Merged Ukraine erupts in riots and general strike.

[jimbob]

I thought he was the US ambassador to Ukraine

 

[jimbob]

You really aren't paying attention, are you? I doubt you even know who Pyatt is. As to your question, it's beyond the point of the claims of these types, which are that the Russian regular army is invading and fighting in the Donbass, failing to provide credible evidence time and time again.

Nobody is saying that Russia is having an all out war with Ukraine. They are providing materiel and troops though.

There was a unit of Russian paratroopers who were on foot and captured 20km from the nearest Russian border. That is too far to be a mistake, especially in a sensitive region.

That *alone* is sufficient evidence to give the lie to Russian claims.

There is significantly more.

 

[jimbob]

btw, here's an interesting interview with that guy Strelkov who seems to be the coordinator of those "Donetsk people's republic forces". Already a couple of days old, also about the non-OSCE military observers. I guess the flag flying below the copter in my pic above is the one of the mentioned airborne brigade:

Interestingly, he's admitted to being a colonel in the FSB:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/igor-strel...ffiliation-kremlin-censored-interview-1477713



Link this archive of the original interview - key parts of which were removed from the original site

Александр Чаленко: Многие ваши критики говорят о том, что Стрелков – это всего лишь подполковник ФСБ, поэтому у него нет никакого опыта планирования армейских операций.

Игорь Стрелков: Я действительно полковник ФСБ, поэтому спокойно отношусь, а вообще не советую вам военного называть на звание ниже, чем он есть.

Which my automatic translation reads as:

Alexander Chalenko: Many of your critics say that arrow - this is just a FSB colonel, so he has no experience in planning military operations. What do you say?

Gunmen Igor: I really FSB colonel, so calm attitude, and do not advise you to call on the military rank is lower than it is.

Or the IBTimes translation, which is more "human":

"I really am a FSB colonel, so I have a calm attitude and I do not advise you to call my military rank lower than it is. The title has a higher value for the military than [it has] for civilians."

The Moscow Times version of this story

"I was the one who pulled the trigger of this war," Strelkov said in an interview published Thursday with Russia's Zavtra newspaper, which espouses imperialist views.

"If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out — like in [the Ukrainian city of] Kharkiv, like in Odessa," Strelkov, who uses that nom-de-guerre meaning "Shooter" to replace his last name Girkin, was quoted as saying.

"There would have been several dozen killed, burned, detained. And that would have been the end of it. But the flywheel of the war, which is continuing to this day, was spun by our unit. We mixed up all the cards on the table," he said.

 

[jimbob]

But apart from such confessions, and eyewitness reports form reputable news sources, and the previously mentioned captured patrol, there is nothing except for the odd item of equipment that ins in Russian but not Ukrainian service.

So Putin's story holds. (ETA: according to some)

 

[CapelDodger]

@ Gulliver Foyle (sorry, quote button on blink)

There's quite a lot, I'll give you the duck duck go search I just did on "european far right funded by russia".

Much of interest there; I should give more consideration to nationalism undermining the EU (rather than undermining democracy), which appears to be the point. The far-right doesn't have to gain power to do that, it just has to threaten the traditional right and drag it towards their position. UKIP in Britain is an example of that. I think it's known as "moving the Overton Window".

He is afraid of democracy, hence his affected contempt of it.

He's afraid of revolutions played out on the streets, hence the desire not to let the latest Ukrainian one succeed. His message to the people is "Look at Ukraine. It's me or chaos".

To be honest, the people of Europe would have been a lot more sympatethic to a military intervention contra Putin than you give them credit for.

No doubt that's your honest opinion but it's not one I share. Europeans have enough to worry about without a country "far away of which we know little" and a squabble over a pile of post-Soviet scrap. The appetite for spreading liberal democracy by the sword is distinctly lacking, in my view. Most Europeans with an opinion regarded the Iraq War as the madcap scheme of a blockhead US Administration; it turned out to be the predicted fiasco and now we're living with the blowback. Good luck peddling a land-war in Russia in that market. Poland-Lithuania aside, of course, which is bloody ironic.

