy negative bias. That I admit for sure. The reason for my bias is that when I look at the recent US, US+coalition or US/NATO interventions/wars in various countries. Often the after picture is worse than the before picture. Libya comes to mind.

I’ll leave it there thanks for the input (sincerely)
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I would be the last person to defend the invasion of Iraq, or the decision to stay in Afghanistan once the Taliban regime had been quickly driven out. The Lybia business was also wrong. And certainly there have been other interventions over the years that went way beyond meddling. If I was President, I'd have very different ideas, I hope. Though existence in the realms of power does influence one's thinking it seems.
 
PsB said:
The whole thing is bonkers.
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Correct -- even Hamlet knows that

Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake.
. . .
I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain?
 
PsB said:
I just can't understand his thought process. Maybe NATO is just an excuse to describe his fear that a brother nation going the same way as Poland and the Baltic Republics (increased standard of living, lower corruption, prospects for EU membership etc.) would end up giving his voters very wrong ideas, thus weakening the kleptocracy he spent the last 20 years refining. Maybe he is simply unable to think beyond 19th century concepts of empire, buffer zones etc. Maybe he is another leader with an inflated sense of personal destiny (to restore Russia to peak "greatness"). Maybe The Donald spooked him by sharing contingency plans with him. Or maybe he's just gone beyond paranoid.
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I suspect that it's a combination of all of those things. In any case, he took a colossal gamble - he assumed that the West would perhaps raise a bit of a fuss, but then calm down - he probably views the West as soft and decadent, not able to take the sort of suffering that the Russians can absorb. And perhaps he simply believed what he wanted to believe. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto famously said, "I fear that we have wakened a sleeping giant - and filled him with a terrible resolve". I hope the West is filled with resolve that's not quite so terrible and that Vlad gets the message - provided he's capable of it, that is.
 
Marina Ovsyannikova: Russian journalist tells of 14-hour interrogation (BBC)

A Russian journalist has been fined and released after she protested against the war in Ukraine on a live TV news programme and made an anti-war video.

Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at state-controlled Channel 1, was detained after she ran on to the set on Monday holding a sign saying "no war".

She said she had been questioned for 14 hours and not slept for two days, and was not given access to legal help.
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Has she got off lightly there or will she be sent to the gulag?
 
PsB said:
I just can't understand his thought process. Maybe NATO is just an excuse to describe his fear that a brother nation going the same way as Poland and the Baltic Republics (increased standard of living, lower corruption, prospects for EU membership etc.) would end up giving his voters very wrong ideas, thus weakening the kleptocracy he spent the last 20 years refining. Maybe he is simply unable to think beyond 19th century concepts of empire, buffer zones etc. Maybe he is another leader with an inflated sense of personal destiny (to restore Russia to peak "greatness"). Maybe The Donald spooked him by sharing contingency plans with him. Or maybe he's just gone beyond paranoid.

A malevolent NATO would not even need to launch ICBMs. A Tomahawk (range 1000 nm, or about 16 degrees of latitude) fired from the Baltic Sea could reach Moscow. So could a cruise missile fired from Poland. Both actions would most likely mean the end of the world as we know it.

The whole thing is bonkers.
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Relax there are no ground launched NATO cruise missiles in Europe.
 
DimitryZ said:
They get nothing from Ukraine now, pittance from Russia and are "governed" by Russian criminal gangs. The same fate has befallen Russia's previous conquests in Georgia - horrible, Gaza Strip like entities created and maintained by Russia to explicitly keep Ukraine and Georgia unstable and bleeding so they can't be considered for EU or NATO membership.
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But also interesting in the sense that the region went from being heavily favored and enriched by the former Putin-friendly president to suddenly having Putin-backed uprisings after said president is forced to step down. I'd say that's far "fishier" than someone from the US State Department naming preferred candidates.
 
gustav_errata said:
But also interesting in the sense that the region went from being heavily favored and enriched by the former Putin-friendly president to suddenly having Putin-backed uprisings after said president is forced to step down. I'd say that's far "fishier" than someone from the US State Department naming preferred candidates.
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What do you mean?

Donbass has been poor for a long time and was on the Ukrainian central government dole for a long time. This is similar to Chechnia, which continues to receive handsome Moscow payments to maintain its loyal status.

