QuoteRussia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — A year after its war with Georgia, Russia is engaging in an increasingly hostile standoff with another pro-Western neighbor, Ukraine.
Relations between the two countries are more troubled than at any time since the Soviet collapse, as both sides resort to provocations and recriminations. And it is here on the Crimean Peninsula, home to a Russian naval base, where the tensions are perhaps most in danger of bursting into open conflict.
Late last month, the Ukrainian police briefly detained Russian military personnel who were driving truckloads of missiles through this port city, as if they were smugglers who had come ashore with a haul of contraband. Local officials, it seemed, were seeking to make clear that this was no longer friendly terrain.
Ukraine has in recent years been at the forefront of the effort by some former Soviet republics to switch their alliances to the West, and it appears that the Kremlin has, in some sense, had enough.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia denounced Ukraine this month for "anti-Russian" policies, citing in particular its "incessant attempts" to harass Russia's naval base in Sevastopol. Mr. Medvedev condemned Ukraine's bid for NATO membership and its support for Georgia, and said he would not send an ambassador to Ukraine.
And the criticism has not let up since then.
Monday was Ukrainian independence day, and Russian prosecutors used the occasion to accuse Ukrainian soldiers and members of Ukrainian nationalist groups of fighting alongside Georgia's military in the war last August. The Ukrainians denied the charges, but they underscored the bitterness in Moscow.
For its part, the Ukrainian government, which took power after the Orange Revolution of 2004, has repeatedly accused Russia of acting as a bully and trying to dominate the former Soviet space both militarily and economically.
Looming is a presidential election in Ukraine in January, which might cause Ukrainian candidates to respond more aggressively to Russia to show their independence. The Kremlin might seek to exploit the situation to help pro-Russian politicians in Kiev.
Both countries publicly avow that they do not want the bad feelings to spiral out of control.
Still, they persist, especially in Sevastopol, where Russia has maintained a naval base since czarist times.
The Kremlin has bristled at what it sees as Ukraine's disrespectful governing of a city that it formerly controlled — one that was the site of momentous military battles, including in the Crimean War and World War II.
Ukraine appears to regard the base as a sign that Russia still wants to project its military might over the region.
The Ukrainians have not only briefly detained Russian military personnel transporting missiles on several occasions this summer. They also expelled a Russian diplomat who oversees naval issues and barred officers from the F.S.B., the Russian successor to the K.G.B., from working in Sevastopol.
The Ukrainians are trying to close a nearby Russian navigation station and are threatening penalties over supposed pollution from Russian vessels off Sevastopol, which is on the south of the Crimean Peninsula.
"Ukraine has become more demanding, and has a right to do that," said the Sevastopol mayor, Sergei V. Kunitsyn, an appointee of the Ukrainian government.
Mr. Kunitsyn said Russian military trucks transporting missiles in Sevastopol had been stopped and searched by the police because their route had not been approved in advance, as is required under accords signed by Russia.
He insisted that day-to-day interactions involving the Russian fleet were being carried out in a businesslike manner in Sevastopol, a city of 350,000.
He said Ukraine was not trying to oust the Russian fleet, though he did raise the prospect of additional pressure.
"If we wanted to, they would have such problems that they would never be able to leave the port," he said. "According to the law, we could find 1,000 reasons why the fleet could simply not live."
The Crimean Peninsula, which has two million people, is part of Ukraine through something of a historic fluke. In 1954, Nikita S. Khrushchev, then the Soviet leader, transferred it to Ukraine from Russia, though at the time the decision had little significance because both were part of the Soviet Union.
Besides serving as host for the Black Sea Fleet, the peninsula had a cherished role in the Soviet era as a vacation spot, with beaches and abundant fruits and vegetables.
After the Soviet fall, Russia reached a deal with Ukraine to maintain the base in Sevastopol, under a lease that ends in 2017. The Ukrainian president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, has declared that it will not be renewed, though his successors may not concur.
The current concern is that a spark in Crimea — however unlikely — could touch off a violent confrontation or even the kind of fighting that broke out between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia.
The situation is particularly uneasy because the population in Crimea is roughly 60 percent ethnic Russian and would prefer that the peninsula separate from Ukraine and be part of Russia. (Sevastopol has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians.)
