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One cannot look at the situation there and ignore the fact that the 'separatists' are the 'reactionaries' who have come out of the woodwork after the Crimean annexation. It apparently has given them the 'green light' to go against this thing called 'Kiev' adding violence to the rhetoric.
Interesting that this situation could play out like Iraq where jihadists ,getting absolutely no challenge, are now looking to 'take' Baghdad.
Any chance of tanks going onto Kiev? I don't know. The Ukrainian situation can wind up like 'Lotto'....sort of like in the 'hey you never know' vein. But from the looks of it Ukraine is wise and doesn't want to play that game. Like who would've thought Russia would annex the Crimea? Wars always come up with surprises. Putin has played a card that a few countries now have to wake up to. Unfortunately, the people find themselves dealing with the mess and suffer the consequences when rational political discourse to solve problems break down.
No, the situation in Iraq is the ISIS wants to take control of the whole country, not just break away their own region. There is also a religious element to it. With Ukraine, east Ukraine wants to separate, not take the whole country. I doubt there would ever be an advance on Kiev from the east, even if they had the ability to.
The problem with this "giving the green light" is that these feelings have been around for 23 years. As I mentioned before, this is not new, there has been a constant feeling of separation since independence, a feeling of "we live in the same area but not together". Kiev has not assisted in helping this at all, under any leader. All the leaders want to do is play decisive politics to gain power, this has repercussions as we see.
Even if or when west Ukraine defeats east, this is not going to suppress any feelings unless Kiev acts to do something other than violent suppression. All it will take is a moment of political weakness and these feelings will erupt again.
From where do you think the separatists got the T-64's, SAM's and RPG's? The command structure of the separatist actions are 100% made with Russian aid.
If the separatists in Donbass are fighting for a better and richer future, being a new Abkhazia or Southern Ossetia won't help them at all. Nobody wants or dares to invest or make any kind of large-scale trade trade with these "nations" with unstable and corrupted junta-governments. The Donbass would be completely dependent on Russia and their money, and would have nothing to say about anything. A simple puppet region with a puppet government and an international outcast. And if Russia don't want to buy their steel and coal, who will? Nobody! How will that help the region?
Well, they are fighting for a better future. The president the majority voted for was ousted, so to many of them the democratic process does not work, and there is not guarantee that it will work in the future. If everyone would have taken the constitutional way of ousting Yanukovich, everything would have been fine.
How is being attached to Kiev working out for them? Unlike Abkhazia and Ossetia, east Ukraine has many more people and a much better economy. Parts of a country separating is not a new concept, the USSR broke apart and no one was screaming about how are the new countries going to support themselves.
Abkhazia and Ossetia are also bad off because much of the world refuses to recognize them, thus the prediction of "they will be bad off" is the result of actions from those stating that. If the world did not recognize the US I am sure the US economy would drop to almost nothing over night. Basically stating the country will fail is a self-fullfilling prophecy.
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Originally Posted by Ariete
As a part of Ukraine who (probably) wants to develop the economy and transfer it to 2010's standards, with the assistance of the IMF and EU, maybe the future will actually be brigher. It worked for Poland, so why wouldn't it work for Ukraine?
How many times has this been promised? I have been hearing of this for over 15 years now. I remember this was all the rage when the Orange revolt took place. Ukraine is forever going to be "having a brighter future with the EU". Fact is while the oligarchs control things, nothing is going to change.
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Originally Posted by Ariete
BUT, as I said before, this is no good for the separatists. They want to become a part of Russia and upholds the nostalgic idea that if a part of Russia the Soviet Union will rise again, and everything will be as it was in 1980 or something. (And in matter of months.) But as that world doesn't exist anymore, and it never will, those hopes are completely unrealistic and stupid. Russia lives from their national resources, not their industry or globalised economy. Donbass don't have natural resources. In fact, what does the region have that Russia wants? Some military technology, nothing else. Do the separatist-terrorists really think it's their human capital Russia is after?
Donbass has industry and millions of people, the population of all three Baltic countries put together. If Russia really wanted the area, they would have taken it already. What the separatists want probably varies greatly, everyone part of it has their reasons. But the actions from Kiev sure as heck have not assisted in smoothing over tensions in the area. A gov does not do what Kiev has done to its own population and expect everyone is going to live and forget after it is over.
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Originally Posted by Ariete
The separatists and some here try to make the impression that 100% of the people in that region is behind the separatists, but that is false. The gunmen reign with violence and terror.
100% of the population in any conflict has never been for or against. Even the US revolution against England did not gain 100% support. The Soviet break up did not get 100% support. The Russian revolution did not get 100% support. WW2 on all sides did not get 100% support. Fact is, most uprisings, rebellions, etc are done by the minority, not the majority. Even Maidan did not have the majority of Ukraine there.
