EDITORIAL
Vladimir Putin, Raving Psychopath
As many predicted it would do after Russia’s 2008 annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia, it appears Russian success with aggression in Georgia has induced it to turn its eye toward an even juicier tidbit known, for now, as Ukraine.
Last Friday, in one of the most fully deranged displays by a world leader in recent memory, Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin spontaneously announced at a press conference in front of his Ukrainian counterpart in Moscow that he thought it would be a good idea if Russia’s giant natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, acquired its Ukrainian counterpart Naftogaz lock, stock and gas pipelines.
What was so astounding was not that Putin would entertain such thoughts, or even that he would say them (most of Russian public supports neo-Soviet aggression against Ukraine and Georgia), but that he would publicly announce such a scheme without giving any advance warning to his diplomatic peer, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who could do nothing but stammer in diplomatese that Putin had “expressed it in an impromptu way.” It’s simply unheard of for a the leader of a major nation to behave this way. Which means, of course, that it’s not the least bit surprising to find the Russians doing it.
Such a deal, if realized, would place Russia in the position to control the passage of its gas supplies into Europe through Ukraine, and deny to Ukraine the only significant bargaining chip in dealing with Russia it has left. Ukraine’s new pro-Russia prime minister Victor Yanukovich has already abandoned the idea of joining NATO and of evicting Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol, these two being the only other meaningful weapons in Urkaine’s arsenal to stave off annexation by Russia.
With control over Ukraine’s gas pipelines, Russia could move to annex the Crimean peninsula, just as it earlier annexed Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, without fear of any significant reprisals.
Nearly as astounding, in fact, as the gigantic bribe Putin paid Ukraine to allow Russia to maintain its military base at Sevastopol for an additional 25 years. Russia will pay not hundreds of millions but at least four or five billion dollars per year throughout that period in enormous subsidies to Gaprom which will allow it to provide cut-rate gas supplies to Ukraine.
With the recent news that Russia is rapidly running out of both oil and gas reserves (both are slated by the UN to run dry by 2070) combined with the dramatic downturn in the Russian economy in recent years, the price being paid by Russia for the Sevastopol base is truly astronomical, a brutal burden for Russian taxpayers to carry especially since Russia barely has a navy to speak of.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the Russian dictator knows full well that Russia cannot afford to pay this price. Of course, if he moves to annex the whole of Ukraine, or simply provokes the country into war by annexing Crimea, then he would have an excuse to repudiate the deal and save countless billions. And given the weak-kneed attitude displayed so far by the NATO allies in general and the American president in particular, there is no reason for Putin to think he can’t get away with such a move.
Let’s be perfectly clear: The people of Ukraine do not want union with Russia. The only reason new President Victor Yanukovich even has power is that the opposition camp was divided between two rival, fractious candidates. The violent reaction in the Ukrainian parliament to Yanukovich’s announcement of the Sevastopol deal shows clearly that Ukrainians want no part of Russian domination. But such sentiments did not stop Adolf Hitler, and they won’t stop Vladimir Putin either.
It is up to the NATO allies to stop him. As Yulia Latynina’s most recent Moscow Times column, which we republish today, makes clear, the NATO allies are sending disturbing signals that they will repeat the mistakes of Munich. It is up to people of courage and good will in the NATO countries to make sure they do no such thing.
La Russophobe 
“… Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin “spontaneously announced at a press conference in front of his Ukrainian counterpart in Moscow that he thought it would be a good idea if Russia’s giant natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, acquired its Ukrainian counterpart Naftogaz lock, stock and gas pipelines.”
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Brevity is a gift. That’s exactly what I love about him.
P.S.
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” — Thomas Jefferson
He does not even bother pretending that Gasprom is a private business. So much for “free enterprise” and “we are now no different from the West” statements.
“It is up to the NATO allies to stop him. ”
Sure, attacking Russia sounds like a fun thing to do. But until USA is done with the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Iran crisis, and with the increasing wave of Islamic terrorism – I don’t think any US soldiers will volunteer to repeat Nazi Germany’s mistake and fight on the Russian front. US boys don’t want to die, and US taxpayers can’t afford any more wars.
