Ukraine's European Revolution?

[alfred russel]

There has to be some benefit to getting more territory (that Russians want). Even some of those that see through the propaganda will take satisfaction in the ultimate result.

[Barrister]

That is different than being anti-US.

I mean, attitude to the US is indifferent at best everywhere I have been to in Europe. Most Hungarians despise it, out of jealousy, mostly. I have no reason to believe that the Russians would be the exception to this rule.

I agree that anti-US attitudes are widespread, and I think you're right that a lot of it comes down to jealousy.

But I think it has very little to do with anti-American propaganda on Russian tv.

[DGuller]

That is different than being anti-US.

I mean, attitude to the US is indifferent at best everywhere I have been to in Europe. Most Hungarians despise it, out of jealousy, mostly. I have no reason to believe that the Russians would be the exception to this rule.

I agree that anti-US attitudes are widespread, and I think you're right that a lot of it comes down to jealousy.

But I think it has very little to do with anti-American propaganda on Russian tv.

What changed in the last two years in Russia?  Were they not jealous of Americans before?

[Barrister]

That is different than being anti-US.

I mean, attitude to the US is indifferent at best everywhere I have been to in Europe. Most Hungarians despise it, out of jealousy, mostly. I have no reason to believe that the Russians would be the exception to this rule.

I agree that anti-US attitudes are widespread, and I think you're right that a lot of it comes down to jealousy.

But I think it has very little to do with anti-American propaganda on Russian tv.

What changed in the last two years in Russia?  Were they not jealous of Americans before?

Nothing has changed in the last two years.

[DGuller]

That is different than being anti-US.

I mean, attitude to the US is indifferent at best everywhere I have been to in Europe. Most Hungarians despise it, out of jealousy, mostly. I have no reason to believe that the Russians would be the exception to this rule.

I agree that anti-US attitudes are widespread, and I think you're right that a lot of it comes down to jealousy.

But I think it has very little to do with anti-American propaganda on Russian tv.

What changed in the last two years in Russia?  Were they not jealous of Americans before?

Nothing has changed in the last two years.

Except the negative view of Americans increased by 21 percentage points.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

snowden?

[Tonitrus]

Apparently the Ukraine crisis is going to kill NATO:

Why the Russian invasion of Crimea could signal the end of the NATO alliance, by Professor Michael Ben-Gad, City University London.

"The likely outcome of the Russian absorption of Crimea and the subsequent feeble response from the West signals the fracturing and potentially the ultimate demise of NATO and the Western Alliance.

"In fact, it may already be too late to save NATO, and the small Estonian city of Narva is where it might well fall apart.

"Perhaps in the not too distant future, Russian border guards will be told to walk the 400 metres across the empty field that separates Narva's town hall from the Russian border, and help the locals seize control of their city.

"How might the US and its Western allies respond? Would they send troops to push the Russians back? In Estonia? How would they get there? And what then? Is NATO then prepared to then head north and re-enact the siege of Leningrad? Would it threaten nuclear war? Over Narva?

"The lazy assumptions that the NATO alliance will continue to guarantee the sovereignty and freedom of its European allies can no longer be taken for granted.

"Those opposed to the maintenance of an independent nuclear capability in either the UK or France might want to think again."

Starting to make me think Putin has been watching "Yes Prime Minister" and trying out those salami tactics.

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

[Savonarola]

Felon wants his probation modified to rescue his daughter, wife from Ukraine

Robert Snell

Detroit — A convicted felon convicted in an international conspiracy that smuggled women into the United States and forced them to work as strippers wants to rescue two women trapped in Ukraine: his daughter and wife.

Veniamin Gonikman was one of the country's most wanted fugitives and triggered a years-long manhunt involving federal authorities before he was caught in his native Ukraine and returned to the U.S. in 2011. Fresh off a three-year prison sentence, Gonikman wants to modify his probation and return home to rescue relatives trapped amid a revolution and Russian invasion, according to federal court records filed Thursday.

Gonikman, 58, is serving probation near Miami and owes $340,000 in restitution to the smuggled strippers but wants U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts to let him fly home and protect his 17-year-old daughter Nikoletta and common-law wife Grygorenko Larysa.

"Seeing his daughter stuck between ultra-nationalist revolutionists, on the one hand, and the Russian invasion of his homeland, on the other hand, Gonikman desperately seeks this court's permission to be with his family to ensure their safety during this time of civil upheaval," defense lawyer Walter Piszczatowski wrote in a filing.

Gonikman was the ninth and final member of a group of people involved in a conspiracy to force women to work at Metro Detroit exotic dance clubs. Members kept a portion of the dancers' earnings and sent the cash back to the Ukraine.

In 2005, Gonikman was charged in a 22-count indictment with trafficking in persons, forced labor, alien smuggling, money laundering, extortion collection and conspiracy, among other charges.

