Ukraine Slides Deeper Toward War as Russia Warns on Vote
Source: Bloomberg
By Daryna Krasnolutska, Daria Marchak and Ryan Chilcote May 14, 2014 9:33 AM ET
Ukraine is as close to civil war as you can get, and a solution to the crisis must satisfy its regions, Russia said, after eastern rebels ambushed a Ukrainian army convoy in the deadliest blow in their campaign to secede.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there is a real war in eastern and southern Ukraine, where more than 30 attackers struck a convoy yesterday near the city of Kramatorsk, killing at least six paratroopers. Having accused Russia of supporting separatists with its special forces and saboteurs, Ukrainian acting Defense Minister Mykhaylo Koval said the two countries were embroiled in an undeclared war.
The ambush was the rebels deadliest attack against Ukraines military since they began a campaign to secede after Russia annexed Crimea in March. The battle came after separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk agreed to join forces to confront the central government. Casualties included quite a number of self-defense fighters killed by artillery and mortars, which may complicate a May 25 presidential election.
When Ukrainians kill Ukrainians, I believe its as close to civil war as you can get, Lavrov told Bloomberg Television in an interview in Moscow. In the east and south of Ukraine, there is a war, a real war, with heavy weaponry used, and if this is something that is conducive to free and fair elections, then I dont understand something about freedom.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-14/ukraine-slides-deeper-toward-war-as-russia-warns-on-vote.html
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Last edited Wed May 14, 2014, 02:43 PM - Edit history (1)
that only a minority of Ukrainians favour Ukraine becoming a member of NATO.
karynnj
(59,503 posts)The issue last November was simply having closer ties to EU - not joining EU either. It also seemed that the majority of people wanted the ties to EU -- and the Pro Russian former President ran on getting them.
What you are posting is a strawman no one is speaking of. It would be just as relevant to positing that the majority of Eastern Ukraine did not want to be annexed by Russia. Both this comment and yours are true, but they are more extreme than where most people are.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)A secret cable released by Wikileaks on Tuesday revealed that Washington had been warned by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as early as 2008 that US-EU-NATO interfering in Ukraine would result in the country splitting in two.
The 2008 cable classified by William Burns, then US Ambassador to Moscow and currently the US Deputy Secretary of State stated:
"Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the Bucharest summit (ref A), Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat."
The cable further revealed that the former Russian foreign minister and Moscow believed that NATO's involvement and expansion in Ukraine and Georgia was not based on security measures but rather a leftover legacy of the Cold War.
Ukraine and Georgia have lobbied to become members of NATO for some years, with full backing of the US, but their proposal for membership was rejected by the alliance at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008.
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/2314/20140513/wikileaks-secret-cable-russia-nato.htm
Another here on the subject :
Is the Russian occupation of the Crimea a case of aggressive expansionism by Moscow or aimed at at blocking a scheme by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to roll right up to the Russias western border? WikiLeaks has revealed a secret cable describing a meeting between French and American diplomats that suggests the latter, a plan that has been in the works since at least 2009.
Titled A/S Gordons meeting with policy makers in Paris, the cable summarizes a Sept. 16, 2009 get-together between Philip Gordon, then assistant U.S. Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and French diplomats Jean-David Levitte, Damien Loras, and Francois Richier. Gordon is currently a special assistant to President Obama on the Middle East.
While the bulk of the cable covers an exchange of views concerning Iran, the second to last item is entitled NATOs enlargement and strategic concept. At this point Levitte, former French ambassador to the U.S. from 2002 to 2007, interjects that [French] President [Nicholas] Sarkozy was convinced that Ukraine would one day be a member of NATO, but that there was no point in rushing the process and antagonizing Russia, particularly if the Ukrainian public was largely against membership. Gordon goes on to paraphrase Levittes opinion that, the Bucharest summit declaration was very clear that NATO had an open door and Ukraine and Georgia have a vocation in NATO.
Levitte is currently a fellow at the conservative Brookings Institute.
At the April 2008 NATO summit in Romania, Croatia and Albania were asked to jointhey did so in 2009and postponed a decision concerning Georgia and Ukraine until December 2008. But in August, Georgian forces attacked the breakaway province of South Ossetiapossibly under the delusion that NATO would come to their aidsetting off a short and disastrous war with Russia. The vote on Georgia and Ukraine was shelved both by that war and a Gallup Poll indicating that 40 percent of Ukrainians considered NATO a threat, while only 17 percent had a favorable view of the alliance.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/13/wikileaks-ukraine-and-nato/
pampango
(24,692 posts)Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Malta and Cyprus
A seventh would not be the end of the world.