People have been upset by new Ukrainian government policies that require the use of the Ukrainian language, rather than Russian, in government activities, including some courses in public schools. Throughout downtown Sevastopol last week, residents set up booths to gather signatures on petitions in an effort to overturn the regulations.
And on Monday, Ukrainian independence day, ethnic Russians in Crimea held anti-Ukrainian demonstrations.
Sergei P. Tsekov, a senior politician in Crimea who heads the main ethnic Russian communal organization, said he hoped that Russia would wholeheartedly endorse Crimean separatism just as it did the aspirations of South Ossetia and another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.
"The central authorities in Ukraine are provoking the people of Crimea," Mr. Tsekov said. "They relate to us like Georgia related to the Abkhazians and South Ossetians. They think that we're going to forget our roots, our language, our history, our heroes. Only stupid people would think that we're going to do that. Unfortunately, stupid people currently lead Ukraine."
Crimean separatists have been encouraged by prominent politicians in Russia, including Moscow's mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, and a senior member of Parliament, Konstantin F. Zatulin, both of whom have been barred from Ukraine by the government because of their assertions that Sevastopol belongs to Russia.
The Kremlin has not publicly backed the separatists, though it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in Crimea must not be violated.
While not denying frictions between Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Kunitsyn, Sevastopol's mayor, said ethnic Russians in the city were more worried about the local economy than who was in charge of the local government. He said employment in military and merchant fleets had dropped sharply.
"People are slowly getting used to the idea that Sevastopol is Ukraine's, and that Ukraine is helping Sevastopol," he said.
Near the harbor, though, residents did not necessarily agree.
Larisa G. Bakanova, 74, a retired teacher, was at a petition booth not far from a monument to Adm. Pavel S. Nakhimov, who led Russia's defense of Sevastopol in the Crimean War in the 1850s. She said people had eagerly signed up to oppose Ukrainian language mandates.
"The pressure from Kiev is more and more intense," she said. "They are stirring us up. They need to understand that this is the city of Sevastopol — a city of military glory, a city of Russian glory."
I don't know why the fuck the Ukrainians would be stupid enough to try to force Ukrainian down the throats of Russian speakers. They don't remember fucking Russification just a few decades ago? They don't see the irony, let alone the threat Russia poses?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/world/europe/28crimea.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
I guess I'm marginally pro-Ukraine here as their govt isn't as completely retarded (just maybe 80%, as opposed to Russia's 99%), but they seem to be doing everything they can to make this situation as nasty as possible. That said, they don't seem to understand how precarious their situation (even their identity, which didn't really exist even a century ago) is.
QuoteSticks and stones
Aug 27th 2009
From Economist.com
Russia needs to play nice
NAUGHTY and tiresome children like insults (both overt and needling) as well as implausible and elaborate excuses. "He wouldn't give it to me and it was mine anyway and also I was going to give it back so I hit him".
As your columnist's children grow up, the need to untangle their tantrums, feuds and nonsense is becoming pleasingly rare. Sadly, the same can't be said for some grownups.
AFP
"Na na na na"
Start with the needling. As Paul A. Goble, a foreign-affairs analyst, noted this week, Russia's president Dmitri Medvedev has pointedly used the preposition "na" [on], favoured during Soviet times, rather than the more recent "v" [in] when referring to Ukraine. That is the sort of thing that children do: habitually mispronounce someone's name in order to irritate them.
Mr Medvedev's prepositional condescension came during a scathing personal attack on the Ukrainian president in which he said Russia would not be sending another ambassador to Kiev (or Kyiv, as Ukrainians prefer it spelled). At a childish level, this is badmouthing a classmate and refusing to acknowledge his birthday.
The 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23rd provided more opportunities for what until recently would have been seen as extraordinary behaviour. The same day, a film called "The Secrets of Confidential Files", broadcast on Russia's Vesti national television channel (meaning it had official endorsement), said that the pact was a necessary response to Poland's signing of a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934. That is like a child explaining a playground scrap on the lines of "Bill was friends with Phil so when Phil beat Bill up I joined in too." Except that in this case the result was not a black eye and scraped knee, but the deaths of many millions of people.
This is not just nonsense, but revoltingly insensitive. It is rather as if German official media were casually blaming Jews for the Holocaust. And it is not a one-off. An article on the Russian defence ministry's website in June claimed that Poland's unreasonable behaviour towards Nazi Germany had justified Hitler's attack.
