2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

TerraN_EmpirE said:

As I said the armed forces of Ukraine should be considered divided at this point. I wonder how much of the indigenous military industrial production has also been divided, I know for example Antinov's headquarters are in Kiev, and that was state run.

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I think two factors are critical:

Are the Ukrainian forces hostile to Kiev made up largely of ethnic Russians?

If yes, Kiev government will survive and Putin might carve out a piece of Ukraine, but rest of Ukraine will turn even more wholly pro-west at the conclusion of this and this little show of force not withstanding, Russia is finished as a major power because Ukraine will join NATO and Russian strategic nuclear forces will be progressively checkmated, and Russia now is too poor to afford anything else that would make her more than a petrol state.

If no, then Kiev government is in a precarious situation. In this case, the key question becomes are the Ukrainian forces hostile to Kiev willing to fire on forces and supporters of Kiev.

If yes, Kiev government is finished. If no, then Kiev government might survive, but would be heavily constrained in what it might do after the conclusion of all this.

Miragedriver said:

The Crimea has been, and is, historically Russian and would be quite happy to swap back and reverse the 1954 swap to Ukraine.

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This is one of the most ignorant statements I recently read. Let me educate you: calling Crimea "a native russian land" is a historical lie. Crimea, the independent Tatar state - Khanate of Crimea - was craftily annexed by Russians in 1783 and then it was occupied by Russian Empire and USSR. In 1918 a revived state called Democratic Republic of Crimea existed for a few months but it was quickly crushed by Russian bolsheviks. In 1954 Crimea was administratively subordinated to USSR territory, the soviet Ukraine, part of Soviet empire.

The undisputed native residents of Crimea are Crimean Tatars, who in 1944 were deported from their homeland by Russians in the context of ethnic cleansing. Most of the Russians living on Crimea are people displaced from Russia or their children. What is worthy of attention is the fact, that Crimean Tatars unequivocally declared binding their fate with Ukrainian independent state, not Russia in any way.

The will of natives has to be respected. Besides it is not about just Crimea, but about free people of the world. NATO have made a huge mistake with Georgia, allowing Russians to now occupy its territory. This mistake shouldn't be repeated.

Not the greatest first post by a new member I have ever read!
General Bae, the members of and moderators of this forum expect a level of decorum and good manners in our discourse and take a dim view of those that fail to maintain the expected standard.
If you have an argument make it on the basis of fact and not emotional hubris. You can include sermonising about the "Free World" in the same catagory as such language is regarded as trolling on these boards.
Please amend your manner if you wish to be a member of this community
SampanViking Super Moderator

chuck731 said:

Are the Ukrainian forces hostile to Kiev made up largely of ethnic Russians?

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Ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians are not clearly divided and there lays the problem.

First of all, most of the Ukrainians are nominally Eastern Orthodox Christians, with some Greek Catholics (those are firmly anti-Russian Ukrainians ) . Among Orthodox there are 3 groups : those who remain loyal to Moscow Patriarchate , those belonging to newly formed (in 1995.) Kiev Patriarchate (still unrecognized by other orthodox churches) ,and smallest group belonging to Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church .

Second, most of the Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian language and first language for many in eastern part of the country is Russian . Among Ukrainians there are generally more surnames ending with "ko" (Tymoshenko , Klitschko) but even that is not good indicative (Turchynov , Yanukovich etc ...)

Third, there are no genetic differences between Russians and Ukrainians, you cannot tell by their looks or DNA tests who is Russian and who is Ukrainian.

Therefore, decision to belong to Russians or to Ukrainians is often made by family tradition or even by personal choice. There are lot of people who identify themselves as Russians and have Ukrainian cousins and vice versa .

GeneralBae said:

This is one of the most ignorant statements I recently read. Let me educate you: calling Crimea "a native russian land" is a historical lie. Crimea, the independent Tatar state - Khanate of Crimea - was craftily annexed by Russians in 1783 and then it was occupied by Russian Empire and USSR.

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Crimean Tatars came to Crimea as part of Mongol invasion of Europe so they are not indigenous people of Crimea either That part of the world has very interesting and bloody history, and you don't want to go too far in the past, believe me .

Probably will seem quiet today after the excitement of the last 48 hours.

Behind the scenes there is going to be a wrestling match between both sides to secure the loyalty of local political and military leaders in the regions. The key factor here is going to be momentum and yesterday Putin had that in spades. I think the "International" media realise that they had blundered into helping give it to him with their coverage yesterday and seem to be back "on message today" puffing up the authority of the Kiev government, giving prominent coverage to "Outraged International reaction" and studiously not mentioning any rumours of Ukrainian defections.

There is one thought I will share however.
I think without exception, nobody on these boards has been surprised that Putin has reacted or how he has gone about it, yet Western leaders seem caught entirely on the wrong foot. Is this credible? are the established powers of the West oo blind and arrogant that they were unable to see this coming?
Or is this a trap for Putin in pursuit of another objective altogether?
I realise that such a question veers uncomfortably close to Conspiracy theory territory, but.......