Fortunately the leading candidate in the May 25 presidential election, Petro Poroshenko, said in early April that the level of popular support for the idea of Ukraine's joining NATO was too small to put on the agenda "so as not to ruin the country". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Poroshenko) It would be smart of him if that were a campaign promise that he kept.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)not becoming a member state. The others you listed are all member states.
Ukraine has got about the same chance of becoming a member as I have of swimming the English Channel
pampango
(24,692 posts)that Ukraine was lured into protest by the promise of EU membership. You're right it isn't going to happen in our life times.
And the leading presidential candidate says that NATO membership is approved of by so few Ukrainians that it is not even on his agenda.
balthazar2
(37 posts)I don't see how Russia and the US can stay out of it militarily. Tick, tick, tick.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)balthazar2
(37 posts)Think before you post.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)an action as some asshole with a gun.
...
Welcome to Ukraine Nulandistan
Wherever the US government says it is promoting democracy and freedom, as US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland professes about Ukraine, there has been destruction, impoverishment, sectarianism, fighting, and death. Welcome to post-coup Ukraine or Nulandistan. It follows the precedents and traditions of destabilization and violence honoured by US officials like Senator John McCain in the Syrian Arab Republic (McCainistan) and by Hillary Clinton in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Clintonistan).
...
Here.
I won't be able to read your replies, have to go pick up dog poop. It makes more sense than you.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)Got me some of that proof of the western sponsored coup in Ukraine that you are always talking about?
And I mean real proof of an actual coup taking place, not just, "Look at my post about the Yatsenyuk website! See!" proof?
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Nuland - on tape - and Yatsenyuk - by declaring himself a tool of NATO and the State Department - already provided plenty of evidence. They don't care if you know, but you don't care to know. Whereas your "proof" of Russian masterminding of the troubles amounts to "Putin lied about something else, ergo anything I, Tommy Carcetti, claim about Putin is true!" So arguing with you is like arguing God with a fundamentalist. Or, more to the point: political reason with an avowed ethnonationalist.
Thanks again!
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)You're strawmanning of my viewpoints is flattering. Honestly, it is. I mean, it's cute. Not accurate of my actual beliefs--not even close--but it sure is cute.
Cute like Yanukovych's dog that he took along with him back when he decided to pack up and leave on his own accord back in February 2014:
I mean, you did see the videos I posted right? Don't be shy. You can admit it.
Funny thing about those videos, how they don't really show someone who's being violently forced out of power as one would expect in a coup, but instead shows someone who takes three days to leisurely pack up his large oil painting collection and other assorted valuables and then helicopter off on his own fleet of choppers to Russia. In other words, not something one would expect in a coup.
But you go ahead and tell yourself that the Nuland phone call and the Yatsenyuk website are smoking gun, direct-and-to-the-point evidence that there was a western sponsored coup.
If you were a States Attorney, Jack, I sure would love to be a defense attorney in your jurisdiction.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)He and his dog are gone, after all.
It's the bankster, Yatsenyuk, and his Nuland-picked cabinet who are
openly working for NATO, the State Department, and the CIA ("NED" ;
stirring up ethnic hatred by abolishing Russian as a language of the state;
imposing the same EU austerity program that destroys Greek society;
allying with Nazis and putting them in charge of the security forces to murder protesters;
blaming their fellow citizens in the East for burning themselves to death;
dressing up attack helicopters in UN colors;
refusing to negotiate with the popular protests in the East, moving their country to civil war;
and making a mockery of the brief promise of the Maidan protests.
You'd think this unelected governor's disastrous regime and program would be of greater concern to you, if you cared what happens to the people in the Ukraine.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)You claim that there was a "coup" in Ukraine. Not just any coup, a western-led coup.
Do you understand the idea of a coup? I know I've already defined it for you. I shouldn't have to define it for you again.
But here's the thing about a coup. It requires a leader to be deposed, to be thrown out of power. (Violently, and by a relatively small group of conspirators, I might add).
The leader who you claim was deposed by virtue of a coup in Ukraine was....wait for it....Victor Yankovych.
So why the fuck are you so surprised that I bring forward to you direct and in your face evidence of the manner in which he left? Why do you think that is such an strange obsession on my part?
You do agree that part of the coup discussion is the person who you claim was subjected to the coup? Correct? Understand?
All you've done is thrown down some sort of laundry list of what you believe the Ukrainian interim government's misdeeds have been. None of it directly relates to the question as to whether Yanukovych was actually overthrown in a western-led coup, as you so claim. Your going off and claiming all I'm talking about in the discussion is Putin, and yet that's not even central to the question of whether or not there is a coup?
Honestly, what is wrong with your head? You're embarrassing yourself completely with the non-sequiturs and continuous dodging of the question that I've asked you.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Sounds about right.
