Ukraine 5

NDPP wrote:

Here is more from the CBC reporter previously writing for The Guardian:

"While the world watched, Russia snatched away part of a sovereign state, and then did it again. With little real help coming their way, the Ukrainian people have bound together to stand up to the Russian empire in a David versus Goliath-like fight."

No wonder people have such shit in their heads on Ukraine, Syria, Libya etc.

 

Pro-Kyiv Propaganda Service, Also Known as The CBC, Publishes an Article on the Increased Military Clashes Taking Place in Eastern Ukraine

https://www.newcoldwar.org/pro-kyiv-propaganda-service-also-known-canadi...

"A report by CBC on Ukraine would not be complete without a few bald-faced lies. 'Who cares? Not us,' replies CBC."

We can talk about justifications  and all but are we saying that Russia did not snatch away a piece of what was another country? I was not aware that this was being disputed.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

The validity is being disputed, yes, and has been for several years. If some people here want to believe there was no interference in that referendum, that there were not regular Russian troops operating out of uniform before it was held that's fine.

I realize we are not going to agree on that, so there is not much point in arguing who is right. But we can certainly present both perspectives here.

My point is that they have a part of what was another country without the consent of that country. It is an odd thing to dispute.

I get the dispute about the will of the people in that territory. But this seemed, apart form the justification argument, rather self evident.

The breakup of one country certainly complicates to a significant degree what you consider external or internal affairs. The best argument against the concept that they took a part of another country is to see Ukraine and Russia in a long term period of splitting and that this is just part of a messy divorce.

Now of course you can point to the delay of two decades. But even there we have some considerations. It takes a while to address thigns and this can be delayed during periods of calm where there is no urgency and inflamed suddenly when there is. In this case the internal problems of Ukraine were very much related to the actions of Russia.

So there are no short of arguments to be made to explain why this is different than it might appear out of context. But I think a lot of time is wasted disputing what should be considered commonly agreed facts rather than evaluating, explanations, justifications and motivations.

I think there are stronger arguments in this for Russia than denial and I don't think that denial has served them very well.

The Ukronazis Used A Ballistic Missile To Strike At the Center of Donestsk (and vid)

http://thesaker.is/the-ukronazis-used-a-ballistic-missile-to-strike-at-t...

"Reports are coming in of what appears to be a ballistic missile strike which hit the city center of Donestsk. Multiple rocket launchers were also used."

And Even RFERL Knows Who's To Blame...

https://t.co/1FgOo383tI

'Anxious Ukraine Risks Escalation in 'Creeping Offensive'

That was a national election, not a referendum to break up the country. Mariupol was one of those cities which voted mostly for yanukovich, yet they haven't thrown the doors open to the russians.

Okay, well kharkiv didn't go over either. My point is those results do not mean what you claim they do. It was not a sovereignty referendum.

I explained already in the other thread why I find that suspiciously high referendum result hard to believe.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

6079_Smith_W wrote:

That was a national election, not a referendum to break up the country. Mariupol was one of those cities which voted mostly for yanukovich, yet they haven't thrown the doors open to the russians.

So you have nothing to say but you post anyways. Is there any dispute with the FACTS I posted above. Those are the facts and you can spin other facts anyway you want.

The idea that the people of Crimea did not support the moves by their parliament to join Russia, after the regime change in Kiev removed the people they had voted overwhelmingly for, is propaganda and disinformation. 

And more obviously, why would anyone wish to be ruled by a Nazi oligarchy whose murderous intentions ('Moskali to the knives!') towards Crimeans have already been amply demonstrated. No wonder millions of Ukrainians themselves have voted with their feet and gone elsewhere. Mostly to Russia.

Canadians had better be careful. You now have a Minister of Global Affairs who shares the same fascist Banderite sympathies and was pronounced 'our woman in the Canadian government' by official Ukrainian sources. The billionaire oligarch and CIA asset who runs this looney bin, Petro Poroshenko, who has already received upwards of $500 Million from Canada,  is considered by Chrystia Freeland to be 'the best government Ukraine has had in its entire history.'

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

My point is that they have a part of what was another country without the consent of that country. It is an odd thing to dispute.

I get the dispute about the will of the people in that territory. But this seemed, apart form the justification argument, rather self evident.

You must mean in 1954 when the evil USSR included Crimea in the Ukrainian SSR as a sop to the dictator khrushchev's allies in Kiev.  Strangely this act of enforced inclusion of a people was the only one that we respect. The Baltic nations of course deserve their right to chose but not the Russian speaking population of Crimea. They were given to the Ukraine and that is the end of it. 

Also irrelevant is the fact that in the democratic elections that took place in 2010 this is how the vote broke out. Note the Crimean voters backed Yanukovych everywhere on the Island with over 3/4 of the voters choosing him under the banner of the Party of Regions to run the country.  The losers in  that election staged a regime change event and installed a party that less than 20% of the Crimean populatopn had supported. 