I wouldn't be sure on that. Putin's regime is in a very tough situation at the moment, in serious financial difficulty at home, with a far-right stoked up to fever pitch by the government egging that government on, and a smouldering resentment at a non-existent wrong done to them. If Putin thinks Russia have any chance of a successful invasion (even if his Generals don't) chances are good he'll take it, in order to get a military victory to bolster his regime.

Putin's position is looking very strong at the moment. The financial difficulties are those of the oligarchs in the main, and Putin has no real affinity with them. Sanctions could have the unintended consequence of staunching capital flight and increasing productive investment in Russia, something which has been sorely lacking in the post-Soviet era. The stoked-up far right is on his side for now, and that smouldering resentment isn't directed at Putin - it's directed at the West. In the Russian national narrative the West has been victimising Russia since the 1830's; the Soviets picked that thread up from the Tsars and Putin from them.

Putin's not going to do a March Through Ukraine like the March Through Georgia. A stalemate is his victory.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Putin's not going to do a March Through Ukraine like the March Through Georgia. A stalemate is his victory.

Apropos Georgia: Porky has a new aide - non other than Mikhail Sackarschwilli. The Ukrainian ambassador to Georgia will have to explain this to the government of Georgia, where Sackarschwilli is wanted for prosecution (he was hiding in New York for the last year+). Provocation after provocation.

 

[Childlike Empress]

jimbob, you're increasingly getting on my nerves with your silly going round in circles. As I said, your motivation is obvious: to convince yourself that your sources of information are reliable. Leave me out of it or face a total end of communication.

 

[jimbob]

So are Russian paratroopers crap navigators, or did they mean to patrol in Ukraine?

Mind you, Putin at least discounts conspiracy theories about 9/11

It is hard to make out your position ETA on that but it seems that you don't... so I suggest you take a look at your own analyses.

 

[dudalb]

Childlike Empress, what evidence would convince you that Russia is sponsoring the rebels and supplying them with matériel?

Probably nothing.

 

[Hercules56]

No truces in Ukraine

http://news.yahoo.com/guns-fall-silent-ukraines-donetsk-poroshenko-orders-ceasefire-005244850.html

What's the point of negotiating truces with people who have no desire to follow them?

The Russian rebels have already vowed to break the truce.

Its like negotiating a truce with ISIS, or Hamas. They simply use it as an opportunity to rearm, or they don't follow them at all.

 

[trustbutverify]

Childlike Empress, what evidence would convince you that Russia is sponsoring the rebels and supplying them with matériel?

Do you really think evidence has anything to do with this? You're talking with someone who thinks a missile hit the pentagon and Michael Jackson might still be alive. The conclusions are pre-selected, evidence to the contrary is simply rejected.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Surprisingly decent and read-worthy piece by Max Seddon at BuzzFeed: The Government Is Losing Territory In Eastern Ukrainians’ Hearts And Minds

 

[Matthew Ellard]

http://news.yahoo.com/guns-fall-silent-ukraines-donetsk-poroshenko-orders-ceasefire-005244850.html

What's the point of negotiating truces with people who have no desire to follow them?

The Russian rebels have already vowed to break the truce.

Its like negotiating a truce with ISIS, or Hamas. They simply use it as an opportunity to rearm, or they don't follow them at all.

There are up to 8,000 Ukrainian troops encircled at Debaltseve. The urgency was to prepare for their release if they are fully encircled and captured. The actual entire deployment of the Ukrainian army is only around 50,000, so this has been a military disaster, more so on lost heavy equipment.

However as the two rebel oblasts, which are ethnic Russian, are now allowed to have a vote of their future, "Minsk II" is satisfactory to all parties.

What isn't detailed in "Minsk II" is assurances on Russian gas supplies to Germany, although I assume these assurances exist.