These and other insults come as Poland is awaiting a visit by Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to a ceremony in Gdansk on September 1st, marking the anniversary of the Nazi attack. Poland hopes that Mr Putin will at least express mild regret about the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17th 1939. At events in Prague on the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and in Budapest on the anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 uprising, Mr Putin managed that, soothing his hosts while not engaging in what many Russians would see as unseemly breast-beating.
Poland hopes that the visit will bring some practical movement on what are tactfully known as "difficult issues" (diplo-speak, in this case, for mass murder). The biggest of these is the Katyn massacre. Paying compensation to the relatives of the 20,000 Polish officers and prisoners of war murdered in cold blood in 1940 is probably too much to ask. But it might be possible to reach agreement on, say, a joint documentation centre.
Even a chance of that modest prize comes at a high price. In order not to jeopardise Mr Putin's visit, Poland has to swallow hard when its history is traduced.
As last week's column pointed out, no country can look back on its history without shame, and modern Russia does not need to feel perpetually burdened by the crimes of the Soviet Union. But neither must it revel in them. Knowing how to end an argument by saying "sorry" nicely is a sign of a well brought-up child (and of a decent human being).
Related, from The Economist.
I imagine half of it will end up annexed and the other half will be a puppet state.
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
So was Poland in 1939. If Russia takes the Ukraine it becomes a real threat to Europe once again.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 28, 2009, 12:06:05 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
So was Poland in 1939. If Russia takes the Ukraine it becomes a real threat to Europe once again.
Does that mean Germany only became a threat to Europe when it conquered Poland?
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
You are a bloody idiot. Ukraine is and has always been the key to the Russian Empire. Russia becomes the empire whenever it has Ukraine and is not when it loses it. Keeping Ukraine out of the Russian reach is crucial to keeping Russia in check.
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
I care.:mellow:
Zoupa is a moron and a waste of oxygen.
Anyway, Ukraine is crucial to European energetic safety. With Ukraine in Russian hands, Russia pretty much controls the Black Sea and can exert strong pressure on Turkey (which is already leaning towards Russia, if judged by the recent overtures between Putin and Edrogan), and it means it becomes the sole dealer of all gas that goes into Europe from Asia.
Of course, fucking French retards are pretty happy sucking Russian cocks, but the rest of Europe probably sees it differently.
Sucks to be Marty I suppose.
Quote from: Martinus on August 28, 2009, 02:25:03 AM
Zoupa is a moron and a waste of oxygen.
Tell us what you really think
Quote from: Martinus on August 28, 2009, 02:25:03 AM
Zoupa is a moron and a waste of oxygen.
Anyway, Ukraine is crucial to European energetic safety. With Ukraine in Russian hands, Russia pretty much controls the Black Sea and can exert strong pressure on Turkey (which is already leaning towards Russia, if judged by the recent overtures between Putin and Edrogan), and it means it becomes the sole dealer of all gas that goes into Europe from Asia.
Wow, I guess maybe you guys shouldn't have spent the last umpteen years laughing and joking about how un-European the Turks were.
This is not just nonsense, but revoltingly insensitive. It is rather as if German official media were casually blaming Jews for the Holocaust. And it is not a one-off. An article on the Russian defence ministry's website in June claimed that Poland's unreasonable behaviour towards Nazi Germany had justified Hitler's attack.
These and other insults come as Poland is awaiting a visit by Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to a ceremony in Gdansk on September 1st, marking the anniversary of the Nazi attack. Poland hopes that Mr Putin will at least express mild regret about the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17th 1939. At events in Prague on the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and in Budapest on the anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 uprising, Mr Putin managed that, soothing his hosts while not engaging in what many Russians would see as unseemly breast-beating.
The upcoming visit to Poland by Putin ought to go over well... <_<
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 02:21:25 AM
I care.:mellow:
Send weapons to the Ukraine.
Heck the Ukrainians have nukes right? What is Russia really going to do?
Quote from: Razgovory on August 27, 2009, 11:23:11 PM
I imagine half of it will end up annexed and the other half will be a puppet state.
Is your imagination powered by Russian nationalist wet dreams?
Quote from: Valmy on August 28, 2009, 07:52:31 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 02:21:25 AM
I care.:mellow:
Send weapons to the Ukraine.
Heck the Ukrainians have nukes right? What is Russia really going to do?
How solidly is the population of Ukraine in favor of independence?