In the Crimean parliamentary elections held in 2010 the people of the region gave the Party of Regions 49% of the vote in a PR system and the next party was the Ukrainian Communist party at 7.4%. Because of the overwhelming numbers they won 48/50 seats.  After the regime change in Kiev the Crimean parliament voted to hold a referendum on independence. 

Of course in all of this unlike with people in other areas of the world the Crimeans have no agency and are dupes and captives of the evil Russians.

I do not know what point you are trying to make. It is not very clear.

No complaint was made at the time of Ukraine independence but some time later. So the point I made it still true. The point you are making is valid but does not negate mine -- it speaks to justifications.

I am not sure why Russia did not claim the Crimea back in the early 1990s.The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was in the context of both being in the USSR. I find it ratehr suspect to presume that deal woudl not be reviewed upon independence. But the fact is it wasn't.

Perhaps the issue was the presumption of Ukraine as a friendly state and this only became an issue if they looked like they would not remain so.

the point I am making is they did snatch it from another country - seems undeniable. But it is not as if there were not reasons to do so. The referendum should have been held in the early 1990s and I doubt it would have been different.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

the point I am making is they did snatch it from another country - seems undeniable. But it is not as if there were not reasons to do so. The referendum should have been held in the early 1990s and I doubt it would have been different.

This is a denial of the agency of the people of Crimea. They are not dupes and slaves they have been voting for decades and they have chosen their path they have not been snatched by anyone. Repeating propaganda points of the NATO alliance to vilify Russia is beneath you Sean. 

Unless I have mistaken your view and you actually think there is a dispute that the Crimean people didn't want to kowtow to the new regime in Kiev that is openly hostile to Russian speaking people. That would be pretty much everyone in Crimea.  

Imagine a coup in Canada that installed a government that adopted English as the state language of all provinces including Quebec. I am not sure what the numbers would be but if the province had a referendum it would likely pass with a large majority.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

the point I am making is they did snatch it from another country - seems undeniable. But it is not as if there were not reasons to do so. The referendum should have been held in the early 1990s and I doubt it would have been different.

This is a denial of the agency of the people of Crimea. They are not dupes and slaves they have been voting for decades and they have chosen their path they have not been snatched by anyone. Repeating propaganda points of the NATO alliance to vilify Russia is beneath you Sean. 

Unless I have mistaken your view and you actually think there is a dispute that the Crimean people didn't want to kowtow to the new regime in Kiev that is openly hostile to Russian speaking people. That would be pretty much everyone in Crimea.  

Imagine a coup in Canada that installed a government that adopted English as the state language of all provinces including Quebec. I am not sure what the numbers would be but if the province had a referendum it would likely pass with a large majority.

Actually it is no denial. I do not see the observation that the people wanted to be with Russia and the territory being snatched as mutually exclusive concepts. I have also said that they did not need to do it that way but that is the way they did it.

I find that all-to-often there is a search for a simple way of looking at something in a good/bad black and white view that really does not serve anyone very well. It is a risky argument that can be lost.

I think the denial that it was snatched promotes a lack of understanding that the people wanted it that way. I prefer stronger arguments to simple ones. And when you say something that on its face is incorrect that does more damage to your argument that the oppostion could.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I think the denial that it was snatched promotes a lack of understanding that the people wanted it that way. 

I think that the insistence that it was snatched promotes a lack of understanding that the people wanted it that way. I am not sure why you think the opposite.

Sorry Krop -- this is irritating. I already said that I do not think that the people wanting to go in any way contradicts that it was snatched. This is territory that was under the control of another government and they took it. We can discuss the reasons why but the word snatch is still relevant even if every single person without a single exception wanted to go. It woudl be true no matter how bad the government was in Kiev. It is not a vlaue judgment. It is one part of a country being taken from another country without that country's agreement or even any kind of process for it.

Sorry but you are the one in denial and that is harming your argument.

I have already stated that I believe the Crimean people wanted to be with Russia. I have never said they should not have it.

I have said that arguing that they snatched it is a losing proposition. Explaining why is a better use of energy.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I have already stated that I believe the Crimean people wanted to be with Russia. 

We have a few points of agreement.

I am not particularly pro-Russian but the idea that a newly inserted regime in Kiev was going to control Crimea was in geopolitical terms just a little arrogant on the part of the masterminds behind the coup in Kiev.  Crimea was the only Autonomous region in the Ukraine and they elected the Party of Regions to represent them in Kiev and within their own Crimean legislature. The Russian base at Sevastopol dates from the 1780's. Saying that Russia snatched it away is true except it ignores the history and the reality that the Russians were never going to allow the leaders of a Western backed coup to have any say in Crimea. You see it as Russia snatching and I see it as the West over reaching because they can't lose. You poke the bear and if nothing happens you win and if the bear reacts then it proves what a despicable creature it is. 

