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The whole Ukraine/Crimea/Russia thing
Mar. 27th, 2014 10:53 am"Ambassador, dear, you are lying. You are calling white as black and black as white."
-- Ukrainian official Vasyl Filipchuk to Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov
"He reminds me of a character from Dr. Strangelove."
-- Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, on Chizhov
There's so much doing on that we don't have accurate information on. The thing that struck me as the most odd was that the day after the then-president of Ukraine agreed to hold new elections in about two months time, he's fled the country back to Russia. Something weird happened and I haven't heard what. Then all these military forces appear in Crimea and take over, fait accompli. Putin tries to feed everyone a huge line of bullshit that these are local defense forces. I'm surprised that the news didn't take the numbers painted on the trucks and look over old photos and footage and match them to Russian bases. Putin then holds elections with almost no notice and no outside monitoring, and what do you know -- 95% of voters want to go back to Mother Russia! That number is especially interesting since while the country was approx 55% ethnic Russians and probably not all of them want to be nationally Russian again, there's also large numbers of Kossacks and other ethnicities that don't want to be Russian.
I can understand Russia wanting control over the country that is the home port of its Black Sea fleet. But Russia and Ukraine have a high level of mutual dependence, and Crimea is highly dependent on Ukraine as it doesn't have land ties to Russia.
This was a very stupid move on Putin's part which lost him all credibility in the rest of the world and made every Russian-speaking but non-Russian country around him very nervous.
I came across an article that said Russian Spetsnaz forces (their equivalent of American Green Beret, British SAS, etc) had been captured inside the Ukraine with fake IDs and information that showed they were there to plan disinformation and unrest campaigns and possibly sabotage. Unfortunately I didn't keep the link, so I don't know if the story has been proven false or what, but it hasn't been picked up by the media that I follow.
-- Ukrainian official Vasyl Filipchuk to Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov
"He reminds me of a character from Dr. Strangelove."
-- Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, on Chizhov
There's so much doing on that we don't have accurate information on. The thing that struck me as the most odd was that the day after the then-president of Ukraine agreed to hold new elections in about two months time, he's fled the country back to Russia. Something weird happened and I haven't heard what. Then all these military forces appear in Crimea and take over, fait accompli. Putin tries to feed everyone a huge line of bullshit that these are local defense forces. I'm surprised that the news didn't take the numbers painted on the trucks and look over old photos and footage and match them to Russian bases. Putin then holds elections with almost no notice and no outside monitoring, and what do you know -- 95% of voters want to go back to Mother Russia! That number is especially interesting since while the country was approx 55% ethnic Russians and probably not all of them want to be nationally Russian again, there's also large numbers of Kossacks and other ethnicities that don't want to be Russian.
I can understand Russia wanting control over the country that is the home port of its Black Sea fleet. But Russia and Ukraine have a high level of mutual dependence, and Crimea is highly dependent on Ukraine as it doesn't have land ties to Russia.
This was a very stupid move on Putin's part which lost him all credibility in the rest of the world and made every Russian-speaking but non-Russian country around him very nervous.
I came across an article that said Russian Spetsnaz forces (their equivalent of American Green Beret, British SAS, etc) had been captured inside the Ukraine with fake IDs and information that showed they were there to plan disinformation and unrest campaigns and possibly sabotage. Unfortunately I didn't keep the link, so I don't know if the story has been proven false or what, but it hasn't been picked up by the media that I follow.