 

[Childlike Empress]

A grim but plausible assessment of the situation on the ground. Apparently Porky was waiting for news from his incompetent staff, that's (one reason) why the negotiations took that long. And apparently he is the one who asked for the delay until Sunday. If you want to take a look at the map, Logvinovo is here, the cauldron is south of it.

After the delay Logvinovo looks like this (and is obviously still controlled by the "rebels"):

 

[Childlike Empress]

[I was tempted to write something about how this is absolutely bizarre and should not be a scene of the 21st century, but foresaw the "it's Putin's fault" reaction so spared me this. But the fact that these narratives of who's "to blame" are drifting more and more apart from each other is extremely worrying. If we continue along this path, we'll blow up this terrific but sometimes terrifying planet]

 

[carlitos]

We?

 

[McHrozni]

http://news.yahoo.com/guns-fall-silent-ukraines-donetsk-poroshenko-orders-ceasefire-005244850.html

What's the point of negotiating truces with people who have no desire to follow them?

The Russian rebels have already vowed to break the truce.

Its like negotiating a truce with ISIS, or Hamas. They simply use it as an opportunity to rearm, or they don't follow them at all.

PR. It gives France and Germany an excuse to withhold aid for a few more weeks. Months were hoped for, but the Russian forces basically denounced the cease-fire within two hours of it coming in effect.

EU needs to decide what it wants to do with Ukraine. Does it want to help it become a sovereign state or not, and accept the consequences either way. If it wants to help Ukraine be independent and sovereign it needs to step up to the plate, if not it needs to accept it is a paper dragon of superb irrelevance. These half-measures are worse than doing nothing.

My personal opinion is that Ukraine needs to be supplied with enough weapons and military training to be able to fight off the Russian army (primarily through unconventional means, I'd start with at least 100,000 per-positioned IEDs and work from there), and on top of that enough weapons and material to overrun these "rebels". Plus enough conventional medium-range missiles to turn Sevastapol into a crater, and enough anti-ship missiles to convert Russian Black Sea fleet into a submarine-only force. A few nuclear weapons would be a nice addition, but there are legal problems with those. Maybe long-range missiles with chemical warheads, they can produce those, surely.

Then, and only then it needs to go on the offensive, certainly not before. It's the only way to keep the whole thing from escalating.

McHrozni

 

[Craig B]

Plus enough conventional medium-range missiles to turn Sevastapol into a crater, and enough anti-ship missiles to convert Russian Black Sea fleet into a submarine-only force. A few nuclear weapons would be a nice addition, but there are legal problems with those. Maybe long-range missiles with chemical warheads, they can produce those, surely.

Then, and only then it needs to go on the offensive, certainly not before. It's the only way to keep the whole thing from escalating.

Let's recap. The use of nuclear and chemical weapons would keep the situation from escalating, but legal problems need to be overcome. I'll go and think about that. It's an interesting and novel way of stopping "escalation", I admit.

 

[McHrozni]

Let's recap. The use of nuclear and chemical weapons would keep the situation from escalating, but legal problems need to be overcome. I'll go and think about that. It's an interesting and novel way of stopping "escalation", I admit.

Who said anything about using them? Today nuclear weapons (and other strategic WMDs) are extremely useful, but only until they are used. Once they are used, they become worse than useless.
If you think that's self-contradictory you don't understand the principles of deterrence.

Putin has threatened Ukraine and the West with nukes over this conflict at least three or four times now. Ukraine has no viable response to that. The only way to ensure it doesn't escalate into a nuclear war is to ensure Russia would be crippled for a few generations by the response.

McHrozni

 

[angrysoba]

Who said anything about using them? Today nuclear weapons (and other strategic WMDs) are extremely useful, but only until they are used. Once they are used, they become worse than useless.
If you think that's self-contradictory you don't understand the principles of deterrence.

How would it deter Russia if such weapons are not to be used under any circumstances?

Besides, Russia also has nuclear weapons of course, and would they be a deterrent to the attacks that you favour Ukraine makes on Russia's fleet?