So, there is only one solution: for the russophobes here to volunteer themselves and their children to die on hte Russian front. Amy volunteers here?
Or do you guys want other people to die for your causes?
voice of treason wrote;
So, there is only one solution: for the russophobes here to volunteer themselves and their children to die on hte Russian front. Amy volunteers here?
comment;
Why should we die on the russian front while we are letting russia to rot from within – what a pleasure to watch it. On the other hand, it would be SOO easy to fight the army [HIV positive 65% or more]……
aaa, usa wrote: “HIV positive 65% or more”
Are you? Is the doctor still doing tests? I wish you recovery.
aaa, you’re cool. Keep on posting more, I’m waiting.
“It is up to the NATO allies to stop him. ”
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Can’t agree more with Voice of Reason really and let me repeat myself again and again :
“Russia still remains the only nation in the world capable to make cockroaches the only residents of the United States in 24 minutes.”
That simple idea must be the first thing to think of with any US president (Muslim or not) when he wakes up in the morning and goes to brush his teeth to keep “the land of the brave” in relatively good shape for other generations of American idiots to come.
“Russia still remains the only nation in the world capable to make cockroaches the only residents of the United States in 24 minutes.”
How comes? What about, say, Pakistan? India?
There are a dozen ways to stop him. Unfortunately the “little worms” in Europe are too busy being “little worms” and US is out of it for awhile.
Oh poor EU idiots, even now they just can not see what a pleasant thing is their fight in Afghanistan…
At the risk of causing a flamewar or being banned, no one has ever made a rational argument that reannexing Ukraine will actually benefit Russia or threaten the West in any measurable way besides redrawing lines on a map. Russia already struggles with its own intractable corruption, a shrinking and aging populace, simmering grassroots ultra-racism, almost no middle class, an ancient and crumbling infrastructure, and its kamikaze fixation on commodities over services. Hegemony over a large country with these same problems to even greater degrees seems like the answer to Russophobic prayers. Very bluntly, how can formalizing the merger of these two poor, miserable, self-loathing, dying nations (three, adding Belarus) into one geopolitical space harm anyone else, much less affect anyone trapped inside beyond accelerating an already inevitable process?
Even the human rights of the affected peoples would suffer little, if at all. Objectively, Ukrainians “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” in the last twenty years, and their northern neighbors didn’t even bother trying. Despite their superhuman bravery, the handful of Politkovskayas and Dymovskys in these three countries are hopelessly outnumbered by a zombie majority content with Putin, Yanukovich, Lukashenko, or the available alternatives: living fossils like Zyuganov and Symonenko, crooks like Tymoshenko and the oligarchs, or hapless prima donnas like Yuschenko and the opposition merry-go-round in Minsk. These people will identify “liberal” and “reform” strictly with the Yeltsin ’90s for another generation at least, and we can mourn their ignorance, but trying to convince them that reform never failed because it was never tried is a fool’s errand. They must learn that for themselves through their own efforts, even if odds are they never will unless a Havel or a Walesa inexplicably appears among them.
These countries aren’t evil: they’re terminally ill. Treating them as enemies or even nuisances is inappropriate. Rather, as in hospice care, keep the patient comfortable and free of pain without expending scarce resources fighting a lost cause. If rejoining “All the Russias” for their twilight years brings them fleeting comfort even as it hastens their demise, then let euthanasia run its course. The most the West can do is welcome, in Cold War fashion, a steady trickle of freethinkers and dissidents who choose not to drown with the sinking ship[s]. Besides them, the only victims of such cold realpolitik are nationalists in Ukraine’s west and especially the long-suffering Crimean Tatars, but these two causes are already even more doomed than their host countries.
Great post. I agree with it all. I’m sure A. and some others would agree too.
