Ukraine.

[Houston Valiant]

It goes back to the saying "If everyone had their own"

[For Us All]

Moscow now has two options: 1) A confederacy between Crimea and Ukraine or 2) Crimea’s full integration into the Russian Federation (a relevant law is being adjusted to allow this).

Even if there is no war,the Crimea crisis is likely to alter fundamentally relations between Russia and the West and lead to changes in the global power balance,with Russia now in open competition with the United States and the European Union.

[For Us All]

Here we go.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10674275/Ukraine-gas-and-oil-prices-rise-amid-fears-of-supply-disruption.html

[Bea Smith]

A quick scan of

 

http://www.ukr.net/theheavenshundred.html

 

shows that a 62 year old woman was beaten to death by police with a baton.

 

Died of slaughter...police batons.

Someone else, a Geophysics professor, was abducted by the police and died as the result of

 

legs - could see the bones, the whole back was blue, his face broken ribs .... on the right side of the skin, because some were broken.

 

Clearly no issues with police corruption/brutality there.

 

 

You might try looking up the word 'gullible' in the dictionary sometime. Nationalist right-wing websites and heresay data uploaded to Wiki are worthless, and full of gutless lies similar to Dr Goebbels stuff in Nazi Germany. I expect we'll see a Reichstag style fire at the Kiev parliamanent blamed on a Crimean seperatist soon. However, even the BBC showed 'protesters' with rifles but inanely said 'not all of them are armed'.

You also make reference to police 'killing their own countrymen'. Weren't the police who were murdered also killed by 'their own countryman' then ?

It's quite clear that, as in Syria, both sides have things to answer for, but it is amazing that such restraint was shown for so long by the elected government - if it had been Isreal and Palestinians throwing petrol bombs they would have been shot on day one. The students murdered in the US at Kent State didn't have rifles or have to kill policemen to be gunned down either.

And to those idiots who answerd the Kosovo comparison by saying that Serbia does bad things, just look a little further back to WW2 where Croatia (currently begging to join the EU) organised some of the worst concentration camps and murdered and tortured over a million people (mostly Serbs, Jews, Roma people and their own dissidents), even their Nazi masters had to tell them to be less vicious.

[Paul6754]

To me this is all about Russia drawing a line in the sand viz Ukraine developing closer ties with the EU and possible future EU membership. The USA, Europe and Russia all have far to much to lose for events to get out of hand. I can't ever see Russia allowing the UKraine to join the EU unless the Crimean peninsula is ceded in some way to Russia, its strategically to important.

[For Us All]

Seems like there is too much money involved for us to impose sanctions?

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10674503/Ukraine-crisis-UK-prepares-to-rule-out-sanctions-on-Russia-amid-threat-to-global-economy.html

[JOHNNYAITCH]

Difficult decision

 

Been watching the Stock Market rise and fall during his speech..up and down up and down..kerrazeeee

[Andyregs]

Russia hasn't changed, apart from making a few people very rich. In fact under Putin it seems worse than the later old regime leaders. Their hypocrisy over Syria and Ukraine is so blatant. Though so is ours. It's ok to use military force on people like saddam when they do this because we can, but Russia are one of the big boys.

[For Us All]

Putin is running rings around Obama,JFK will be turning in his grave.

[Bea Smith]

Russia hasn't changed, apart from making a few people very rich. In fact under Putin it seems worse than the later old regime leaders. Their hypocrisy over Syria and Ukraine is so blatant. Though so is ours. It's ok to use military force on people like saddam when they do this because we can, but Russia are one of the big boys.

 

It's a bit worse than that. The US and some UK leaders of recent times can't wait to be the moral guardians of the world when it suits, but hardly dare say a word about the dreadful human rights abuses of Robert Mugabe, or what goes on in Saudi Arabia (the least free country in the world) or Bahrain where the uprisings were brutally put down without a word from the west. I wonder why, but expect most can work it out.

Russia is not going to take over all of Ukraine, and probably wont venture outside Crimea, which is really Russian anyway and was only 'transferred' by a weird administrative act by Nikita Kruschev in the 1950's. The famous Mr K was actually born in Ukraine I think I read, though this is not really relevant but an interesting piece of trivia, similarly Stalin was not Russian or Hitler German.

When it comes to really nasty and illegal interventions (and really significant mass murder) and regime changes, Putin is an absolute amateur and perhaps anyone who doesn't believe me should google Chile Allende, Patrice Lumumba, Grenada and then we have Iraq and a few dozen other places.

[JOHNNYAITCH]

Interesting to see how pragmatic our leaders are being...they could take on the Taliban, Saddam etc militarily to achieve their goals so they did, they can't take on Putin militarily to achieve their goals so they are not doing so.

 

Putin is a clever man and will get what he wants from this

[JOHNNYAITCH]

It's a bit worse than that. The US and some UK leaders of recent times can't wait to be the moral guardians of the world when it suits, but hardly dare say a word about the dreadful human rights abuses of Robert Mugabe, or what goes on in Saudi Arabia (the least free country in the world) or Bahrain where the uprisings were brutally put down without a word from the west. I wonder why, but expect most can work it out.

 

Pragmatism

[For Us All]

Russian news agency RIA: Defence Ministry says intercontinental ballistic missile test-fired.:nailbiting:

[JOHNNYAITCH]

I'm off down the pub..if I'm going to get blown away today I might as well; haven't had a drop of alcohol since late 2010 so it won't take many

[Bea Smith]

I'm off down the pub..if I'm going to get blown away today I might as well; haven't had a drop of alcohol since late 2010 so it won't take many

 

So it seems Putin is not going to annex even the Crimea, and has shown leadership that Obama and that idiot Cameron (where is he during all this ?) and his tame poodle William Haig might learn from.

 

Or was it like this -

 

Putin on phone a month ago to Yanukovitch - 'You've spent that £12 billion bail out already ? Ive just paid out for Sochi - you'll have to go, sorry. Look, get on to that blonde bimbo and get her out of prison to stir up some riots, oh and the thick Klitty-ko boxer, let them have a bit of power for now I can manipulate them later. You can have a dacha outside Sochi, just sort it.

 

Y agrees. Changeover. P puts plan into action, Crimea looks about to explode but of course is all under control.

 

Muggins EU and USA send first instalment of £100 billion bail-out to totally corrupt Ukranian economy. Putin smiles, K relaxes in his dacha, Klitty and the bimbo think they have won (but within 2 years are ousted and publicly burned at the stake in Independence square for more corruption), and all go to bed happy.... except for the western public whose services are cut and have first of six 5p a litre petrol price rises.

Gas prices about to go up too and national debts of UK, US spiral. Ukraine forces its way into EU and 65 million more become eligible to come to Britain and enjoy the milk and honey.

 

On to those other forgotten Euro-states Kazakhstan, Azerbijan and Turkmenistan !