Please do keep kicking my threads, I appreciate it. I'm going over to the Yats one right now...
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)What is your personal theory of what exactly happened on the evening of February 21-22, 2014 as it relates to Victor Yanukovych's departure from Kyiv, and who if anyone do you believe to have been involved in facilitating said departure and in what capacity were they involved?
And.....go. The floor is yours.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Clearly, on that night there was a legitimate, constitutional transfer of power after a very quiet election with the people electing the banker designated by NATO and the State Department. With 99% turnout, 89% approved of the plan to set Ukrainian against Russian, have Nazis run the police, plunder the country at the risk of destroying it, and blame it all on Putin, even though Russia had no interest in seeing a civil war erupt in Ukraine.
But I think the man you keep wanting to avoid - Yats - speaks so well for himself already!
Sorry I forgot the link, see you there:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024946300
go west young man
(4,856 posts)as noted by two of the US's most profound scholars on the subject, proving that the people that run our countries foreign policy really are amateurs with grand egos and not much more...
This article also has a good take on how the US has misled, misaligned and misjudged in this whole situation...http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/12/u-s-media-ignores-putins-peace-plan/
Personally, I think we need our $700 billion a year back.....we're paying for a shit sandwich.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)You responded/evaded with pure snark, but you're the one pushing the conspiracy theory. (And I mean that in a most literal manner: You are alleging members of the US government conspired with individuals in Ukraine to overthrow Yanukovych in a real and actual coup d'état.) It's your burden to prove that, not mine.
But you know what? Because apparently seeing your post rise to the top of the page for about 5 seconds gives your life so much meaning, I'll humor you. I can ask you the same question on your post, and you can choose to avoid the question and throw out red herrings and non-sequiturs and strawmen. Or you can actually answer what is a pretty simple and straight forward question. Your choice.
I'll see you on the other side.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)that everything bad that happens in the Ukraine is the result of action by ethno-Russians and the president of Russia. Even though the latter especially, no matter how evil, has no interest whatsoever in a civil war in Ukraine, or annexing territories that Russia was already exploiting but that as new Russian provinces would come with their own built-in, new, violent insurgency.
And at the same time, you push the coincidence theory that the obvious, announced involvements of NATO and the State Department and the CIA ("NED" , and even the FBI, do not matter and mean nothing. These involvements began long before the banker Yatsenyuk's group came to power. You'd like to trivialize the open public endorsement of the State Department for an extraconstitutional regime change (sounds like a coup!) as a matter of Nuland handing out those cookies you are obsessed with.
This is a consistently upheld double standard on behalf of a fantasy that there was a democratic, legitimate transition, or that the present government is not destroying the country by fomenting civil war, when it so evidently is. It dispenses with examination of what's actually going on and it's nonsense.
Perhaps Yanukovich fled in a cowardly fashion, or perhaps by fleeing (after clearing out some of his plunder) he averted (for that time) the bloodbath that your Nazi allies had already initiated. There are worse things he could have done than to sneak out in the middle of the night. He could have gone for the Tiananmen Square solution, would that have caused you to respect him more? I suppose you would have been more impressed with the small-time kleptocrat if he'd made some bellicose speech pitting the West against Russia in an ongoing war, like Yatsenyuk just did on May 9th. Standing tall for World War III! Why does this matter now?
You never address who is in charge now: the government chosen by State Department-CIA, NATO and EU, using disaster capitalism to impose austerity, being willing to incite ethnic civil war so as to maintain its power, working with Nazis, burning people for protesting, dressing up its attack helicopters in UN colors, and (as of May 9) talking up a war with Russia in which the West is supposedly standing tall alongside the Kiev regime.
As an American, my primary concern should be whether the American government takes a side in this conflict materially, gets involved with aid, money, arms, announcements, ultimata, and the risk of a World War, or else engages in negotiations and forces its Kiev wild-dog to back down.
So now that you have your precious answer to your Yanukovich at Night question, you will continue to avoid what the Kiev regime is and rationalize anything they do as the (ethno-)Russians' fault. More importantly, from a DU perspective, you will continue to contribute to the New Cold War propaganda and selling a disastrous imperialist involvement for the U.S.
U.S. out of Ukraine, assist in a negotiated, peaceful solution. Peace above all, because escalation is a potential global disaster. It's that simple.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)since the "Bay of Pigs"
Ukraine was never worth it but for bragging rights and to "show the Russians" and CIAs misadventure had predictable results.
Ukraine remaining neutral would not have been so bad for the Ukrainians but now the split in two is inevitable with Russia getting the plum parts and EU getting the perpetually money-losing state (Mother of all Greeces) infested with neonazis and fascists.
When does Victoria Nuland get a medal?