Gonikman fled the country after being indicted and had been living illegally in Ukraine using fake passports and tried to bribe a government official who came to arrest him, according to court records.

The arrest came almost four years after Gonikman's son was sentenced to 14 years in prison for smuggling women from Eastern Europe and forcing them to work in Metro Detroit strip clubs.

Court records chronicle a desperate situation in Ukraine.

"Gonikman has had regular telephone contact with his daughter Nikoletta, and his partner Larysa, since his release," from prison in September, Piszczatowski wrote. "Of late, the news they share with him has gone from bad to grim. The civil unrest in the Ukraine continues to escalate. There is no order in the streets and no-one to enforce the law. The situation is a matter of international concern but for the Jewish population of the Ukraine is a matter of grave concern: it is both a violent and unpredictable environment."

Both Gonikman and his daughter are Jewish, according to the court filing.

His daughter is ill and being treated for various medical problems, according to the filing.

Gonikman wants to secure safe housing for his daughter and wife, perhaps in another country, the lawyer wrote.

The former fugitive is mindful that he has two years' left on his probation and outstanding restitution. Gonikman, who once led a high-rolling lifestyle that included multiple bodyguards and expensive cars, works as a janitor and security guard in Florida and pays $70 a month in restitution.

It sounds like the premise for a made for TV movie.  Gonikman is allowed to return to his native land, but only if accompanied by the FBI agent who helped put him in prison.  The agent is an ethnic Ukrainian whose wife was forced to work in Detroit's seedy strip clubs by Gonikman's gang.  Will their mutual animosity prevent them from working together, or will they learn to put their differences aside for the greater good?  Find out when "Once Upon a Time in the Ukraine" airs tonight.

[Razgovory]

Gonikman is a terrible superhero name.

[Syt]

[Zanza]

Germany's Russia policy
Which war to mention?

For Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, the crisis is a throwback to worse times

HILLARY CLINTON, among others, has reportedly compared Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which Hitler justified on the basis of protecting ethnic Germans living in the Sudetenland. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and de facto leader of the European Union in dealing with Vladimir Putin, has also been looking to history for precedents. But she concentrates on the events leading up to the first world war, not the second. That choice of analogy says much about how Germany is handling the crisis.

As a former East German, Mrs Merkel has no illusions about Mr Putin, who learned fluent German as a KGB agent in her country during the 1980s. She sees his empire-building as an atavism that has no place in postmodern Europe—the sort of "conflict about spheres of influence and territorial claims that we know from the 19th and 20th centuries, conflicts that we thought we had transcended," as she told her parliament on March 13th. Unless Mr Putin stops, she added, Germany and its allies will incrementally step up their resistance. She ruled out a shooting war, but not an economic one.

By the standards of German foreign policy in general, and specifically its relations with Russia, such a tough tone is new. Starting with Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) in the 1970s, Germany has preferred engagement to confrontation when it comes to Russia: Wandel durch Handel (change through trade) as the rhyming slogan has it. (Leave the bullying to the Americans with their cowboy diplomacy, went the subtext.)

Mrs Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, took this approach furthest, becoming pals with Mr Putin and, soon after leaving office, joining the board of a pipeline company carrying Russian gas to Germany. Even now, Mr Schröder preaches empathy for Mr Putin, arguing that his actions in the Crimea are no different to NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, in which Germany took part under Mr Schröder. That is a "shameful" comparison, Mrs Merkel told parliament: in Kosovo NATO was intervening to stop atrocities.

And yet Germany's Russia policy under Mrs Merkel and her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will always be more nuanced than its more gung-ho allies would like. Mrs Merkel's style of crisis management, as displayed during the euro crisis, is essentially incrementalist. Mr Steinmeier used to be Mr Schröder's chief of staff and shared his approach. And both are fascinated, if not haunted, by history; having recently read the bestseller "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark, an Australian historian at Cambridge who speaks flawless German, they are determined not to repeat the mistakes of 1914.

Mr Clark's protagonists are sleepwalkers because, in the weeks following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, they failed to communicate or change course, trapping themselves in seemingly inevitable cycles of escalation and mobilisation until disaster struck. On March 14th, in the Baroque atrium of Berlin's German Historical Museum, Mr Steinmeier hosted a debate between Mr Clark and a German historian, Gerd Krumeich, about the lessons of 1914 for today. The most relevant one, said Mr Steinmeier, is what can happen when dialogue stops and diplomacy fails. It is crucial not to drive into "dead ends", Mr Steinmeier went on, but to create "exits".

Sanctions and other measures must come step by step, giving Mr Putin chance after chance to stop further escalation. Mrs Merkel and Mr Steinmeier have been speaking to Russia more than any other Western leaders, with nearly daily phone calls in recent weeks. No matter what happens, Germany will keep talking.