Let me put it this way. If you take something of mine and I snatch it back -- I still can't say that the act of snatching did not happen. The rationale for why it is mine is not part of the act -- it only helps explain it. To say I snatched it in no way negates my claim or that it was mine. It only speaks to what I did.

Now this is a complicated situation as the USSR gifted the territory to Ukraine and then did not say anything when it became independent. It should have put Crimea up for debate then and not a couple decades later. Apart from all justifications, snatch is still the right word.

Now the explanation may inlcude that Russia may not have raised this on independence in order to keep good relations with Ukraine. That was apparently not a good judgment call. It can be argued that the Russian position was prescribed when it let Ukraine leave the USSR with it.

The best argument for what should happen to it is the will of the people there. In this case Russia had a strong justification to see a change but instead of making the claim it went in and took it (holding the referendum after). The word snatch is fair -- even if every single person in Crimea wanted this. The point is it was like-it-or-not a part of another country and they did not bother with any process other than snatching it to get it.

Just because Russia had a good claim doee not mean that the way that they did this needs to be approved or that we have to pretend they did not snatch it.

I guess the point is that I do not feel the need to say that side is right. So I don't. Crimea should have gone to Russia and Russia should not have snatched it in the way it did without a better international claim becuase this was international by the time they did it.

Funny. I think we all agree both that there was no way Russia was going to let go of Sevastopol, and that, had there been a free referendum, there is a good chance the people of Crimea might have voted to join Russia. If anyone read the wikipedia article I posted they would have noted that a post-referendum poll by the Levada Centre found the somewhat more believable number of 84 percent in favour of the Russian option.

Of course, I think we would also agree that Nixon would have won the 72 election even without Watergate. So it isn't the only relevant question.

The questions of interference, and of legitimacy are important, which you can see not only from the number of nations (not only western nations) which do not recognize the result, but also from the fact that even several members of Viktor Yanukovich's Party of Regions considered it an illegal referendum.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

The questions of interference, and of legitimacy are important, 

I agree that the regime change in Kiev was a case of foreign interference and thus it had no legitimacy to try to rule the Autonomous Region of Crimea. The West backed coup that included fascist elements only has legitimacy in a NATO propaganda reel.

There has only been one election in Crimea since the referendum and that was the recent Russian election. Crimea did not vote in the Ukrainian elections so I don't understand how those elections legitimize the Kiev regime's claim to still rule Crimea. In the last Ukrainian election that Crimean's voted in they overwhelmingly voted for the party that was overthrown in the NATO orchestrated putsch.

Quote:

On 2 September the Central Election Commission of Ukraine announced that voters from Crimea (including Sevastopol) would not be able to vote for the 12 Crimean constituencies.[1][14] On 25 October (one day before the election) the Central Election Commission of Ukraine announced that there will also be no voting in 9 constituencies in Donetsk Oblast and 6 constituencies in Luhansk Oblast (the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine).[1] Because of this 27 seats of the 450 seats in parliament will remain unfilled.[1] On 24 October it was estimated by the democratic watchdog OPORA that 4.6 million Ukrainians will be unable to vote – 1.8 million in Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, 1.6 million in Donetsk Oblast and 1.2 million in Luhansk Oblast.[44]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_parliamentary_election,_2014

6079_Smith_W wrote:

I didn't bring it up in reference to Crimea, k. I brought it up in reference to you calling it a putsch and illegitimate.

Would you have preferred if Ukraine tried to walk into Crimea and set up polling stations? Do you think Russia would have let it happen?

One of the things you have to remember is that once a legitimate government is overthrown, everything is on the table. It's also no secret that Russians are discriminated against in Ukraine.

Ukraine could have set up polling stations in Crimea. Like the Maytag repairman, the people who ran them would have been the loneliest people in town.

I'm not the one who brought that up, Rev. I was wondering how it related to my point, which is this: 

Whatever one's opinion is about the former president up and leaving the country, there has been a parliamentary and a presidential election since then.

And the current president is someone who that part president asked to have in his cabinet five years ago.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I guess the point is that I do not feel the need to say that side is right. So I don't. Crimea should have gone to Russia and Russia should not have snatched it in the way it did without a better international claim becuase this was international by the time they did it.

What were the international rules that were being followed when the West backed a coup in Kiev? We seem to have a difference as to what started the inevitable chain of events.