Quote from: Valmy on August 28, 2009, 07:52:31 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 02:21:25 AM
I care.:mellow:
Send weapons to the Ukraine.
Heck the Ukrainians have nukes right? What is Russia really going to do?
No they don't. IIRC they used to but given them up.
No nukes in Ukraine, all the CIS states had to give up their weapons to Russia.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on August 28, 2009, 07:59:50 AM
How solidly is the population of Ukraine in favor of independence?
Western Ukraine very much. Eastern Ukraine is Russian-speaking and favors pro-Russian policies, but (AFAIK) most of them still consider themself Ukrainians are contrary to what is sometimes said aren't excactly waiting to be reenaxed into Mother Russia. The only part of the country with such sentiments is Crimea.
Quote from: Viking on August 28, 2009, 08:06:11 AM
No nukes in Ukraine, all the CIS states had to give up their weapons to Russia.
Yeah, they got bribed to give them up. Thought in the early 1990's the Ukrainian president proposed an alliance between Ukraine and Poland, Czechs and Hungary that would have been BACKED BY THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS :D
Quote from: Viking on August 28, 2009, 08:06:11 AM
No nukes in Ukraine, all the CIS states had to give up their weapons to Russia.
Whoops.
Well then...um...
I am out of ideas. Sorry Ukraine.
Quote from: Queequeg on August 27, 2009, 10:47:16 PM
I don't know why the fuck the Ukrainians would be stupid enough to try to force Ukrainian down the throats of Russian speakers. They don't remember fucking Russification just a few decades ago? They don't see the irony, let alone the threat Russia poses?
That's the whole point: To roll back Russification, and to eliminate the dagger that is constantly against their throat. Otherwise, the Ukrainians will eventually be victims of Russian genocide again.
QuoteUS-EU Plan To "Move" Earth Orbit Doomed, Say Russian Scientists
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A new report circulating in the Kremlin today states that Russian Space Scientists are warning that the United States and European Union plan to actually move the orbit of our Planet Earth, in what these Westerners are now calling an "accelerated phase", is "doomed to failure" and could actually threaten the existence of all mankind.
Not being largely known by the Western peoples is that their present state of life under the twin terrors of war and Global economic collapse has, in reality, been a decades-long scheme by their leaders to suborn their citizens natural intellect in order to keep them from knowing the true terror of our times and from where our greatest danger lies, our own Solar System.
In the briefest overview of this danger possible, one must turn back to when the United States President Ronald Reagan first took office in 1981, and who upon his reading the assassination file of Pope John Paul I became aware of the true danger facing our World, whereupon he, Reagan, then decided to inform his citizens, like the late Roman prelate had attempted to do, only to become another casualty of the assassins of secrets and darkness on March 30, 1981.
Pope John Paul II, being saddened by the near fatal assassination attempt upon Reagan, and knowing of the true facts surrounding the murder of his predecessor John Paul I, became the last World leader to attempt to tell humanity "the secret" whereupon he, like those before him, was gunned down on May 13, 1981, effectively placed into the "abyss of silence".
Though never fully informing his people of the true danger they were facing, Reagan did continue to subtly allude to it, the most famous of his "warnings" being his September 21, 1987 speech before the assembly of the United Nations, and where he stated in a grave tone, "I wonder how quickly our differences, Worldwide, would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this World."
Bolstering Reagan's knowledge of this "alien threat" was the 1983, 10-month mission of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) joint telescope project of the United States (NASA), the Netherlands (NIVR), and the United Kingdom (SERC), and which confirmed the theories of many imminent scientists and researchers [Professor Richard Muller, UC Berkley; Walter Cruttenden, Binary Research Institute(BRI); Dr. Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana, etc.] of our Solar System being binary in origin and possessing a brown dwarf "twin" to our Sun and of which was written about in the Washington Post on December 30, 1983:
"A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite.
So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant comet, a nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through."
