That's my point - we're now seeing not people movement (like on Maidan where ordinary people from all over Ukraine came there to protest) for separation but an organised action with armed groups of 'separatists' who's main objective is to take over some strategic admistration's buildings in Eastern Ukraine. Who armed those 'separatists' who surely aren't amateurs - the only reasonable answer would be a force that's able to concentrate some 40k of soldiers on the border I suppose. Never heard about separatists movements in Eastern Ukraine vocal enough for active federation or even incorporation of those areas into Russia in the past 10 years. The only number I heard about was 2000 people protesting in Donetsk a week ago as well.
2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos
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thunderchief
Senior Member
You don't see them because you don't want to see them
There were lot of pro-Russian demonstrations in previous days, things are getting a bit hot now for women and elderly, but you could still find reports and pics :Can't see a point in your argument as I was talking about big demonstrations and those from the wiki link you provided only showed an average mobilisation of the 'crowds' around 1%, max 2% of cities population on both sides. From the link it looks like pro Russian demonstrations stopped a week ago and there were only pro Ukrainian marches in few cities recently. And those who wanted union with Russia nowhere got majority two months ago.You don't see them because you don't want to see them
thunderchief
Senior Member
Well, you cannot have milion-men march in relatively small town. Even in Kiev on Maidan square, most of the times there were around ten thousand people. Few times it got bigger, but these were temporary peaks.
Besides, time for demonstrations is over. As recent event showed us, few dozen determined men with guns are worth more then thousand unarmed protestors or million silent voters.
Engineer
Major
Violence is not an inverse correlation of the number of people in a group. Armed thugs in Midan Square thew Molotov cocktails and rocks at police with the intention to maim. The activists that are taking over buildings have the objective of taking over buildings and they are causing almost no casualty. That's why the Russian activists can be called peaceful.
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TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
No Casualties YET.
MwRYum
Major
It's the classic case of not choosing your bedfellow wisely, especially for the West. Although what started the Maidan Revolt is something else, by the time it reached its first apex things have changed with the involvement of Right Sector and the like, and they hijacked the revolt plus adding their own agenda...the US and EU ignored that development, thought anything that'd weaken Moscow's stance is good, totally disregarded those Bandera freaks will do nothing less than giving Moscow the rallying cry it so badly needed.
As we can see in the subsequent events, not even the change of government at Kiev incited uprising in the Eastern Ukraine (where Russians formed an ethnic majority), but when the "new" parliament bulldozed that law through, Moscow now got all the local support it needed to muscle in. Sure enough, "rebels" or "local militia men" who are that well armed, disciplined and well trained are either front-line graded regulars or even special forces; mass defections by Ukraine forces stationed in Crimean region further shown how little the "new" government in Kiev got when comes to loyalty from the regular troops, which they're now dealing with the issue by drafting Right Sector thugs into newly formed militia outfits.
Then when comes to response, the Western Powers simply has neither the resources to totally replace the "Russian factor" in Ukraine's economy, nor the stomach to really challenge Russia, a nuclear-armed superpower (to all those hippies out there, that's the prove of nukes keep the world peace!); when comes to sanctions, the biggest Russia-EU trade is LPG (try to live without heating when General Frost comes knocking!) which EU couldn't hope to find alternatives in short term, the US pledged to meet the demand with shale gas but we all know "fracking" is a very problematic method to say the least; the UK ain't prepare to have its financial industry get hurt in this either...
And there's China: with China's economy still going strong and sourcing energy cleaner than coal, Russia really have no worries when comes to fossil fuel exports. Pretty much if the West really want to make Russia back down they should've woo China to join in, but when SecDef Hagel badmouthed China so much during his recent Asia tour, you can tell they never consider getting China onto their side. Thus you can see Beijing pretty much let Moscow do their thing, while the Foreign Ministry issued a few statements which pretty much equivalent to have said nothing at all.
Thus far, it can be said that the Western powers handed too much good cards to Russia.
As we can see in the subsequent events, not even the change of government at Kiev incited uprising in the Eastern Ukraine (where Russians formed an ethnic majority), but when the "new" parliament bulldozed that law through, Moscow now got all the local support it needed to muscle in. Sure enough, "rebels" or "local militia men" who are that well armed, disciplined and well trained are either front-line graded regulars or even special forces; mass defections by Ukraine forces stationed in Crimean region further shown how little the "new" government in Kiev got when comes to loyalty from the regular troops, which they're now dealing with the issue by drafting Right Sector thugs into newly formed militia outfits.
Then when comes to response, the Western Powers simply has neither the resources to totally replace the "Russian factor" in Ukraine's economy, nor the stomach to really challenge Russia, a nuclear-armed superpower (to all those hippies out there, that's the prove of nukes keep the world peace!); when comes to sanctions, the biggest Russia-EU trade is LPG (try to live without heating when General Frost comes knocking!) which EU couldn't hope to find alternatives in short term, the US pledged to meet the demand with shale gas but we all know "fracking" is a very problematic method to say the least; the UK ain't prepare to have its financial industry get hurt in this either...
And there's China: with China's economy still going strong and sourcing energy cleaner than coal, Russia really have no worries when comes to fossil fuel exports. Pretty much if the West really want to make Russia back down they should've woo China to join in, but when SecDef Hagel badmouthed China so much during his recent Asia tour, you can tell they never consider getting China onto their side. Thus you can see Beijing pretty much let Moscow do their thing, while the Foreign Ministry issued a few statements which pretty much equivalent to have said nothing at all.
Thus far, it can be said that the Western powers handed too much good cards to Russia.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The overwhelming impression I get of western leaders and key power brokers is that they are either all a bunch of idealogical crusaders or lawyer politicians.
The crusaders live in an idealogical lala land, who go gaga over anything remotely 'democratic' and think anything with 'people power' automatically could do no wrong and must be supported no matter what. They also think that 'democracy' is so inherently good, that anything done in the name of democracy can only be good as well.
These people either still think the Cold War is on, or are desperate to start a new one with whoever to get back into their comfort zone of having a big bad bogey man to scare their citizens and politicians with to get unlimited funding for pork barrow defence projects and silence any doubters within their own people.
It doesn't help things one bit when you have factions who think they are still in a Cold War with Russia, other factions that want a start a new one with China, and yet other factions that want to start a hot war with Iran and no central authority to co-ordinate, control or even supervise all these factions so you have mid-level players making decisions way above their pay grade and either not knowing or not caring about how their own power players affect the bigger picture.
Couple that with lawyer politicians more worried about plausible deniability and the next election cycle than effective and co-ordinated control over foreign policy and operations and is it any wonder western foreign policy is a confusing and contradictory mess?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
If this is another case of being inspired by the Arab Spring which really looks like it is, I find it criminal. Let's get rid of a government and just hope, with no certainty, the next one serves our interests. Who gives hoot if people die as a result just as long it isn't someone who can vote me out of office. I find that callous and irresponsible.
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joshuatree
Captain
Side question, what was the EU using before LPG from Russia? Coal? Oil?
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