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Originally Posted by Ariete
But anyway, the people of Donbass should really ask themselves what they really want. But I won't keep my hopes high. We already see from these internet warriors in this thread that their ability for critical and rational thinking is on a kindergarten level.
Besides the rampant apathy (the same type who sat on the sidelines even during the Russian revolution), it is clear and not clear what they want. It is clear they want a degree of autonomy from Kiev. It is not clear how much autonomy they want or will settle for. I also do not trust the motives for many of the separatist leaders in charge of this thing; the area has a history of people riding an ideology for personal motives which become clear much later.
The key to disrupting the separatists is to make it difficult for the separatist leaders to deliver public goods. The problem with this is that it has the potential to backlash against Kiev, people who may have been apathic or slanted towards Kiev/against the separatists may develop hostile feelings against Kiev for disrupting these public goods. This is why even the US in its conflicts did not cut off water, food, medicine, etc to populations.
From where do you think the separatists got the T-64's, SAM's and RPG's? The command structure of the separatist actions are 100% made with Russian aid.
Well, there were military bases in east Ukraine, and those bases did have weapons in them. There were also captured many weapons from west Ukraine units. I do not see how everyone forgets east Ukraine has military bases with weapons, and a lot of those people siding with the separatists. Also, Ukraine has numerous active T-64 tanks, it is one of their main battle tanks. Russia has zero in active service. Those tanks came from Ukrainian forces, not Russia. DO I have absolute proof? Of course not, but just common sense shows that wow, a T-64, one of the main tanks Ukraine uses the separatists now have, and they obviously got them from the military bases they came under east Ukraine's control, as well as all the other weapons.
The separatists know how to sue them because a large number of them were in the army, part of the conscription service the Soviets and Ukraine had. This is why they know tactics, intel collection, etc, because they have been trained in this. Kiev is effectively going against a trained military force, not a bunch of civilians who got together all of a sudden to play army.
I will add: those T-64's and other heavy weapons are probably getting into defensive positions, they hardly have the logistics, nor the numbers, for an offensive against Kiev. Tanks can make outstanding defensive weapons as they are quickly portable, thus can reset their position as needed.
Well, they are fighting for a better future. The president the majority voted for was ousted, so to many of them the democratic process does not work, and there is not guarantee that it will work in the future. If everyone would have taken the constitutional way of ousting Yanukovich, everything would have been fine.
How is being attached to Kiev working out for them? Unlike Abkhazia and Ossetia, east Ukraine has many more people and a much better economy. Parts of a country separating is not a new concept, the USSR broke apart and no one was screaming about how are the new countries going to support themselves.
How many times has this been promised? I have been hearing of this for over 15 years now. I remember this was all the rage when the Orange revolt took place. Ukraine is forever going to be "having a brighter future with the EU". Fact is while the oligarchs control things, nothing is going to change.
A gov does not do what Kiev has done to its own population and expect everyone is going to live and forget after it is over.
Blah, blah, boring. Buy some new arguments. In a democracy the people have every right to oust a corrupt president, especially when he goes against the constitution and starts to murder his own citizens. If Janukovych wiped his ass with the constitution, how can anybody demand others to respect it? The whole concept of democracy and international law seem to be completely obscure to all of you jerking off to the picture of Stalin.
Poroshenko has been in office for a couple of weeks. The terrorist-separatists started to terror-separatist immediately after Yanukovych was ousted. They didn't even give a chance to Kiev. Heck, they even prevented people from voting in the recent presidental elections. They have no respect to anyone, and can't demand that either. As long as this situation goes on, the worse the people will have.
USSR maybe fell apart, but what happened with Chechnya? Brutal mass-murder by Russia, and no negotiating with the terrorists.
I don't care who promised what. And it's up to the Ukrainians to decide and resolve.
What has Kiev done to its population? It tries to keep the nation united and return to peace. The separatist-terrorists don't seem to want any peace at all.
If the separatists in Donbass are fighting for a better and richer future, being a new Abkhazia or Southern Ossetia won't help them at all. Nobody wants or dares to invest or make any kind of large-scale trade trade with these "nations" with unstable and corrupted junta-governments. The Donbass would be completely dependent on Russia and their money, and would have nothing to say about anything. A simple puppet region with a puppet government and an international outcast. And if Russia don't want to buy their steel and coal, who will? Nobody! How will that help the region?
It's you ( as a Westerner) think first of all in terms of "investment" and "large-scale" trade. The "rebels" think first of all in terms of protecting their identity and their way of life. Now let me turn the table around and ask you hypothetically speaking - say Putin's Russia would love to take over Finland, talking about "great investments" and "large-scale trade" that it has in mind for Finland, provided that Russia had those money. Would it matter to you if Finland would have become Russia's province once again, if money for "large-scale trade" and "great investments" were coming from Moscow, not Sweden or any other European countries?