But, where in the 1980's this "threat" to our Planet was abstract in nature, and its potential future course towards Earth was still being widely debated, this cannot be said today, and as we can read from the latest reports on this mysterious brown dwarf twin of our Sun by Italian scientists:
"For two weeks, Pluto has been impacted, heating and disruption of a new celestial body too close to its orbit. The reason: a brown dwarf 1.9Mj size that is positioned right in "Sagittarius," and that currently is disrupting the orbit of Pluto. But not only that of Pluto, too, is disturbing the orbit of Jupiter and other planets of the solar system. In fact, the Sun, CMEs has issued in recent weeks that have caused a shift in our geomagnetic axis exactly in 19th, and an increase of the seismicity of 1.33 MW on average seismicity in 2008, so "literally" to confirm the theory "of our solar system binary. Something is coming, and clearly, the peak of the Oort cloud in the area of Sagittarius, is caused by a brown dwarf, which may also be viewed on the WorldWideTelescope, (WWT), right, tracing the orbit of Pluto."
And, as we had previously reported on in our July 20th report, Meteor Hit On Jupiter Prompts Russian Warning For Earth, and our August 3rd report Russia Says Comet Strike On Venus Following Jupiter Hit Is "Dire Warning' For Earth, and with Saturn's rings now being hit by meteors too [3rd photo left], these new reports are further warning that the US and EU are "going forward" with their plan to actually attempt to move our Earth's orbit so as not to experience the catastrophes known to our World's most ancient of peoples when this "cosmic dance" of "planetary giants" is due to occur in our present age between the years of 2010-2012.
To the sheer magnitude of the West's plan to move our Planet Earth we can also read as reported in 2001 by Britain's Guardian News Service at the outset of the terrors the West has put upon humanity:
"Scientists have found an unusual way to prevent our planet overheating: move it to a cooler spot. All you have to do is hurtle a few comets at Earth, and its orbit will be altered. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.
This startling idea of improving our interplanetary neighbourhood is the brainchild of a group of Nasa engineers and American astronomers who say their plan could add another six billion years to the useful lifetime of our planet - effectively doubling its working life.
'The technology is not at all far-fetched,' said Dr Greg Laughlin, of the Nasa Ames Research Center in California. 'It involves the same techniques that people now suggest could be used to deflect asteroids or comets heading towards Earth. We don't need raw power to move Earth, we just require delicacy of planning and manoeuvring.'
The plan put forward by Dr Laughlin, and his colleagues Don Korycansky and Fred Adams, involves carefully directing a comet or asteroid so that it sweeps close past our planet and transfers some of its gravitational energy to Earth.
'Earth's orbital speed would increase as a result and we would move to a higher orbit away from the Sun,' Laughlin said.
Engineers would then direct their comet so that it passed close to Jupiter or Saturn, where the reverse process would occur. It would pick up energy from one of these giant planets. Later its orbit would bring it back to Earth, and the process would be repeated."
Russian scientists, however, describe as "sheer insanity" this plan of the West's to make of our inner Solar System a "shooting gallery" of comets under the guise of protecting us from Global Warming, of which the West is still failing to fully inform its citizens is, in fact, occurring on all of the Planets.
Even worse, these reports warn that the United States and Israel's planned "earthquake simulation", due to take place on August 27th in the Negev desert, so that our Earth's "new alignment" can be further "tweaked" after the "magnetic tides" of the combined Jupiter-Venus-Saturn meteor strikes "wash over" our electromagnetic field could, instead, cause "catastrophic tidal forces" to be unleashed upon our Planet.
But in all of these events, one can only wonder how much more these simple human beings can continue playing like they're gods until the wrath of a real one wakes them up from their dreams of Global dominance? Perhaps it will be sooner, much sooner, than they think.
© August 26, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
Quote from: Ed Anger on August 28, 2009, 08:36:51 AM
Global Warming, of which the West is still failing to fully inform its citizens is, in fact, occurring on all of the Planets.
I wonder if with enough greenhouse gases, Mars will be livable without self-contained domes.
Quote from: Valmy on August 28, 2009, 07:52:31 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 02:21:25 AM
I care.:mellow:
Send weapons to the Ukraine.
Heck the Ukrainians have nukes right? What is Russia really going to do?
They got rid of them years ago.
Quote from: Sahib on August 28, 2009, 08:06:35 AM
The only part of the country with such sentiments is Crimea.
Which isn't surprising, given how Crimea was never part of Ukraine until Khruschev gifted it to Ukraine when he came to power.
Quote from: Sahib on August 28, 2009, 08:06:35 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on August 28, 2009, 07:59:50 AM
How solidly is the population of Ukraine in favor of independence?
Western Ukraine very much. Eastern Ukraine is Russian-speaking and favors pro-Russian policies, but (AFAIK) most of them still consider themself Ukrainians are contrary to what is sometimes said aren't excactly waiting to be reenaxed into Mother Russia. The only part of the country with such sentiments is Crimea.
