Russian-Ukrainian war

AskWazzup said:
lujo said:
...It's not like they ever lost it, really. They're fighting to keep the status quo, but sice most of the status quo was unnoficial since Hruscev, it looks rather shocking. Technicaly, it's not really an invasion as much as dropping the PR pretenses about how things actually worked over there.
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Technicaly it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
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Yes.
All territory on earth has at some point had another national identity than what it has today, wether it belonged to a neighboring country - or it enjoyed independence in early history. Like I once told a grumpy old white-pride guy, that if we're gonna be picking and choosing what historical "basis" we "belong to", we should just go all the way back. "Proud white Europeans" should worship bears, and dance around fireplaces and stuff like that. Count me out, I got things to do.

Same with Crimea - it belonged to Russia, it no longer does, they traded it for a huge stockpile of nukes, they shook hands, signed the paper, and sealed the deal. Coming back to cry about it is lame. Also, come on, Russia should ask Finland what their opinion is, about lost land, stolen land, taken land, land not given back, false pretexts, etc, I bet the Finns could elaborate a bit on the problem.
 
Russians are indeed among the very last people who should cry about such things. Its history is filled to the brim with strong-arming various ethnicities into their territories, before, during and after the USSR. Even today, it would be hard to say all the people in Russia proper see thrmselves as ethnic Russians. Again, they're hardly unique in this matter, but looking at some of their media it seems the Russians are very quick to play the victim and ''protect the nation/people'' cards, when they are among the biggest victimizers of them all.

But at least so far there hasn't been bloodshed, and I'm fairly positive the plan is not to wage war in Ukraine. Putin is waving his dick around and counting on the West letting him because the alternative is far uglier. But I'm worried that if too many incidents like that are allowed to pass, the Kremlin starts to grow overconfident and overplays its hands; there's only so much the West will accept without sanctions of some kind.
 
No, no, no, I don't mean that the Russians never lost Crimea in a nationalist sense - but in the very real "we have you at gunpoint and you're only a sovereign state if you do exactly what we tell you and never get any other idea otherwise we burn you all to the ground" sense. They don't have any "right" to it, but they have need of it. Having Ukraine, and Crimea with it, turn west and then someone like USA buying/extorting the right to build a bigass military base there is just out of the question as far as Putin (or any hypothetical Russian dictator) is concerned. If Russia at any point lost de facto control over the Black Sea, we'd all know about it because everything from Turkey to India would be a big saudistan or several small ones.

It wouldn't take forever for the US to take over middle-east states, or destabilize them into stone age. There'd be noone to easily supply the opposition. Just about any war america has led since WWII (and there were plenty) was only a war because Russia backed the other side, where Russia was out of reach, the US did whatever they wanted (think Chile). Without Russia in the equation (or at least at in a position where they can't support the other side), the US (or even France, lol) can mow down most countries in a matter of days. And then keep it.

Now whether US "winning" would be a good or a bad thing is up for debate, but as far as the russian leadership is concerned it's out of the question. The west was very quick to acquire Romania and Bulgaria, US has controlled Turkey for decades, Russia won't let Ukraine go (at least not the parts next to the black sea), because if it goes - Syria goes, and after Syria, Iran does as well. And once Iran goes... Well, we can all have that war we've building towards for the last 60 or so years.
 
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Naaah, jury is still out on that. As long as it's just Crimea, nothing else was expected. Noone officially backed the Ukrainian revolution because they knew this would happen, but if it ends there, in a seccession of Krim (whether annexed or as a Kosovo-like protectorate), it's where it will end for a while. Possibly a longish while.

If not, then, yes, I agree, Putin's gone off his rocker.
 
I am not sure France of its own could mow down other countries easily. (especially is the military budget dropping every day). France + UK + Germany is one other thing...

Also, it is sure Russia want to keep some influence in countries around, but it's seem unlikely that they could go full war agains't the west, and bring a lot of allies around. By the time of the cold war they were two opposed ideologies, with cons & pros in both sides. Now even russians & chinese are capitalist. There's not much they could ideologically bring in the table, contrary to the arabians, which oppose Religion agains't heresy, with pros & cons in both sides.
 
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Putin putting all his informational resources to use, our news websites forums are full of Kremlin Trolls today, as well as youtube and probably to some extent websites all around Europe. Trying to gloss this over as much as possible, i wonder how many they employ to wage such a huge informational war.
 
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Russia really seems like the bully amongst countries. It's like all they're good at is flexing their muscles and sending soldiers/swat guys to 'fix' things, whilst being totally inept.
 