If Putin annexes all ex-soviet republic, it will be a great achievement for Russia – the problem will be HOW TO KEEP IT UNDER CONTROL – so the only solution is to reopen the gulags into which ALL Russians will walk in the name of mother russia just to avoide a civil war, which, by the way is unavoidable…
Rex R:
It would give the Russians a lift. There would be unforseen consequences. For instance Germany might revert to type. The Russians need to be resisted every minute of every day. The situation is actually very serious because USA is temporarily zero’d out.
Putin knows it is now or never.
Oh, you sound too pessimistic. Cheer up, you’re living in the only existing super-power!
To show how bad USA’s situation is see what Zero has accomplished academically:
From the Connecticut Post and American Thinker
Included were transcripts of his grades from Southeastern University in Washington, D.C. which he attended in the late 1990s and where he took mostly business classes. He was at best a mediocre student, with his transcript peppered with Cs and Ds, and even an F in one class, Basic Statistics…
‘The Russians need to be resisted every minute of every day. The situation is actually very serious because USA is temporarily zero’d out.’
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Both in Afganistan and Iraq they do it very nicely “every minute of every day” with US college-money collectors and their EU herd of jackals. Check up the statistics.
The British, Italians, Canadians and Spaniards all seem to be very happy with Iraq and Afganistan. Jackals are jackals ‘couse they’re jackals.
I can’t locate the source but I recall hearing about this proposed ‘merger’ several months ago. What made it stand out was that the name selected for the combination of Naftogaz and Gazprom was to be Нигаз (Nigaz)
I thought it was a joke.
Actually, Nigaz is a joint venture between Gazprom and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
…but you don’t remember the source anyway, so it’s ok….
NATO will not go to war with Russia over Ukraine. If we get bogged down there, we won’t be out for another 50 years, or more. And with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Kosovo, Bosnia… that would be a bad idea. Only half of Ukraine would be loyal to NATO’s cause, and the two Ukraines are not divided by a natural border (Russophiles and Russophobes are on both sides of the Dnieper), which only begs fro more trouble. NATO should establish a perimeter on an easily defensible border in very loyal nations. That means NATO must not go beyond Romania and Georgia. Sorry Ukraine.
Well and certainly Rex Rufus, I’m totally sure everybody may agree except Ukrainians (well why just Ukrainians all the non-Russian people unlucky enough to be born and reside in this despised and gods-forsaken land). What I told 2 months ago proved to be true – Ukraine IS totally lonely, our only hope were Americans but with these liberal gutless bunch of cowards Ukrainian liberals, nationalists, patriots and globalists (yes pretty weird alliance but in Ukraine no effective pro-Western coalition can be established without cooperation of these so incompatible forces in fashion something Popular Fronts of 30s) are left high and dry and everything Westerners can do is just say sorry and bye and well that’s their right however stupid and strategically wrong it is because really we live in a Darwinian world where every man for himself and they have no obligation to care for us.
But my point is do we have any obligation to care for THEM? And the answer isn’t as simple as it seems to be. Cuz yes, we ARE alone and betrayed, though actually they view it differently for in their eyes we never were ones of them however hard we tried… But anyway we may feel an enormous grudge against them, we may feel hurt, abandoned, humiliated even sensing how our love of them transforms into sheer hatred, but still, this venom, however bitter can’t be anything but purely emotional, somehow infantile because at intellectual and spiritual level you can’t hate your own ideal, you can’t hate something you are or want to be yourself, and maybe it’s the most tragic aspect of Ukrainian mentality and that’s what differentiates us from Russians for real. Russians have an option. Whenever rejected by West they turn their back on it, try to oppose it, become stronger AGAINST it, but we can’t spite West this way, for being against YOU means be with THEM and for us it’s like, rephrasing a popular slogan from eighties “Better dead than Red”, “Better dead than Russian!”. Nationalist utopia of building strong and totally independent state distanced from both Russia and West, so called neutrality, i.e. being geopolitically neutered isn’t acceptable either. So it seems that the only choice for us is to be either mired in nationalist moronism of isolation in the middle of the rapidly globalizing World which means complete degradation and absolute loss of any significance for the global development or alliance with Russia which is actually worse than genocide because if exterminated we just die, while russification mean that potential and resources of our land and its people will serve the cause we deeply hate and we ourselves will become tools to promote it. And yes, the Russians are right Ukraine can survive only as a part of some bigger Empire, but to become something to give our very existence as a nation some meaning so we can make a difference in this World we can only as a part of the Western (European) liberal and democratic Empire. Only if totally westernized, Ukraine can become a real nation. Staying where it’s now the land is a just a dust.