I thought a two wrongs make a right argument was beneath you

The people of Crimea have a right to self determination and we all agree they would prefer to be within the Russian sphere. It was wrong to institute regime change and like all regime changes from Yugoslavia to Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya once the West unleashed the genie out of the bottle nasty things happened. I don't believe in two wrongs making a right I believe that interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations as NATO does leads to instability. However I think you have to look at who started the snowball rolling at the top of the mountain to determine why the avalanche destroyed so much. Condemning the neighbours who dug out the Crimean's from the avalanche is pointless.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I note some of them are up in arms but only in parts of the country that voted for the Party of Regions prior to the coup. For some strange reason the parts of the country that voted that way in 2010 didn't feel all warm and fussy about the overthrow of their government by Western backed armed insurgents.

But you will also notice that there are many parts of the country where the majority voted for Party of Regions but where there has been neither uprising, nor invasion. Mariupol, which has been bulwark against the invasion, and the home of the Azov Battalion, voted majority Party of regions. And I pointed out that several members of that same party spoke out against the illegal referendum.

So it is a little bit more complicated than that.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

6079_Smith_W wrote:

So it is a little bit more complicated than that.

That has been my point all along. It is way more complicated than Russia is bad and the Ukraine is good. You post without nuance normally and condemn one side and praise  the other. I am merely trying to point out there is more to the story than the NATO propaganda channel that you seem to stuck in.

I am glad you are seeing some of the nuances in a complex dispute.  

At least on this I think we agree.

Too many conflicts in the world are discussed in a very simplistic way.

Certainly this is an example of things being much more complicated that many want to make out and no side is particularly innocent.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Sure. 

But is it still nothing but a western backed coup then?

Of course not. For many Ukrainians especially in the government controlled areas the new Kiev government is legitimate. It is up to them to figure out how to reconcile with the other people who don't want any part of this anti-Russian government.  It is very complicated and it is always sad when neighbours get caught up in geopolitical machinations and start fighting against each other. 

6079_Smith_W wrote:

It is not just a case of neighbours being caught up in geopolitical machinations. There is actually a history between the Russians, the Ukrainans, the Tatars, the Jews, the Mennonites, the Poles, and others who live there.

The tension was there and then someone lit the fuse. 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The tension was there and then someone lit the fuse. 

There are many points which could be identified as "lighting the fuse", going back decades. Most recently, the 2009 announcement to end the Sevastopol lease in 2017 was probably one. Or Russia cutting off gas back in the 90s to press for control of the Black Sea Fleet.

It has been a few years, but from one perspective that happened when Viktor Yanukovich backed out of the EU partnership agreement. And it is worth remembering that HE negotiated that, not the opposition. Not the members of any alleged putsch. Even if he did do it because he wanted cash.

Also forgotten is the hundreds of people who started disappearing after the Maidan protests started, some later found at the garbage dump, or in one case hanging from a metal protest tree. This went on for several months before the situation reached a crisis point.

This article is worth reading. It does focus on the mis-steps by Europe (no, it wasn't the Americans), but also points out that Putin had also given the green light to economic cooperation in 2004. And it points out that the nation which really wanted Ukraine to have NATO membership was Poland. Everyone else realized that and EU membership were out of the question.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/war-in-ukraine-a-result-of-mi...

Were there bad mistakes made on the part of Russia? Of course. That is a big part of the reason why many were pushing for closer EU ties in the first place. But this is also tempered by the fact Ukraine borders on Russia, and was host to one of their most important naval bases.

So this does actually focus on western mistakes and overreaching, with the difference that it points out how Yanukovich played a major role in it.

Yes, though we wouldn't reduce Ireland's easter uprising as "poking the bear". We would see it for what it was - a popular uprising.

Certainly what caused the political turmoil, and the invasion, in Ukraine was the fact that this involved Europe and Russia. But the pressure to move toward Europe, both economically and in terms of rule of law, were popular. And in fact it was Yanukovich and the Party of Regions which negotiated that process until he caved in to pressure from Putin to stop.

Note the difference in these two articles, in particular Putin refering to the protests as "European" blackmail, and the mixed message about further talks.

https://www.rt.com/business/ukraine-eu-trade-agreement-088/

https://www.rt.com/news/putin-eu-ukraine-blackmail-151/https://www.rt.co...

Although in hindsight this is being spun as a military, NATO and American driven process that isn't actually what happened at the time. The military threat certainly was on people's minds (and considering what happened after, they were right to be) But while some there and in Poland had talked about NATO membership for Ukraine, that has never been seriously on the table. The real military issue was Sevastopol; and it was a Russian concern. But the far greater issue from the perspective of Ukraine was political and economic.

Here's a documentary on Rossia-1 about the Crimean invasion. In the first two minutes Putin says that at the time he took Yanukovich out of Ukraine he started planning to annex Crimea to Russia. Also in the documentary he speaks openly about how he sent troops in before the election to secure the penninsula, makes references to the ethnic divide there making things potentially worse, and that he was prepared to use nuclear arms if necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeWXs8fLC1I