Since the uprising which immediately followed the Crimea invasion, the "free republics" were no longer controlled by Ukraine, so the dole was gone.

Russians supply the remaining population with barest of necessities, all businesses are gone and Russian criminal gangs are "governing" these sorry locations.

What's fishy is what actually happened, not some imaginary conspiracies you heard about somewhere. Every place Putin "liberates" quickly become Mordor and have to be walled off from the rest of the world.
 
DimitryZ said:
What do you mean?

Donbass has been poor for a long time and was on the Ukrainian central government dole for a long time. This is similar to Chechnia, which continues to receive handsome Moscow payments to maintain its loyal status.

Since the uprising which immediately followed the Crimea invasion, the "free republics" were no longer controlled by Ukraine, so the dole was gone.

Russians supply the remaining population with barest of necessities, all businesses are gone and Russian criminal gangs are "governing" these sorry locations.

What's fishy is what actually happened, not some imaginary conspiracies you heard about somewhere. Every place Putin "liberates" quickly become Mordor and have to be walled off from the rest of the world.
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I don't argue with you about any of that. I fully believe everything you say about how the region itself has been treated. I'm talking about the corruption in Yanukovych's government that heavily favored his cronies from the Donbas region, as described in the Wikipedia extract that I quoted (see full description here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Reports_of_corruption_and_cronyism)

It's not a conspiracy that I've heard about. I just read about the corruption and cronyism in Yanukovych's government favoring friends from Donbas, and thought it was "fishy" that the same region went on to feature prominently in Putin's plans. Put it this way: do you reckon (I honestly don't know) that the few Ukrainian nationals (Ukrainian or Russian-speaking) who have actually benefited from the uprising in Donbas might some of the same people who benefited from Yanukovych's government?
 
DimitryZ said:
What do you mean?

Donbass has been poor for a long time and was on the Ukrainian central government dole for a long time. This is similar to Chechnia, which continues to receive handsome Moscow payments to maintain its loyal status.

Since the uprising which immediately followed the Crimea invasion, the "free republics" were no longer controlled by Ukraine, so the dole was gone.

Russians supply the remaining population with barest of necessities, all businesses are gone and Russian criminal gangs are "governing" these sorry locations.

What's fishy is what actually happened, not some imaginary conspiracies you heard about somewhere. Every place Putin "liberates" quickly become Mordor and have to be walled off from the rest of the world.
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I sssume the workfair programme involves them being bussed into other parts of Ukraine to ‘police’ the civilian population and finger anti-Russian elements.
 
gustav_errata said:
I don't argue with you about any of that. I fully believe everything you say about how the region itself has been treated. I'm talking about the corruption in Yanukovych's government that heavily favored his cronies from the Donbas region, as described in the Wikipedia extract that I quoted (see full description here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Reports_of_corruption_and_cronyism)

It's not a conspiracy that I've heard about. I just read about the corruption and cronyism in Yanukovych's government favoring friends from Donbas, and thought it was "fishy" that the same region went on to feature prominently in Putin's plans. Put it this way: do you reckon (I honestly don't know) that the few Ukrainian nationals (Ukrainian or Russian-speaking) who have actually benefited from the uprising in Donbas might some of the same people who benefited from Yanukovych's government?
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I don't think so.

Russian led uprising in Donbas was an entirely astroturf affair. They brought their own operatives' to foment and lead it. The nominal pretense, just like now is to "protect" ethnic Russians from impending Ukrainian Nazi "genocide." In this meaning, "genocide" is any attempts by Ukraine to protect its territorial integrity.

This is an EXACT replay of Hitler's sudattenland maneuver.
 
DimitryZ said:
I don't think so.

Russian led uprising in Donbas was an entirely astroturf affair. They brought their own operatives' to foment and lead it. The nominal pretense, just like now is to "protect" ethnic Russians from impending Ukrainian Nazi "genocide." In this meaning, "genocide" is any attempts by Ukraine to protect its territorial integrity.

This is an EXACT replay of Hitler's sudattenland maneuver.
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OK thanks for clarifying. I hereby rescind all accusations of fishiness.
 
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