I don't think they'd enjoy having Ukrainian shoved down their throats, either. Ukraine doesn't appear to know that it is treading on eggshells, only underneath the eggshells are claymore mines and discarded heroin needles.
QuoteWhich isn't surprising, given how Crimea was never part of Ukraine until Khruschev gifted it to Ukraine when he came to power.
The same is true of the entire Black Sea coast and a lot of Eastern Ukraine. That area went from being Turkic to being settled by a hodgepodge of Cossacks, converted Turks and Russians without any connection to supposed antecedents of the modern Ukrainian state (mostly Kievan Rus', though the Ruthenian parts of the Polish-Lithuanian confederacy too).
Quote
Anyway, Ukraine is crucial to European energetic safety. With Ukraine in Russian hands, Russia pretty much controls the Black Sea and can exert strong pressure on Turkey (which is already leaning towards Russia, if judged by the recent overtures between Putin and Edrogan), and it means it becomes the sole dealer of all gas that goes into Europe from Asia.
1) It's Erdoğan, pronounced Erdooan.
2) Turks and Russians have been fighting for the better part of a thousand years. They are natural enemies, with almost a thousand years of constant slaughter and slavery between them. They hate the Russians with a far more visceral passion than maybe even the Poles. You Islamophobe motherfuckers drove the Turks into Russia's (childish but far more shrewd) arms.
QuoteSo was Poland in 1939. If Russia takes the Ukraine it becomes a real threat to Europe once again.
Or, you know, not. Russia is undergoing a demographic and economic collapse, and they've blown all their raw material money on bullshit, wasting an opportunity to develop a real economy or invest in infrastructure or fight graft. Russia's structural problems are so large at this point that they are mostly a threat to themselves besides the obvious nuclear possibility. Without an energetic, reformist leader and a demographic rebound (which I think are likely in the medium term, but not now) Russia will continue to drown itself in drugs, alcohol and retardation.
Even with the Ukraine that's all still true. And after Ukraine, what will Russia do? Annex Belarus? There are too many natives in the Baltic states, and there are no neat chunks of Poland or Finland to bite off.
I don't get that "shoving Ukrainian down their throats". It's a Ukrainian nation, and its a pretty natural part of nationhood to want to promote your language. Besides the two languages are very similar and I understand it's not all that hard for a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker to comprehend each other.
And Ahab, as usual you spend far too much time worry about ancient history when trying to analyse modern politics.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 28, 2009, 12:06:05 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
So was Poland in 1939. If Russia takes the Ukraine it becomes a real threat to Europe once again.
Quote from: MartinusYou are a bloody idiot. Ukraine is and has always been the key to the Russian Empire. Russia becomes the empire whenever it has Ukraine and is not when it loses it. Keeping Ukraine out of the Russian reach is crucial to keeping Russia in check.
At risk of crossing the emeregent Timmi-Marti Bund, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Whether Russia is or is not a threat depends on the objective quality of Russian strength and power. Were Ukraine to fall under Russian influence or even jurisdiction it would not have much significant positive impact on Russian power. More likely the net effect would be negative (the old Soviet Russia subsidized Ukrainian energy usage which is ultimately behind much of today's wrangling.
Of course I am not advocating selling out the Ukraine but I find the bearmongering puzzling.
QuoteI don't get that "shoving Ukrainian down their throats". It's a Ukrainian nation, and its a pretty natural part of nationhood to want to promote your language. Besides the two languages are very similar and I understand it's not all that hard for a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker to comprehend each other.
Then what's the difference between a free Ukraine and Ukraine as part of Russia? I don't see the difference here: Ukrainians and Russians are so similar that Russian speakers in Ukraine should just get used to Ukrainian, while during Russification Russians thought that Ukrainian and Russian were so similar that Ukrainians should just start speaking Russian. :huh:
Quote
And Ahab, as usual you spend far too much time worry about ancient history when trying to analyse modern politics.
There's no love lost between Turks and Russians today, and east of Kiev and going from Odessa east you won't hear much Ukrainian. How does the history not matter?
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 12:19:27 PM
Besides the two languages are very similar and I understand it's not all that hard for a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker to comprehend each other.