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As a part of Ukraine who (probably) wants to develop the economy and transfer it to 2010's standards, with the assistance of the IMF and EU, maybe the future will actually be brigher. It worked for Poland, so why wouldn't it work for Ukraine?
Because when Poland has been "taken under the wing of IMF and EU," it was part of a plan of destruction of former Warsaw pact, the re-structuring of the post-cold war world, and decisions have been made what should be "changed and adjusted," and what should be completely destroyed ( not necessarily with bombs, right away, but what should be marked for potential destruction.) The rule of thumb what should be done here or there was basically the idea what would serve American interests of global domination and what wouldn't. Now Poland ( and other small Central/Eastern European countries) have been marked for "adjustment and restructuring," since being small countries, they could have been easily absorbed into EU's economy, plus old European countries still had space for cheap labor that Poland was going to supply there.
Now Ukraine was a different story. Number one - it's the biggest country in Europe, that couldn't have been absorbed into EU as easily as Poland, for reasons that it used to be part of the Soviet Union ( and unlike Poland, didn't have private sector, being part of central planning of Moscow.) This decline of population in Ukraine shows that interconnectedness with Russia, that the biggest number of deaths, decline of birth rates came after the destruction of the Soviet Union, as much as it was case in Russia.)
The population/culture is quite identical to Russian the further East you go ( as you can see now) and so on. It could have been smart of EU to include Western-most parts of Ukraine into EU already back then, the "separatist" sentiment was there, but Ukraine, apparently was a "long-term project," that couldn't have been dealt with right away ( too costly and too uncertain,) and thus has been postponed till later times.
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BUT, as I said before, this is no good for the separatists. They want to become a part of Russia and upholds the nostalgic idea that if a part of Russia the Soviet Union will rise again, and everything will be as it was in 1980 or something. (And in matter of months.)
So? Some Russians uphold the "nostalgic idea" of the Soviet Union, and they have their own reasons ( just look at demographic chart of Ukraine( and Russia.) And some uphold the idea of revival of Russia on purely nationalist ground, without the revival of the Soviet Union.
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But as that world doesn't exist anymore, and it never will, those hopes are completely unrealistic and stupid. Russia lives from their national resources, not their industry or globalised economy.
"Globalized economy" works first of all in the US interests and those people in governments that shake hands with the US ( Putins' government including.) It doesn't work in Russian national interests. Why would a country so rich in natural resources and people's potential would be interested in "globalization?" Think about it.
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The separatists and some here try to make the impression that 100% of the people in that region is behind the separatists, but that is false.
There is no such thing as "100%" behind anything, when it comes to population choices anywhere.
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In fact, what does the region have that Russia wants? Some military technology, nothing else. Do the separatist-terrorists really think it's their human capital Russia is after?
It depends. From government's point of view, may be "human capital" of Donbass is not particularly wanted, but from Russian nationalist point of view, human capital of Donbass matters.
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The gunmen reign with violence and terror.
Not more than Kiev that relies on Ukrainian nationalists of "Pravy sector" to "reign."
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But anyway, the people of Donbass should really ask themselves what they really want. But I won't keep my hopes high.
Why should you keep your "hopes high?" For what exactly? That Eastern Ukrainians would realize how attractive a paradise that's created in your mind for them under the dominance of the EU and nationalist government in Kiev?
Well, there were military bases in east Ukraine, and those bases did have weapons in them. There were also captured many weapons from west Ukraine units. I do not see how everyone forgets east Ukraine has military bases with weapons, and a lot of those people siding with the separatists. Also, Ukraine has numerous active T-64 tanks, it is one of their main battle tanks. Russia has zero in active service. Those tanks came from Ukrainian forces, not Russia. DO I have absolute proof? Of course not, but just common sense shows that wow, a T-64, one of the main tanks Ukraine uses the separatists now have, and they obviously got them from the military bases they came under east Ukraine's control, as well as all the other weapons.
Yes:
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Originally Posted by Ariete
edit: more info on the tanks. They were apparently left behind on Crimea, and were supposed to be shipped to Russia, but they didn't want them and gave them to the separatists. Russia has already admitted they mingle actively in the crisis in e Ukraine, so no surprised here. But as a reminder, tanks can create a lot of damage and the russophiles and terrorists have no reason to play the victim. The separatists are equally involved in the killing.
Blah, blah, boring. Buy some new arguments. In a democracy the people have every right to oust a corrupt president,
Define "people" here. It were not Eastern Ukrainians who came to Maidan to oust that president; so what happened to their democratic rights?
Last edited by erasure; 06-15-2014 at 11:37 AM..
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