BS: Ukraine

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:26 AM

You'd think before it got blown out of proportion, into joining 'alliances', which would escalate bloodshed, and bad P.R., you'd think the countries involved, (ooops I meant banks), would send their slickest negotiators to hammer out a deal..all leveraging everything they could, and sell out each other, and the citizens, who think it's about their countries....and work a deal.
That's what it's going to boil down to, anyway.......unless some bankster is 'in' with weapons manufacturer....then there is money to be made, selling ideologies and weapons..and hope they use up a LOT of them!!!.....they'd have to wage an intense propaganda campaign, to make sure both sides REALLY HATE each other REAL GOOD.....(and use up more ammo and stuff, for sale)
OH, by the way, do you remember me telling you that the five countries on the U.N. Security Council, are also the world largest weapons suppliers??...Briton, France, U.S., China and Russia......
So if it's all about fighting over money, and/or the way it is
'handled'.....
...so I guess that might in the bargaining....

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,rb
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:01 PM

Canada should send the HMCS Protecteur to the Black Sea, after she gets towed to Hawaii by the US Navy for repairs.
Maybe re-christen her "HMCS Provocateur" with a bottle of Molson Ex.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 08:39 PM

In Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: He served in the KGB in East Germany, where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

    Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. "In another world," she said.

If you weren't sure of the veracity of that little reportorial nugget, all doubt should've vanished after Putin's press conference today.

Slouching in a fancy chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled. And rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: Serious! angry! bemused! flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of Ukraine, but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs elections, but you can't have elections because there is already a president. And no elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite? Look at how peaceful the Crimea is, probably thanks to those guys with guns holding it down. Who are they, by the way? Speaking of instability, did you know that the mayor of Dniepropetrovsk is a thief? He cheated "our oligarch, [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich" of millions. Just pocketed them! Yanukovich has no political future, I've told him that. He didn't fulfill his obligations as leader of the country. I've told him that. Mr. Putin, what mistakes did Yanukovich make as president? You know, I can't answer that. Not because I don't know the answer, but because it just wouldn't be right of me to say. Did you know they burned someone alive in Kiev? Just like that? Is that what you call a manifestation of democracy? Mr. Putin, what about the snipers in Kiev who were firing on civilians? Who gave them orders to shoot? Those were provocateurs. Didn't you read the reports? They were open source reports. So I don't know what happened there. It's unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don't know. Yanukovich didn't give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don't do it. You'll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn't the first time they've done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people...these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You're not listening to me. I've already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you're not listening. It's not that Yanukovich said he's not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they're not as bad as in Ukraine. The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?

And so on, for about an hour. And much of that, by the way, is direct quotes.

Gone was the old Putin, the one who loves these kinds of press events. He'd come a long way from the painfully awkward gray FSB officer on Larry King, a year into his tenure. He had grown to become the master of public speaking, who had turned his churlish, prison-inflected slang to his benefit. A salty guy in utter command of a crowd. That Putin was not the Putin we saw today. Today's Putin was nervous, angry, cornered, and paranoid, periodically illuminated by flashes of his own righteousness. Here was an authoritarian dancing uncomfortably in his new dictator shoes, squirming in his throne.

For the last few years, it has become something like conventional knowledge in Moscow journalistic circles that Putin was no longer getting good information, that he was surrounded by yes-men who created for him a parallel informational universe. "They're beginning to believe their own propaganda," Gleb Pavlovsky told me when I was in Moscow in December. Pavlovsky had been a close advisor to the early Putin, helping him win his first presidential election in 2000. (When, in 2011, Putin decided to return for a third term as president, Pavlovsky declared the old Putin dead.) And still, it wasn't fully vetted information. We were like astronomers, studying refractions of light that reached us from great distances, and used them to draw our conclusions.

Today's performance, though, put all that speculation to rest. Merkel was absolutely right: Putin has lost it. Unfortunately, it makes him that much harder to deal with.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 07:23 PM

Induct Ukraine as NATO member, now

By Tarek Fata, Toronto Sun

First posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 06:34 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 06:41 PM EST
   
The first shots in the Ukrainian crisis have been fired.

Fired in the air by invading Russian troops in Crimea, to warn Ukrainian soldiers to back off, but shots nonetheless in what may well become a modern version of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Except this time, chances are it will be the American eagle that blinks, not the Russian bear.

As I wrote last week, the new, changed borders of Europe are a fait accompli.

Just as NATO sliced Kosovo out of Serbia to provide a homeland for Muslim Kosovars, the Russians have invoked the same principle to carve out Crimea from Ukraine's underbelly, ostensibly to save the region's ethnic Russian majority from "extremists" that have supposedly taken over in Kiev.

