Ukraine's European Revolution?

[Solmyr]

I guess she won't be working there much longer.

[Viking]

Meanwhile, newsreader on Russian Today speaks out against the Russian invasion of Crimea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZolXrjGIBJs

Well she says she doesn't know anything about ukraine then says both sides of the infowar are wrong. She can't have it both ways. She also goes on to sympathize with the ukrainians who are pawns in a great power game between russia and the us. The thing is that this is exactly what putin thinks and exactly what he wants westerners to think. Emphasize the moral equivalency between russia and the US and declare both side equally culpable. The thing is that you can't do that and unilaterally condemn one side without implicitly condemning the other.

Russia is doing something wrong, but both sides are equally bad since the poor ukrainian people are suffering in this struggle between super-powers.

As Ben-Jen Stark said, anything you say before "but" doesn't count.

Edit: Tamas, she will NOT lose her job, she couldn't have helped Putin more by doing anything else.

[grumbler]

Well, RussianFox, here is how it happened: the President made a deal to curb his own powers, and stay until elections. 24 hours later he was nowhere to be found. The democratically elected Parliament, including the Prez's own party, kicked him out. It was anything but a coup.

Well, RussianTamas, you haven't even started to address GF's question.  He wasn't asking what happened, but how a coup could be legal.  The answer would be that traditionally a coup d'etat is essentially extra-legal.  It was a legal coup if it succeeded, and an illegal coup if it did not.  Lately (i.e. since WW2), a consensus has begun to build that all coups are illegal and that governments can only "legally" be overthrown by revolution.  That seems kinda circular to me, but whatever.

[Malthus]

Well, RussianFox, here is how it happened: the President made a deal to curb his own powers, and stay until elections. 24 hours later he was nowhere to be found. The democratically elected Parliament, including the Prez's own party, kicked him out. It was anything but a coup.

Well, RussianTamas, you haven't even started to address GF's question.  He wasn't asking what happened, but how a coup could be legal.  The answer would be that traditionally a coup d'etat is essentially extra-legal.  It was a legal coup if it succeeded, and an illegal coup if it did not.  Lately (i.e. since WW2), a consensus has begun to build that all coups are illegal and that governments can only "legally" be overthrown by revolution.  That seems kinda circular to me, but whatever.

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call
it treason."

[PJL]

Somewhat OT: RTE went into a bizarre audio loop during their Prime Time show about the debate on Ukraine. It did this for about 10-15 minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jooaVtAgNlw

[grumbler]

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call
it treason."

The Chinese say it more succinctly:  "The winner is the king and the loser is the rebel."

[Queequeg]

Link.

In Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: He served in the KGB in East Germany, where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. "In another world," she said.

If you weren't sure of the veracity of that little reportorial nugget, all doubt should've vanished after Putin's press conference today.


Slouching in a fancy chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled. And rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: Serious! angry! bemused! flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of Ukraine, but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs elections, but you can't have elections because there is already a president. And no elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite? Look at how peaceful the Crimea is, probably thanks to those guys with guns holding it down. Who are they, by the way? Speaking of instability, did you know that the mayor of Dniepropetrovsk is a thief? He cheated "our oligarch, [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich" of millions. Just pocketed them! Yanukovich has no political future, I've told him that. He didn't fulfill his obligations as leader of the country. I've told him that. Mr. Putin, what mistakes did Yanukovich make as president? You know, I can't answer that. Not because I don't know the answer, but because it just wouldn't be right of me to say. Did you know they burned someone alive in Kiev? Just like that? Is that what you call a manifestation of democracy? Mr. Putin, what about the snipers in Kiev who were firing on civilians? Who gave them orders to shoot? Those were provocateurs. Didn't you read the reports? They were open source reports. So I don't know what happened there. It's unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don't know. Yanukovich didn't give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don't do it. You'll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn't the first time they've done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people...these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You're not listening to me. I've already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you're not listening. It's not that Yanukovich said he's not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they're not as bad as in Ukraine. The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?

