European Politics

MSNBC jsut brought back Czechoslovakia .... dumbasses

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There are houses, yes, lots of houses, just a bit on the expensive side is all. If anyone wants to steal me a house I'll go along with it.
 
Soon there will be a list pseudo-Facebook statuses about the Ukraine crisis.

"Viktor Yanukovych's status is now deposed"
"European Union and USA like this"
 
Obama did not win the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing, I'm sure Twitter is only the start, next up Instagram!
 
Some further developments: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26405635

Ukraine has ordered a full military mobilisation in response to Russia's build-up of its forces in Crimea.

The BBC has seen what appear to be Russian troops digging trenches on the Crimean border. :blink:

The US, France and Canada say they are suspending preparations for a G8 summit in the Russian resort of Sochi in June as a reaction to the deployment, with Canada also recalling its ambassador from Moscow for consultations.
 
Don't get me wrong: I don't approve of Putin's imperialism, he is a villain and he should leave the Ukrainians alone.

But I wish whatever government the Ukraine has right now would put human lives over national pride, and let Crimea go. It's just not worth it.
 
Apparently on the news (I don't have a link, was mentioned in conversation with my mum) it was stated the UN has declared Russia's actions as an act of war.

Whilst I agree it would be best to let it end without any loss of life, the problem isn't necessarily national pride, it's giving in to what could be called bullying (or rather terrorism) to an extent - "Give us this or we'll beat you up". Which if they cave, sends a signal to everyone else, but even just regarding Russia where does it end. I would hope that Crimea is all they want, but he may turn out to be more greedy and start wondering what else he can get out of it. That is of course, a worst case scenario and I hope it would never come to anything even like that.

Aren't they trying to declare this as "protecting our citizens"? I was under the impression that the issues in Kiev were a) in Kiev and b) over. Further more if they are living in Crimea then they are surely not Russia's responsibility to protect any more... I mean if something kicked off in Britain I wouldn't expect a large deployment of Polish troops to suddenly appear to protect the Polish living here. This is after all what the Police and Military of the country are for, to protect people living there, not just people who were born there.
 
Perun said:
But I wish whatever government the Ukraine has right now would put human lives over national pride, and let Crimea go. It's just not worth it.
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Agreed. It's very difficult to act wise in this situation.
 
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The majority of the Crimean population is Russian, they'd rather belong to Moscow than to Kiev, and there is a referendum for independence planned for the end of March. This is all not that simple.
 
Perun said:
The majority of the Crimean population is Russian, they'd rather belong to Moscow than to Kiev, and there is a referendum for independence planned for the end of March. This is all not that simple.
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I don't really know what happened with the earlier riots etc other than the Prime Minister/President (?) of Ukraine has been deposed, but does this mean that the guy who's just been ousted was more favourable to that Russian population in Crimea than his replacement, and so Moscow have become somewhat unhappy with this and stepped in? So in less than a month most of this may have been sorted in an entirely different way?

World of Tanks as you may or may not know, is done by a company based in Moscow, who also have an office in Kiev (that focuses on World of Warplanes). As I play the game I frequently read a blog with various articles on either the game or historical info about the vehicles within it, and this morning he's put up something about the Ukraine business because someone had asked him if he thought it would affect the companies operation. The blog is hosted in by someone living in Kiev, with whom he has spoken - naturally he's not anything to do with the government etc, so whether these are opinions or things that have been heard within I don't know, but here's some of the things he wrote.

A lot of people compare the situation to Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Adolf Hitler, using blackmail and cowardice of former Czechoslovak allies, forced Czechoslovakia to secede its border regions at the pretense of “protecting ethnic Germans”
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He basically confirmed to me that if Russians continue to invade from Crimea into Ukraine, there will be an all-out war
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I really don't know much about the whole situation asides from what I've been reading here and the odd snippet I've caught from the BBC on TV, so I'm curious as to any comments on this you guys have.
 
It's pretty clear that the Kremlin's excuse for invading Crimea - protecting ethnic Russians and Russian interests - was just that, an excuse. I don't think there was going to be any persecution of the Russian speaking population in Ukraine as the protests weren't necessarily anti-Russia, more anti-Yanukovych. Like Crimson Idol said, Poland wouldn't try to invade Britain and I can't see France invading Canada or Holland invading South Africa. Obviously the Russians have occupied Crimea to bully the Ukrainian parliament into doing whatever it is that Putin wants them to. Letting go of Crimea would save lives in the immediate future what what kind of precedent would it set? Fighting back against Russia would show Putin that the Ukrainians won't be bullied but Russia could peel Ukraine like an orange. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. If they let go of Crimea they're also abandoning the ethnic Ukrainians in the region as well as the Tatars, one of whom told the BBC that they don't support the Russians and have learnt to be part of Ukraine since the country became independent.
 
Yeah, I hear that Hitler-Czechoslovakia argument all the time. I frankly don't know if it's valid. In 1938, the alternative to the Munich agreement wasn't running into total nuclear annihilation, I do know that much.

Sure, letting Russia have Crimea sets a questionable precedent. People forget that Sevastopol has always been under de facto control of the Russian navy, but that only concerns this one place. So yeah, the precedent. The message needs to get out that Putin can't do whatever he wants. I guess it's a matter of philosophy to determine whether this message is worth risking and sacrificing lives for.

I don't know what kind of war is being risked here, whether it's completely limited to Crimea, whether it's fighting in Crimea and bombing Ukrainian cities as in Georgia, or if Putin decides all Russians in the Ukraine need saving and he just decides to invade the whole country. How can we know? And where do we draw the line between making a statement of national sovereignty and blatant suicide?
 
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