Ukraine - discuss

[Andy105]

^^

Very important to remember this when thinking about the whole situation. Russia is not innocent - but the current Ukrainian government is unelected and took power via force.

Right. I don't think that there are any good guys here, and Putin is playing on that.

And yes, we must all fight against crappy snus. It's the right thing to do.

[Frosted]

^^

Very important to remember this when thinking about the whole situation. Russia is not innocent - but the current Ukrainian government is unelected and took power via force.

This...too.

I think Russia could foresee a potential civil war. Their sphincters tightened as the Crimea is strategically important, so they took it back before everything went down the toilet. I dont blame them.
With civil war you can't do a single thing to stop it or to help. Civil war is the dirtiest, most dangerous and horrific of all wars.. unfortunately it must run it's course....if indeed it must happen. I hope the people of the Ukraine go to the brink, look at the abyss, say " f** k that" and walk away from it.

[wa3zrm]

Putin and the ‘Good Hitler’
World Affairs Journal ^ |

Just when you think Vladimir Putin’s propaganda cannot sink any lower, it invariably does.
Andranik Migranyan is a seasoned Kremlin hand. A former member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, a cavalier of the presidentially bestowed Order of Honor, he currently heads the New York office of the so-called Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a Russian GONGO created on the initiative of Vladimir Putin in 2007 (it also has an office in Paris).
This week, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper published Migranyan’s article attacking Professor Andrei Zubov, a prominent and well-respected Russian historian, who, in his recent op-ed in Vedomosti, drew direct parallels between Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Adolf Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria and annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland and Lithuania’s Klaipeda region in 1938–1939. For his views, Zubov was promptly fired from his job at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
Migranyan’s “argument” against Zubov’s well-founded logic is shocking even by the standards of today’s regime in the Kremlin. Rather than attempting to refute the parallel between Putin and Hitler, Migranyan actually embraces it—with an added twist. “We should distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939, and separate chaff from grain,” he writes. “The fact is that while Hitler was gathering German lands; if he… were known only for uniting, without a single drop of blood, Germany with Austria, Sudetenland with Germany, Memel [the German name for Klaipeda] with Germany, in effect achieving what Bismarck could not; and if Hitler stopped at that, he would be remembered in his country’s history as a politician of the highest order.”
Perhaps someone could remind Andranik Migranyan and his Kremlin overseers of the track record of this “politician of the highest order” and “gatherer of German lands” prior to 1939—including the establishment of concentration camps and the public burning of books; the purges of “non-Aryans” and the creation of the Gestapo; the closure of newspapers and political parties and the establishment of a one-man dictatorship; the Nuremberg racial laws and Kristallnacht.
But of course they already know that.

[SnusBooth]

Ukraine crisis: Deal to 'de-escalate' agreed in Geneva

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27072351

"Following the Geneva talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said there was agreement that all illegal military formations in Ukraine must be dissolved, and that everyone occupying buildings must be disarmed and leave them."

[trebli]

Here is an interesting recent video. I think it was originally broadcast by the BBC. The Kiev government is having a difficult time in convincing ordinary citizens that it represents them.

[trebli]

Another video along the same theme.

[trebli]

Slovakia Looks To Aid Kiev With Reverse Gas Flows



“Reverse gas supplies from Slovakia have become one of Ukraine’s best hopes for a strong supply of natural gas amid fears that Russia could cut off its supply.
With Ukraine importing nearly 60 percent of its gas from Russia, discussions on the use of reverse flows of gas have been taking place between Slovakia, Ukraine and the European Commission since the beginning of April, when Russian energy giant Gazprom nearly doubled the price for gas that Ukraine had been paying.”

http://www.turkishpress.com/news/402562/

[trebli]

Misery In Ukraine As Deadly Conflict Drives Civilians From Homes

Misery In Ukraine As Deadly Conflict Drives Civilians From Homes





Quote from the video:


"Valentina Popova, in the ward next door, has lost her leg and her arm to indiscriminate artillery shells.


Switching to the Ukrainian language, she made a heartrending plea to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.


"We used to dance, sing, do everything in Ukrainian. Poroshenko, Mr. Poroshenko -- please listen to us. Why don't you understand your people? Be a man. Be human. Please stop your aggression. Stop this war."


http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/02/world/...sis/index.html

[Frosted]

Theres been a peace agreement today...I hope its strong.

It seems that acting as a human being is too much for some people.

[trebli]

I hope so too Frosted. It's time for this to stop.

[wa3zrm]

Isis Tells Vladimir Putin: 'We are Coming to Russia' to 'Free Chechnya'
International Business Times ^

The radical Islamist group Isis (now known as Islamic State) has released a new video threatening Russian President Vladimir Putin that it plans to come to Russia and "free Chechnya".
The video footage, believed to be filmed in the Taqba airbase captured from Syrian government forces in Raqqa, shows an IS fighter in a military jet.
"This message is for you, Vladimir Putin! These are the aircraft you sent to Bashar [Assad], and we're going to send them to you. Remember that!" he said.
"This is Russian technology," said a militant with a Russian voice, according to The Moscow Times.
"We will with the consent of Allah free Chechnya and all of the Caucasus! The Islamic State is here and will stay here, and it will spread with the grace of Allah!" another militant warns.
The militant then addressed Putin, adding: "Your throne has already been shaken, it is under threat and will fall with our arrival [in Russia] ... We're already on our way with the permission of Allah!"
(video at link)
While the terror group has declared war on the United States for its air-strike campaign in northern Iraq, Russia has provoked its ire for supporting and supplying the Assad regime. The militants in the video refer to Assad as a "pig".
Russia's security services believe hundreds of militants from the Caucasus regions have fled to the Middle East to fight with the group.
One of the group's prominent military commanders, Omar al-Shishani, is a Georgian-born ethnic Chechen. With a deep hatred for the Kremlin, he played a role in the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, spying on Russian tanks and relaying their positions back to Georgian artillery.
Some social media users have called Shishani "Tarkhan the Rodent" in reference to his real name, Tarkhan Batirashvili. Shishani itself translates as "the Chechen" in Arabic.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Instagram the group's warning was a "childish threat".
In the post that showed Kadyrov with a shirt emblazoned with Putin's face, he said the Islamist militants were "saying only what their masters in the West's security services were telling them to say".
"These jerks have nothing to do with Islam. They are the blatant enemies of Muslims all over the world. Naive people decided to threaten Chechnya and all of Russia with two aircraft. They can sit in 2,000 aircraft and still not make it to Russia," he wrote.
"I declare, with all responsibility, that whoever gets it into their heads to threaten Russia and speak the name of President Vladimir Putin will be destroyed as soon as he says it." He added: "We won't even wait for him to sit at the helm of a plane."
Before the release of the video, Russia's Defence Ministry condemned the "horrific crimes" committed by the group and requested that China and Western nations battle to end IS's campaign across the Middle East.

[Frankie Reloaded]

lol. And they will only stop on the way for a minute or two to incinerate Israel Strong words...