So indeed the prospects for Ukraine aren’t just grim, they are disastrous, talking about just grim they are so for gutless Westerners who seem to have forgotten what their ideals are and traded them for mere comfort and thus do their best to downplay the danger Russia poses to them and everything they believe in or at the very least claim to. But the question is what the West-oriented citizens of Ukraine can do and how to respond to the our spiritual Motherland attitude, how to cope with our ultimate loneliness? We should realize that what West, including even our brothers Croatians and Poles, wants from us has nothing to do with our own interests and aspirations. They want us not to make a TROUBLE for THEM. That’s all their eastern policy is about and we try to meet their expectations in hope for reward, but the truth is there’s no reward for us but their thanx for being good kids and behaving! So what’s the point. Europe says it’s interested in our stability, in our good relations with Russia, read inimpeded traffic of gas through our territory so Germs won’t freeze, etc.etc, but what WE are interested in? Who needs this damn peace and stability if it means being pushed into hopeless backwaters, total periphery of all global processes? Isn’t it obvious that the more of a troublemaker you are the more attention from the West you get. Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, Korea, but not Ukraine! And you know what guys until we are no trouble for the West it will never come to us. America is helping Iraqis to build democracy and reform, cuz it’s affraid of Saddam-like leaders and fundamentalists, Americans are ready to invade Iran for they fear it’ll built a bomb and nuke Israel. Ukraine? Nobody cares, because ther’s no threat!))) Swell! Let’s create it ourselves! Let’s become the biggest trouble in Europe ever! That’s the shortest way to become part of it and it’s no romaticism or utopianism. Romanticism and utopianism s to hope that we manage to reform it from inside and then be accepted as a legitimate part of Western civilzation. We need to be done to what was done to the Japanese in 40-50s or is being done to Iraqis now. We should MAKE West reform us from outside and to do so we have to leave it no other choice. All-out Bosnia-like civil war on Moscow lackeys sounds cool. Exploding nuclear power plants, millions of distraught refugees storming the schengen borders, floods of blood and Ukraine as just one horror show all over youtube you name it. No peaceful euthanasia dude, if Ukraine has to die may it go down in flames! Yes, I realize how terrible it sounds to wish such things on my own country, but first, it deserves it, i have admit it, having failed so ignominiously being populated by stubborn and blind retards, cuz I mean really 50-70% of its population are just what we call here bydlo and second, to save our country we need to be ready to sacrifice it on the altar of Freedom, as Chairman Mao put it once may 2/3 of the World’s population die so the other 1/3 will enjoy communism, perhaps the same logic has to be applied to Ukraine and 2/3 of must die so the rest will become Europeans. And yes, such scenario will be hell of an inconvenient one for westerners, but who cares, lets care for them the same way they care for us, isn’t it fair?
And as to some practical aspects of how to blow the country up, just some suggestions. Say on May 11 te opposition is planning the mass rallies of protests againts the Black Sea treaty, so why instead just rallying not to collect about 100000 people in Halicia an send them right to the Crimea and Sevastopol, to rally and picket the Russian Fleet. The consequences are very likely to be dire and the worse the better. Damn stability and peace! We need as much destabilization as only possible to bring a total collapse of political and legal system and make a raving hell out of the country so the US and EU will be forced to intervene and invade us. If they won’t have balls for it but the Russians will, let us become their worst nightmare ever! And Europeans are better remember that Ukraine is much closer than Iraq…
Your people do not want to join NATO. You’ve made your choice.