All of this could have been avoided had America shown some resolve in 2008 and accepted Ukraine's application to join NATO.

Unfortunately, the man who now leads NATO and the West is not John F. Kennedy, who eyeballed Russia into retreating from Cuba.

To put this crisis in perspective, it's important to look at the timeline in Ukraine.

On Oct. 21, 2013, NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen announced that Ukraine, which had been lobbying to become a NATO member for years, and had been rejected in 2008, would not join NATO in 2014.

A month later, on Nov. 21, 2013, the pro-Russian Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych unexpectedly announced he was abandoning plans to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union.

This came as a shock to many in Ukraine and by December, Yanukovych's arbitrary actions triggered widespread protests, led by a most unlikely of Ukrainians—a dark-skinned, Kabul-born investigative journalist, Mustafa Nayyem.

(So much for Russian propaganda that the Kiev uprising was some sort of a White supremacist fascist putsch).

Nayyem used social media to rally students and others to protest.

Soon, tens of thousands of ordinary people joined him and his call for a European option for Ukraine.

(By the way, the "Maidan" where Nayyem's youth gathered, is a Turkish, Arabic, Persian word for a public square, that is used as far away as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and as near as Poland and Ukraine).

The question now before the EU and NATO is less about getting Russian troops out of Crimea than it is ensuring the rest of Ukraine is not sliced into two parts, with Moscow gobbling up the industrial east, with all its mineral resources, leaving a truncated and economically devastated western Ukraine in the lap of the EU to rescue and revive.

There is way to stop Vladimir Putin's imperial designs, but to accomplish it all of us, including U.S. President Barack Obama, will have to develop stiffer spines and a dose of courage.

Instead of the endless rhetorical condemnations and cliché-ridden utterances, what western governments have to do right now is this:

1. Immediately induct Ukraine as a full member of NATO and call Moscow's bluff, the way JFK did in 1962.

2. Through back channels, let Putin know he can keep Crimea, but any encroachment on the rest of Ukraine will be considered an attack on the other member states of NATO.

The choice is Obama's.

Stand up for Ukraine and be counted. Or, forever become the laughing stock of the world, from the Boko Haram of Nigeria and the Taliban of Afghanistan, to the over-dressed communist generals who run North Korea, to Putin's biker gangs of Moscow.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 05:30 PM

Welcome...anytime!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 04:49 PM

Ah, Jeez, Ed- why are you introducing facts into the discussion???

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:41 PM

How was the reaction and success of the Bush-Cheney approach in the Russian military incursion into Georgia much different from Obama?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:09 PM

"Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:54 PM
CS: "Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity."
Leave me and my homeland out of it!
GfS"

Heh! Thanks for the laugh GfS ;-P

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:06 PM

In the meantime I am struggling to repair all the storm damage to my property.
in my opinion, even thugh the soviet regime had many faults they were all better off under the soviet union, and the only positive i can think of is, thank god all these idiotson both sides dont have nuclear weapons.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 02:23 PM

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ireland-told-atone-for-helping-us-rendition-242719.html

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 01:08 PM

Huh?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 01:03 PM

"Leave me and my homeland out of it!"
If only we could !! - tell the fellers who are still transporting 'rendition' victims though our local airport (west of Ireland)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:54 PM

CS: "Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity."

Leave me and my homeland out of it!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:40 PM

"The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to. It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:24 PM

wage the new Cold War all over again."

Yup. Worked SOOOO well the last time around. Some idiots never learn.

But what one would expect from the Stephens - neo-conservative mouthpiece & editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post {a legal partner of the WSJ) from 2002 to 2004- and BooBad.

So let's go back to the days when men were men, and fight the First World War all over again
Back with Barry, back to "cash and carry", back with Barry's--

"And remember, 'I'm an American first, and a politician second'. . . Spoken like a true American politician"

Back with Barry, not with Lyndon, Ike or Harry, back with Barry's boys.

Russia is a petro-oligarchy

Unlike the US?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:10 PM

"Only a president as inept as Barack Obama could fail to seize the opportunity to win, or even wage, the new Cold War all over again."

Why would Obama - or anyone at all - want to wage the cold war all over again?
Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:26 AM

This is what WSJ columnist Bret Stephens suggests as a policy option for the US:

""In Russia," the historian Dietrich Geyer once wrote, "expansion was an expression of economic weakness, not exuberant strength." Mr. Putin's Russia is a petro-oligarchy whose survival depends on high oil prices and privileged access to the West for the politically connected elite. Raise interest rates, investigate the finances of Mr. Putin's inner circle, impose travel bans on Putin's cronies and broaden the scope of the Magnitsky Act, and we'll see just how resilient the Moscow regime really is. Only a president as inept as Barack Obama could fail to seize the opportunity to win, or even wage, the new Cold War all over again."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:14 AM

The proper way for any nation to militarily intervene in the offairs of another nation, regardless of their interests or firepower, is through the UN (That of course may differ in times of war, where the outside nation is directly attacked by another nation).