Akratus said:
Russia really seems like the bully amongst countries. It's like all they're good at is flexing their muscles and sending soldiers/swat guys to 'fix' things, whilst being totally inept.
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Ironically, this should make Russia and USA super buddies, they've even failed miserably with the same country (Afghanistan), they could totally hang out together, and hi-five.

Btw, Russia denies having given an ultimatum.
 
naossano said:
Also, it is sure Russia want to keep some influence in countries around, but it's seem unlikely that they could go full war agains't the west, and bring a lot of allies around. By the time of the cold war they were two opposed ideologies, with cons & pros in both sides. Now even russians & chinese are capitalist. There's not much they could ideologically bring in the table, contrary to the arabians, which oppose Religion agains't heresy, with pros & cons in both sides.
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Yes, but capitalist is just another name for imperialist once you grow large enough, and that's where everyone was back before WWI. Didn't stop everything going to hell. And before that everyone was happy enough with colonial wars for a good while after Prussia and England kicked everyone elses asses. And you're aware that USA and Russia have been ass deep in these for the last half a century? Now you got Europe waking up after a sound thrashing (like they got in WWI) and Germany trying to grab more and more puppets - it was only a matter of time before one of the big boys decides to show they're not letting anything of real strategic importance go.

And there's also bloated military budgets and a lot of domestic bread and circueses off of faded glory around, bloated bureaucracies and an almost hereditary aristocracy pulling strings almost everywhere. New war tech, too, lots of it. It probably won't be WWII this time around, except maybe in terms of troop mobility, but there's rather solid grounds for another WWI.



Say, it's terribly heartless, but cynicism helps dealing with stressful issues (a Nuke goes off in Ukraine, my country's pretty screwed too), anyone wants to place wagers on what happens?

My bet: Russia gets Krimea, maybe something else but not too much more, EU grugdingly accepts, Obama goes "oh, well, didn't think it would be that easy anyway", entire world tells Ukraine there's nothing they can do, Putin scores points with warmongering nationalists and moves on to the next bread and circuses thing (something not invasion friendly), possibly even buys up whatever the new goverment in Ukraine is with gas and stuff. Some maps get redrawn, some Ukrainans get screwed over, no nukes go off. World goes back to bussiness as usual.
 
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lujo said:
World goes back to bussiness as usual.
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This IS business as usual :D It usually just happens in other places. Hell, Congo has been invaded continously by Uganda and Rwanda, and the rest of the world wasn't even aware. Analysts thought the Congolese were being crybabies or something, untill it has recently come to the surface that it was indeed an invasion for territorial control/conquest. Not an expert on that particular subject, but millllions of casualties since the 90s :D
 
Well, are we horrible for bieng cynical, or is the world hypocritical for loving to think Congo is on another planet? :D Because here in ex-yu everytime someone sayes something to the ammount of "yeah, that would make sense in Africa, but this is Europe", like that means something, someone else ussually reminds him/her of our own completely pointless, tribal, monstrosity laden war of not too long ago, and they go "oh, good point".
 
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What i meant, and i could be horribly wrong, is that Russia & its main allies seems to me less isolated and sharing a lot of with other countries, and depend of the whole world for many trading stuff. They would not only have a lot to lose by going a full war agains't the rest of the world but i don't feel that the people would fully support it as if the west was the unknown monsters that doesn't share any value with them. But i could underestimate the power of propaganda. I am also not fully aware of the mindset of people living in countries like Russia/USA/China that are so big that you could think it contains the whole world.
 
lujo said:
My bet: Russia gets Krimea, maybe something else but not too much more, EU grugdingly accepts, Obama goes "oh, well, didn't think it would be that easy anyway", entire world tells Ukraine there's nothing they can do...
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Here I think is the problem. Amidst all this talk about war and global tension, people forgot about the first struggle - the Ukraine, and the Ukrainians. You might have heard about the ultranationalists ('Right Sector'), who were some of the more active members of the Euromaidan. Armed and already mobilized.

Putin has proved that he's unable to handle delicate situations very well. One armed clash with these nationalists and it could result in a national uprising, effectively turning Ukrainians into a partisan army of millions, supported by the West through equipment and training (as it had been in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and just about any Russian armed conflict). That right there is the grave of the current regime.
 
Which one, Russian or Ukrainian? Because, yeah, EU and USA would like nothing better than see Russia bogged down in another pointless and resource draining war, and even move in later as "investors" which "help" rebuild Ukraine.

And yeah, people forget Ukraine, except Ukraine can either take a hard stance on not giving Russia what it wants and get either curb-stomped or bogged down in a war, or listen to what it's told (by everyone eventualy) and give Russia what it wants. They're sorta screwed whatever they do.
 
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