And so on, for about an hour. And much of that, by the way, is direct quotes.

Gone was the old Putin, the one who loves these kinds of press events. He'd come a long way from the painfully awkward gray FSB officer on Larry King, a year into his tenure. He had grown to become the master of public speaking, who had turned his churlish, prison-inflected slang to his benefit. A salty guy in utter command of a crowd. That Putin was not the Putin we saw today. Today's Putin was nervous, angry, cornered, and paranoid, periodically illuminated by flashes of his own righteousness. Here was an authoritarian dancing uncomfortably in his new dictator shoes, squirming in his throne.

For the last few years, it has become something like conventional knowledge in Moscow journalistic circles that Putin was no longer getting good information, that he was surrounded by yes-men who created for him a parallel informational universe. "They're beginning to believe their own propaganda," Gleb Pavlovsky told me when I was in Moscow in December. Pavlovsky had been a close advisor to the early Putin, helping him win his first presidential election in 2000. (When, in 2011, Putin decided to return for a third term as president, Pavlovsky declared the old Putin dead.) And still, it wasn't fully vetted information. We were like astronomers, studying refractions of light that reached us from great distances, and used them to draw our conclusions.

Today's performance, though, put all that speculation to rest. Merkel was absolutely right: Putin has lost it. Unfortunately, it makes him that much harder to deal with.

[Liep]

Very pretty, very fierce. 

[Tamas]

what if: the troops participating in the earlier "exercise" in Russia got sent back to barracks because the rubel and their stockmarket crumbled and the Ukrainians refused to serve a casus belli? Maybe Putin's original plans and schedule is now in schambles, hence his rambling at the press event?

[derspiess]

Let's hope.

[Tamas]

although clearly it is far from over, just in at bbc.co.uk:

Russian troops have been breaking into the premises of an air defence unit outside of outside Yevpatoria in western Crimea, Interfax reports. The unit's spokesperson was quoted by the agency as saying they had tried to block the Russian troops but about 150 of them had "crushed the defence and broken into the territory of our unit". Via BBC Monitoring.

In an urge to neutralise still hostile air defense units? 

[Jacob]

Apparently RT's reply to Ms. Martin is:

"In her comment Ms. Martin also noted that she does not possess a deep knowledge of reality of the situation in Crimea. As such we'll be sending her to Crimea to give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicentre of the story."

[Tamas]

BTW I think one thing this crisis shows is that indeed just how much western politicians are in fact totally in the pocket of various businessmen. I mean, all-out economic war with Russia in terms of blocking them from most everything would be an inconvenience for the western countries, but would totally crumble Putin's regime.
So cowardly shit like the UK leaked doc on not hurting business relations just shows that the priorities the politicians have/want to follow.

[crazy canuck]

BTW I think one thing this crisis shows is that indeed just how much western politicians are in fact totally in the pocket of various businessmen. I mean, all-out economic war with Russia in terms of blocking them from most everything would be an inconvenience for the western countries, but would totally crumble Putin's regime.
So cowardly shit like the UK leaked doc on not hurting business relations just shows that the priorities the politicians have/want to follow.

I know that you have only recently departed from a land most politicians probably are in the pockets of someone but in most Western Democracies most politicians also have an eye out for the ramificantions on their actions on the economy and therefore the well being of the citizenry at large.  The British were against financial sanctions because a significant part of the British economy is based on London being a major financial centre and financial sanctions would hurt Britain as well as Russia.  The Germans were against energy sanctions because they get a significant amount of energy commodities from Russia.


This is what Putin was counting on.  What probably surprised Putin is that even without the West imposing sanctions the Russian economy could suffer and that, as much as anything, is probably why is, for the moment, is waiting.  Yi turned out to be right.  But probably not for the reasons Yi thought.  The thing we will never know for sure is whether Putin would have carried out with the threat if the market hadnt tanked yesterday.

[DGuller]

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call
it treason."

There is also a rhyming Russia saying: "Мятеж не может кончиться удачей, В противном случае его зовут иначе."