SampanViking said:

Probably will seem quiet today after the excitement of the last 48 hours.

Behind the scenes there is going to be a wrestling match between both sides to secure the loyalty of local political and military leaders in the regions. The key factor here is going to be momentum and yesterday Putin had that in spades. I think the "International" media realise that they had blundered into helping give it to him with their coverage yesterday and seem to be back "on message today" puffing up the authority of the Kiev government, giving prominent coverage to "Outraged International reaction" and studiously not mentioning any rumours of Ukrainian defections.

There is one thought I will share however.
I think without exception, nobody on these boards has been surprised that Putin has reacted or how he has gone about it, yet Western leaders seem caught entirely on the wrong foot. Is this credible? are the established powers of the West oo blind and arrogant that they were unable to see this coming?
Or is this a trap for Putin in pursuit of another objective altogether?
I realise that such a question veers uncomfortably close to Conspiracy theory territory, but.......

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I think everyone were taken by surprise at the speed of yunukovitch's collapse, so some degree of surprise is not faked.

No major western nation really has nearly as much at stake in Ukraine as Putin. Necessity does focus the mind, and necessity is not there in western capitals, unlike in Moscow. So it is also likely no western leadership had applied themselves to keep up with pace of events in Ukraine, hence more genuine surprises resulting from being behind, rather than quite abreast of events.

Western leaders probably had some forethought about this eventuality when they were observing the unrest and disturbances in Ukraine in the last 3 month. But they don't plan to do anything about it that would be seen as effective in the short run. Pretending to have totally surprised - how could Putin! - affords a face saving way of appearing to be ineffectual. So what surprise there appears to be that was bot caused by lack of attention and speed of events is an act to cover for planning to do nothing that would bear fruit quickly.

chuck731 said:

I think everyone were taken by surprise at the speed of yunukovitch's collapse, so some degree of surprise is not faked.

No major western nation really has nearly as much at stake in Ukraine as Putin. Necessity does focus the mind, and necessity is not there in western capitals, unlike in Moscow. So it is also likely no western leadership had applied themselves to keep up with pace of events in Ukraine, hence more genuine surprises resulting from being behind, rather than quite abreast of events.

Western leaders probably had some forethought about this eventuality when they were observing the unrest and disturbances in Ukraine in the last 3 month. But they don't plan to do anything about it that would be seen as effective in the short run. Pretending to have totally surprised - how could Putin! - affords a face saving way of appearing to be ineffectual. So what surprise there appears to be that was bot caused by lack of attention and speed of events is an act to cover for planning to do nothing that would bear fruit quickly.

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In theory I could buy that version Chuck. That the expectation was an early election under the last agreement in which popular sentiment alone would enthrone a new pro Western regime. Instead Yanukovych runs and creates a power vacuum that nobody had anticipated or made contingency for.

In reality though, I look a the way this has played and simply, the sum of the parts and it does not really add up. If that was really how it was, think the West would have been far more particular about the groups it was working with/promoting on the ground (some very nasty neo-nazis types by all accounts) and nobody from the EU/US side has demanded that the programme and timetable of the final agreement must be adhered to. You would expect this as politicians do not negotiate an agreement that they want and then happily bin within 24 hours without murmur or complaint.

Instead, the methods and language of the Maidan Revolt have been as provocative as it is possible for them to be.
This is why none of this really feels right to me and that a deeper game is in play. I have thoughts on what that game may be, in the Geopolitics thread.

Re #132: I had in mind specifically your paragraph

The whole idea is to let the free market work with honest, law abiding, private ownership (or market ownership) and leadership of their companies. The free market is meant to allow honest businesses to flourish, use their profits to create better products, hire more people, and grow. When that happens everyone is well served...including government who reaps larger tax revenues from the growth.

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Capitalism functioned in Russia in the '90's as badly as it still does in the Ukraine. It improved considerably after Putin came in but it is still far from perfect. Now you tell me it also functions badly in the US.

As for Ukraine becoming a member of the EU I would think that might happen just before or just after Turkey becomes a member. Several countries are disturbed by the hundreds of Bulgarians and Romanians coming to them. I read that many Ukrainians would want to emigrate West to escape the corruption in their own country so ... And paying to clean up the mess in Ukraine is clearly outside the power of Brussels.

solarz said:

Holy ----! That's a huge blow to the new Ukrainian government right there, and I don't think we've seen the last of these kinds of defections.

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Although the Ukrainian Navy doesn't appear to be a very modern and large fleet to begin with, if there are any other defections, will they be of any significance? I guess that depends on any potential naval action and if there will be any western foreign intervention.

Confirmation I think albeit without calling it by its name that the Ukrainian navy has indeed resigned or defected en masse



The report says that Russian soldiers are now occupying the base.

The Ukrainian Admiral who was allowed to leave has coined the interesting phrase to describe his former subordinate officers as "Hostages of the Situation". I will remember this one for the lexicon of weasel words!