The first two sanctions—suspending talks about easing visa requirements and blacklisting officials deemed at fault during the crisis—have not, admittedly, impressed Mr Putin much. Subsequent steps, in the form of economic sanctions, could hurt a lot more.

The pain would be shared. Though Russia was only Germany's 11th-largest trading partner in 2013, after Poland, some 300,000 German jobs depend on exports there. Russia in turn mainly supplies gas and oil, 36% and 35% of Germany's imports respectively. Russia might react to economic sanctions by reducing those exports. A report by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a Brussels think-tank, argues that the EU has full reserves and could import more gas from Algeria, Norway and Nigeria, though at a price. Other experts, such as Alexander Rahr at the German-Russian Forum, an organisation for informal exchanges between the two countries, think that doing without Russian gas is at best years away.

There are many more measured steps to be taken before things escalate that far. If they did, Germany's business elite and public might yet support such drastic measures; but only after they had seen Mrs Merkel exhaust every other option.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21599410-angela-merkel-and-her-foreign-minister-crisis-throwback-worse-times-which-war

[KRonn]

It sounds like the premise for a made for TV movie.  Gonikman is allowed to return to his native land, but only if accompanied by the FBI agent who helped put him in prison.  The agent is an ethnic Ukrainian whose wife was forced to work in Detroit's seedy strip clubs by Gonikman's gang.  Will their mutual animosity prevent them from working together, or will they learn to put their differences aside for the greater good?  Find out when "Once Upon a Time in the Ukraine" airs tonight.   

Hehe, good story line! A new TV series, maybe even a reality show!   

[The Larch]

Mrs Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, took this approach furthest, becoming pals with Mr Putin and, soon after leaving office, joining the board of a pipeline company carrying Russian gas to Germany. Even now, Mr Schröder preaches empathy for Mr Putin, arguing that his actions in the Crimea are no different to NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, in which Germany took part under Mr Schröder.

It's quite embarrassing to see how deep Schroeder is in Putin's pocket, right?

[Valmy]

Mrs Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, took this approach furthest, becoming pals with Mr Putin and, soon after leaving office, joining the board of a pipeline company carrying Russian gas to Germany. Even now, Mr Schröder preaches empathy for Mr Putin, arguing that his actions in the Crimea are no different to NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, in which Germany took part under Mr Schröder.

It's quite embarrassing to see how deep Schroeder is in Putin's pocket, right?

Ah Kosovo, the gift that keeps on giving.  The Europeans are really making us regret preventing them from slaughtering their people wholesale, but it is not surprising a German would be so offended by that.

[celedhring]

Meanwhile, the EU is moving forward with trade association with Ukraine:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us-ukraine-crisis-eu-agreement-idUSBREA2K0JY20140321

The European Union and Ukraine signed the core elements of a political association agreement on Friday, committing to the same deal former president Viktor Yanukovich rejected last November, a move which led to his overthrow.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, EU leaders Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, and the leaders of the bloc's 28 nations signed the core chapters of the Association Agreement on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels.

The deal commits Ukraine and the EU to closer political and economic cooperation, although more substantial parts of the agreement concerning free trade will only be signed after Ukraine has held new presidential elections in May.

Van Rompuy, the European Council president, said the agreement would bring Ukraine and its 46 million people closer to the heart of Europe and a "European way of life".

"(This) recognizes the aspirations of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and the rule of law, where all citizens have a stake in national prosperity," he said.

Two sets of the documents were passed around the table for the EU's leaders and Yatseniuk to sign in a solemn atmosphere. Van Rompuy and Yatseniuk then shook hands and exchanged the documents to applause, witnesses said.

Coinciding with the signing in Brussels, Russia's upper house of parliament unanimously approved a treaty annexing Ukraine's Crimea region, clearing the way for President Vladimir Putin to sign it into law.

Yanukovich turned his back on signing the EU agreement last November in favor of closer ties with Moscow, prompting months of street protests that eventually led to his fleeing the country. Soon afterwards, Russian forces occupied Crimea, drawing outrage and sanctions from the United States and EU.

As well as the closer political ties, the European Commission has agreed to extend nearly 500 million euros worth of trade benefits to Ukraine, removing customs duties on a wide range of agricultural goods, textiles and other imports.

Once Ukraine has held presidential elections on May 25 and a new administration is in place, the EU plans to move ahead with signing a free-trade agreement with Ukraine, giving the country unfettered access to the EU's market of 500 million consumers.

That has far more potential to strengthen Ukraine's shattered economy, but also runs the risk of provoking retaliatory steps from Russia, which has already imposed stricter customs checks on trade with Ukraine.

The other burden for Kiev is meeting the obligations that come with EU political association, including instituting changes to the rule of law and justice, and adopting business and environmental standards that will require hard work and long-term investment to meet.