Nobody helped Croatia when the tanks were rolling over Vukovar. We had to stop the JNA ourselves, with smuggled East German weapons. And the world noticed something’s happening only when the pictures of total destruction of a city started circulating world media. Maybe that will be the fate of Sevastopol. I don’t know. I hope with all my heart such mess can be avoided. I hope you East Slavs are smarter than us primitive South Slavs.
You are kidding what’s so smart about trading our place in the world history for a dubious peace and stability. Yes smart or as other say rather sly Ukes have quite a reputation for their sensibility and readiness to prefer a piece of proverbial Salo (totally gross and nauseating pig’s fat) to freedom and dignity. And I personally adore really heroic “stupidity” of your people for whom the latter immaterial values were more important than their personal safety or foreign approval. You really deserve your place in the global community. You won it…
But talking about our people’s reluctance to join: don’t you think that ideas like those you just voiced contribute to this reluctance also because if you don’t know Yanukovycz and his ilk use this attitude of the Europeans to the fullest being like nobody’s waiting for you in Europe, NATO isn’t serious about Ukraine’s membership, these aspirations just make us a nuisssance etc, etc… They are like Europe for you is a utopia, while Russia and we are for real. If only Europeans gave us at least just some hope, it could change population’s attitude drastically.
And WE never made our choice 51% ofthe voters voted AGAINST Yanukovycz. As to the surveys concerning our attitude to the membership, how can you take seriously these volatile mood-swings of the ignorant crowd? In fact we never had a serious discussion on the issue just primitive propaganda.
But actually this is over as I said before YOU did make your own choice about us and now we are totally on our own. We may respect your choice or blame you, it doesn’t matter because whatever we might say is nothing but words, while our loneliness and isolation are facts and they are the only that matters here so all our strategy should be based upon them. It doesn’t mean that we have to abandone our hopes and aspirations as for joining your structures it just means that we have to stop behaving and trying to be good kids crazy about winning your approval and playing by your rules. We have to learn playing dirty. By WE I mean not Ukrainian government or even majority of the population but specifically progressive pro-Western part of Ukrainian society suffering from too much idealism and eagerness to please. We should build up our vision of Ukraine as a western country setting its full-fledged NATO and EU membership as the absolute and unquestionable goal with no price too high to achieve it. And yes, if the price is the pictures of total destruction of Sevastopol circulating world media, so be it. Though to be frank I don’t get it why we have been holding to this city so hard. I guess Ukraine would be better off without Crimean and Dumbass (Donbass) retards. Y’kno, when a fox gets into a trap he chews off his own leg to free himself, so that might be the case with Ukraine, to let these, the most reactionary regions go to save the rest. And who knows maybe the incipient civil war will result just in cesession of this geopolitical ballast.
“But talking about our people’s reluctance to join: don’t you think that ideas like those you just voiced contribute to this reluctance also because if you don’t know Yanukovycz and his ilk use this attitude of the Europeans to the fullest being like nobody’s waiting for you in Europe, NATO isn’t serious about Ukraine’s membership, these aspirations just make us a nuisssance etc, etc… They are like Europe for you is a utopia, while Russia and we are for real. If only Europeans gave us at least just some hope, it could change population’s attitude drastically.”
There will always countries and groups hostile to your country’s entries into various organizations. That shouldn’t discourage you. Through persistent diplomacy and of course, reform, you will achieve results, bit by bit. Look at Croatia’s ardent path to the EU. We have a higher standard of living and less corruption than Romania and Bulgaria, yet they joined the EU in 2007, and we are still waiting, because we still carry the legacy of war. The reasons for holding us back are purely political. Yet, we are making our way through, and our membership in the EU is expected in 2012.
And I thought I read somewhere that the EU will lift visas for Ukranians in the future. That could be considered progress. Just look at Russia and Serbia how they score political points even on the slightest improvement they make! They play dirty. You should play dirty too.