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)uhnope
(6,419 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)Was once part of Russia.
May end up that way again.
Or there may be new republics.
Or there may be a weak, federal Ukraine.
"Designs on Europe"? That's just partisan propaganda.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"That's just partisan propaganda..."
Except that Putin himself said. "The question is to ensure the rights and interests of the Russian southeast... Its New Russia. Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Odessa.
go west young man
(4,856 posts)to describe the upswing in economic conditions within the country....New Russia applies to culture, fashion, a rebirth of spirit and new construction...I've been over 8 times....American perceptions are sadly way off.....Here's a couple of examples. Peace.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)Novorossiya (Russian: Новоро́ссия, Ukrainian: Новоросія, Romanian: Noua Rusie; literally New Russia) was a historical term used by Russia denoting an area north of the Black Sea, part of the historical region (presently a nation-state republic) of Ukraine, which was conquered by the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century, and remained under the control of the Russian Empire until 1917. In modern terms this historic territory overlaid what is now Donetsk Oblast, small portions of Luhansk Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Zaporizhia Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Odessa Oblast and Crimea in Ukraine, Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, Rostov Oblast, and the Republic of Adygea in Russia.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
"I would like to remind you that this is Novorossiya - the term used back in the tsarist epoch. Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in the tsarist epoch. These are the territories which were turned over to Ukraine by the former Soviet government in the 1920s. God knows what they did that for.
All this dates back to the victories won by tsarist Russia in notorious wars in the epoch of Catherine the Great and Prince Potyomkin with the center in Novorossiysk; hence the name- Novorossiya. Then for different reasons these territories were lost, but the people remained. "
Vladimir Putin, April 17, 2014
go west young man
(4,856 posts)accept US media propaganda. Watch the video's....or avert your lying eyes. I know plenty of Russians and they all use the term New Russia....when I've told them about things I was surprised Russia had...they will commonly say "welcome to New Russia!". Notice the first vid is the story of a cool laid back African American basketball star....living in Russia. He likes it. Putin must have tortured him pretty good because his Stockholm Syndrome is fascinating to observe.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)Just to let you in on that.
go west young man
(4,856 posts)how dare I, who have been to Russia 8 times, each time for a month, dare to know what the fuck Russians think.....please elaborate on your vast experience there, did you try the banya?
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)This isn't a Russia tourism discussion, just so you know.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Because whatever Putin says doesn't matter. If Obama says something, geezus he's an imperialist dictator.
ballyhoo
(2,060 posts)moondust
(19,986 posts)Rossiyskaya Gazeta is the Russian governments official newspaper of record and provides the official publication of all laws and government decrees, for which it gets compensation from the federal budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond_the_Headlines#Structure
go west young man
(4,856 posts)it is the Russian equivalent of US government program promotional videos....here's an example...
It's 2014....all developed countries are promoting themselves on video....it is the best way for people to learn to understand different cultures....even the US culture.moondust
(19,986 posts)accept US media propaganda" are probably more confused than Americans who accept and promote Kremlin propaganda, right? Or maybe you're not American? Privet tovarishch!
go west young man
(4,856 posts)(not that being Russian is a bad thing) then I would be a very rich man....and instead of wasting my time smacking my head into brick minded walls I would most likely be on a private yacht in the Caribbean.
pampango
(24,692 posts)accept US media propaganda", ... well you know the rest. Perhaps there can be independent thinking on both sides and the person you or I don't agree with is not a mental midget who believes the "propaganda" coming from one side or the other.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)But the Russians only think back to whenever the last time they controlled whatever piece of land they now seek to reconquest. Once Russia conquered it, it is considered Russian since the dawn of age.
Hence why they assume Crimea is historically Russian as well.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)ethno-nationalist, anti-Russian prejudices?
There might be someone in the back snoozing through it.
independentpiney
(1,510 posts)It was the capitol of the Rus from around the 10th to the 13th century, when the Golden Horde rode in.
Igel
(35,317 posts)Calling it "Russian" is something that they disabuse freshmen in Slavic civ classes of. Sort of like calling the area of the Continent that the Angles migrated from "England".
It has as much in common linguistically with Russian as with Ukrainian, Ukrainian having more Polonisms and rather fewer foppish South Slavonic forms. (Really? "Vladymir"? That "vlad-" bit was gone before the Horde got to the Urals, but that reflex is very Church Slavonic.)
And the political and social system was refashioned rather thoroughly by the Horde--more so under its acolyte Groznyi tsar' than in the SW. Enough that Ivan the Terrible couldn't abide the Novgorodian system and utterly destroyed it when he had a chance.
independentpiney
(1,510 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)nationalists of practically any modern country can find a map that shows there country should be a lot bigger than it is today.