I don't know, I personally find it a lot easier to comprehend Polish rather than Ukrainian, and I actually spoke Ukrainian for part of my life (you were endangering the intactness of your face by not doing so in Lviv).
Knowing all of a dozen words of Ukrainian I'll defer to your expertise.
Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2009, 12:39:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 12:19:27 PM
Besides the two languages are very similar and I understand it's not all that hard for a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker to comprehend each other.
I don't know, I personally find it a lot easier to comprehend Polish rather than Ukrainian, and I actually spoke Ukrainian for part of my life (you were endangering the intactness of your face by not doing so in Lviv).
I guess some of those squabbles make our US "English first" type stuff a bit tame by comparison!
Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2009, 12:39:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 12:19:27 PM
Besides the two languages are very similar and I understand it's not all that hard for a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker to comprehend each other.
I don't know, I personally find it a lot easier to comprehend Polish rather than Ukrainian, and I actually spoke Ukrainian for part of my life (you were endangering the intactness of your face by not doing so in Lviv).
Ukrainian has some weird spots IIRC; Russian gs are hs, like in Czech, and they have a guttural sound like gh that is nowhere to be found in Russian. The grammar seems a bit more conservative as they don't have a preopositional (pridlozhny) case, and maintain the Indo-European locative and vocative. They are also a lot more consonant cluster averse, so stuff like the genitive plural of medicine, the impossible to say lekarstf, are rare.
It is probably easier to read than to listen to, same as it is with 'mutually uninteligable dialects', like Schweiss Deutsch for High German speakers or or any kind of Arabic from another. To me, Ukrainian sounds a lot like Czech while Polish sounds more like Russian, but I'm not fluent in Russian yet and don't have a huge amount of experience with Ukrainian or Czech.
Just because both are similar, that doesn't mean that both understand. It's quite possible for Ukrainian speakers to understand Russian while the reverse is not true. It's like this with most Swedish speakers and Norwegians. The Norwegian understands the Swede (unless he's from skåne) and the Swede almost never understands the Norwegian.
Quote from: Queequeg on August 28, 2009, 12:08:09 PM
2) Turks and Russians have been fighting for the better part of a thousand years. They are natural enemies, with almost a thousand years of constant slaughter and slavery between them. They hate the Russians with a far more visceral passion than maybe even the Poles. You Islamophobe motherfuckers drove the Turks into Russia's (childish but far more shrewd) arms.
I would imagine the creation of some buffer states has relaxed tensions somewhat.
As a Russophile, you analysis can't be trusted anyways.
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 11:38:26 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 28, 2009, 07:52:31 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 28, 2009, 02:21:25 AM
I care.:mellow:
Send weapons to the Ukraine.
Heck the Ukrainians have nukes right? What is Russia really going to do?
They got rid of them years ago.
Once again, the folly of not having nukes.
Not having nukes if far more expensive, in treasure and blood, than having nukes.
Well, it seems ukranian and russians have fought each other in Africa:
"Eritrean-Ethiopian War. In February 1999, according to some reports, Ethiopian Su-27 pilots shot down four Eritrean MiG-29s. Some of these sources claim that the Ethiopian planes were flown by Russian pilots, and the Eritrean planes by Ukrainians. (It is certainly true that local pilots were trained by instructors from those nations.[19]) "
They fought against each other in the Caucasus as well.
Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2009, 05:09:00 PM
They fought against each other in the Caucasus as well.
When? I'm curious.
Quote from: Martinus on August 28, 2009, 02:18:18 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 27, 2009, 11:56:16 PM
Ukraine is a shithole. Nobody cares, and that's fine.
You are a bloody idiot. Ukraine is and has always been the key to the Russian Empire. Russia becomes the empire whenever it has Ukraine and is not when it loses it. Keeping Ukraine out of the Russian reach is crucial to keeping Russia in check.
That's nice, but what's keeping Russia in check is the fact that it's a third world country.
Quote from: Zoupa on August 29, 2009, 03:01:07 AM
Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2009, 05:09:00 PM
They fought against each other in the Caucasus as well.
When? I'm curious.
I don't remember exactly, but it was during the various wars and conflicts after USSR collapse (for example Abkhazia war). Ukrainians obviously didn't fight in their uniform, but they fought as mercenaries. Russians were supporting the sides that Ukrainians didn't fight for, and helped along a genocide or two along the way.
What's with your people DGuller? Send a letter back and tell them to cut this out.