“But actually this is over as I said before YOU did make your own choice about us and now we are totally on our own… It doesn’t mean that we have to abandone our hopes and aspirations as for joining your structures it just means that we have to stop behaving and trying to be good kids crazy about winning your approval and playing by your rules. ”
I cannot speak for my entire nation or even less for the West. Here in Croatia there’s never been an opinion poll about Ukraine or Ukranians. There were opinion polls about Russia, and they were mostly negative (second only to the “pure darkness” that was Serbia and Montenegro). Though the opinion of Russia is improving, as the memories of the war and Russia’s role (real or perceived) in it wane.
Ukraine was always held in higher regard than Russia. One of Zagreb’s major streets is named after you ( google “Ukrajinska avenija”). So I guess you still have a chance with us.
“We have to learn playing dirty. By WE I mean not Ukrainian government or even majority of the population…Y’kno, when a fox gets into a trap he chews off his own leg to free himself, so that might be the case with Ukraine, to let these, the most reactionary regions go to save the rest. And who knows maybe the incipient civil war will result just in cesession of this geopolitical ballast.”
I agree. Let each region choose: West or Russia. The pro-West regions shall be the new, smaller, stable Ukraine fully susceptible to Western integration. Though I’m afraid no power sitting in Kyiv would ever be ready to reduce their “fiefdom” even for a square meter.
You are a very intelligent and progressive person, transhumanistua. I’m glad to have this conversation with you.
No, guys, noone in Kiev would ever just let the Donbass go (and a good deal of Kiev population too). Just like they didn’t let it to Srpska Kraina.
So if you want Lviv or Ternopil free of Donbass “ballast” you have to fight for it. But you well may lose. Or win and still lose.
You seem to get it way wrong, I never was like: let’s built a Eurokraine just on a platform of the Western part of the land which is more or less ethnically homogeneous and I didn’t even meant to establish it on a basis of pro-Yuschenko 2004, or pro-Tymoszenko 2010 regions, look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Второй_тур_
Because in these case Ukraine wouldn’t be just reduced but reduced dramatically I mean like when some quantitative loss of territory and population transits into qualitative loss of geopolitical and geoeconomical potential, given that Ukraine would lose its access to Black Sea and control over the lower Dnieper basin. And I don’t think it’d be totally necessary. Cutting off the most malignant territories like Crimea, Dumbass and maybe Charkiw giving the highest support to the pro-Russian Regionites might be enough. Moreover, as a resident of one of those “benign” russophilic regions myself I can say that there’s a difference between us and say Donecians. Our people are mostly politically apathetic, pragmatic, cosmopolitan and usually following the strongest one. Their russophilia is rather situational, mostly skin-deep and based more upon the lack of some strong patriotic sentiments, deep-rooted conformism, inertia and preoccupation with economical benefits than on any high-minded identification with Russia. So with the most anti-western and anti-Ukrainian regions detached, the rest would whine and grumble a trifle and than calm done.
But I agree that we are the most likely to have fight for the liberation from these tumors keeping on to methastasize the entire nation. And my point is that we have to be ready to fight, up to the full-scale civil war for the future of our country. And it’s not about seeking the permission of Yanukovycz or anybody else in Kyiw to excise these territories fom the nation’s body, a wave of popular resistance with some new leaders at the helm should PUSH them OUT with the efforts to keep Kodak (Dniepropetrovsk), Zaporijjea, Cherson and Mykolayiw regions IN. As to Odessa, given Romanian claims to Bugeac, Odessa region might be split between Ukraine and Romania with Odessa turning into an independent Singapore-like city-state with EU-membership prospects, a status it would hardly prefer to trade for an annexation to Russia.
And actually it wouldn’t even be a loss of territories. We have to abandone a patriotic illusion that we are masters of Dumbass or that Crimea’s transfere was a gift or an acquisistion of any sort. Wake up guys in fact it’s quite the other way around, it’s not that Ukraine annexed these territories (it never did it itself really) but IS annexed TO them. It’s even more of the case if we take into account that neither Dumbass nor Crimea were ever parts of what can be viewed as Ukraine proper, i.e Ruthenian voivodships in a body of Polish Crown: Czernichowskie, Kijowskie, Braclawskie, Podolskie, Wolynskie and Ruskie, thus actually from ethnical and historical slant the eastern border of Rzeczpospolita before 1654 makes the easterm border of Ukraine
And what’s so interesting about Charkow and Donbass regions is that even back then in 1918 they were instrumental to the conquest of Ukraine by Soviet Russia serving as a platform for Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which while having being established outside the Ukrainian State attacked the latter thus bringing the main part of Ukraine under the Soviet rule.
The same is happening now. The regions in question are used as anchores to hook the entire Ukraine to Russia. It’s time to get off the hook
Thanx, hroboatos, especially for not being mad at me for my own angry remarks, by YOU I never meant Croatians in particular but Europeans in general and mostly Germans who are maybe next to Russians the biggest “friends” of Ukraine. And as for your country I never doubted that for Croatians it’d be easier to understand Ukraine because we have a lot in common and actually relationship between Croatia and Serbia are very similar to those between Ukraine and Russia, but unfortunately our people lack your resolution and courage and it’s a shame but something has to be done here to raise the sluggish, dim-witted herd to fight if not for some national ideals then for European future of their kids…
I sincerely hope that Yanukovycz’s Sevastopol betrayal will wake them up, but even if it doesn’t.. let’s say Ukrainians will have to turn to more radical ways, maybe even stopping to regard this Government as our own but treat it as an occupational administration to be fought against by all means.
Somehow the agreement that was made between Gorbachev and H.W. Bush in 1991 is conveniently dropped down the memory hole and forgotten here.
Bush promised Gorbachev that NATO would not extend one inch east of a unified Germany — an assurance made that was easily believed by a naive and gullible Gorbachev.
Not only did Bush break his promise (like every other US president), but NATO enlargement continues unabated and it now sits directly on Russia’s borders — a hostile alliance undoubtedly.
But what can one say? The big Satan is a big liar.
Russians always claim that, but I have yet to see any evidence.
No, obviously that was just another of Gorbachov’s whims. Of course, none of the US presidents, especially Bush the Senior, could have lied to the USSR leader.
hroboatos:
“NATO will not go to war with Russia over Ukraine. If we get bogged down there, we won’t be out for another 50 years, or more. And with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Kosovo, Bosnia… that would be a bad idea. Only half of Ukraine would be loyal to NATO’s cause, and the two Ukraines are not divided by a natural border (Russophiles and Russophobes are on both sides of the Dnieper), which only begs fro more trouble.”
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This is a sample of current thinking among Europeans just to feel laid back. The problem is their imperial master from across the pool with his decisive say in European matters is ever trying to blow that all up.
P.S.
“If you are looking for trouble, man
You’ve come to the right place – RUSSIA.” – Adolf Napoleon :-)
Addendum to my last post:
NATO is now determined to become a global police force, far and beyond its European borders, evident by the deployment of its troops in Afghanistan — that was never the original or intended goal of the security organization.
Dima:
Addendum to my last post:
“NATO is now determined to become a global police force, far and beyond its European borders, evident by the deployment of its troops in Afghanistan — that was never the original or intended goal of the security organization.”
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Dima, your last remark sounds a bit academic as it seems and fit for experts only.
Let me ask you a simple question. They say big oil has been found in the Antarctic. Do the penguins need to be bombed into submissin in the name “peguins’ rights, civil liberties, American “universal” values and democracy?
Might the Antarctic be “an intended goal of the security organization” – NATO?
I just can imagine LaRussophobe “experts” doing their best hired to demonise the penguin world of terror and their iceberg riding terrorist leaders.
Oh, Mighty God – Save Russia and the Antarctic penguins and their oil/gas fields from democratic liberals and liberal democrats of all shapes ans sizes from the West and their hired for a penny “experts”!!!
“the penguin world of terror”. Hm, sounds a legitimate target to me.
Great post! Have nice day ! :) mqrrv