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Stu
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:10 AM

Globalisation has made it impossible to deal with invasions like this as the markets get upset when trade is threatened. Look at how our governments abandoned Tibet and human rights in China in favour of trade, ignore slavery worldwide etc.

The Russians will keep Crimea because there's fuck all we can do about it, and market forces don't care about people.

It's all about the money, money, money . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:07 AM

While the world theorizes and takes sides and hopes for this or that to happen or not happen, the Quakers in Moscow plead with Friends/Quakers around the world:

02 March 2014
To all Friends, a statement on Ukraine

Source.
A statement from Moscow Friends Meeting to all Quakers everywhere:

To all Friends:

Moscow Monthly Meeting of Friends asks you, dear Friends, to pray and work with us for peace in Ukraine. We propose the following principles to guide our prayers and our advocacy:
For government based on compassion instead of coercion, free from international interference.
For reconciliation among all the people of Ukraine regardless of ethnicity.
For all the different ethnic groups of Ukraine to be able to express their hopes and expectations freely.
For all controversies to be resolved without violence.
Moscow Friends will continue to follow the situation closely and prayerfully. Please join us.

Johan Maurer and Misha Roshchin
Moscow Monthly Meeting of Friends

Surely they want what we all would want for all the people of the world. War has never yet worked in the history of humans. Will we ever learn? "The people of the world must decide their fate, they need to stick together or disintegrate."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:56 AM

Oh, and Bobad- do take a butchers at a geo-political map some time.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:52 AM

Its kind of like the WMD's in Iraq, Bobad.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:48 AM

"Putin has a perfect right to go into Crimea and stabilise the situation."

I may have missed it but I had not heard of there being any instability in Crimea - can you expound on that?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:29 AM

I find the American criticism of Putin's action totally grotesque. America and her allies have gone barnstorming into Iraq and Libya in the recent past, and America has been responsible for regime change from Iran to Venezuela. There has also been extreme criticism and attempts at destabilisation in Syria, while the repressive Saudi regime is regarded as a staunch ally.
   My take is that Putin has a perfect right to go into Crimea and stabilise the situation.
   The only politics working here is the politics of energy and it's distribution. What a surprise!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 09:41 AM

Perhaps the people of Crimea have a right to determine their own fate, and the majority may indeed wish to rejoin Russia. However that decision should not be made looking down the wrong end of Putin's guns!
If Russia withdrew with a UN promise to hold a democratic and free vote on that question, and Russia was to agree that the rest of Ukraine would have soverign self determination including tne right to join NATO a fair outcome could result.
The problem is that arseholes like Putin here, and Bush in Iraq have no concept of diplomacy! If you have big guns better to follow the lead of Hitler and Stalin!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 09:27 AM

All about gas?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 09:14 AM

Great letter in The Guardian this morning:

John Kerry accuses the Russians of acting "in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext". This should end all debate on Americans' understanding of irony.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 08:59 AM

The tragedy of the Ukraine is that the rebels who rightly abhor Yanocovich have no legitimate plan of action to replace him

Elections were planned for May.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Stringsinger
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 08:55 AM

The tragedy of the Ukraine is that the rebels who rightly abhor Yanocovich have no legitimate plan of action to replace him, running the risk of finding another one just like him, a similar problem for Egypt or any revolutionary movement that takes place, remembering that the French Revolution wound up with Napoleon at the helm.

The sick nationalism of the Nazis have infected some of the Ukrainian rebels making it difficult for the world community to totally support their grievances.

As for Putin, he is emerging as another dictator, a replacement for Communism as a continuing Tsar, who aligns with Yanocovich in this capacity and whose power incites the envy of none other than Kim Jung Un.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 04:23 AM

I'm not surprised to see Russia moving to defend it's not insignificant interests in Crimea (it is after all the kind of action that any major power would attempt - in some way), not least it's warm water port. The fact that Crimean's generally support Russia and that Crimea was formerly a part of Russia, is certainly fortunate for Russia for diplomatic reasons. As such, hopefully unless the West intervene before the referendum there (slated for 30th March I believe), things could stay peaceful until Russia secures it's interests there.

The US position on this is however breathtakingly hypocritical, when the US (including Obama's stated position "the US will defend it's interests" on the potential war in Syria just recently) repeatedly initiate military actions to 'defend their interests' abroad - usually many miles abroad, though it's own back door has seen plenty of aggressive measures "protecting US interests" too.

Kerry in particular is a joke: ""You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text," Kerry told the CBS program "Face the Nation."

Whu? Really you'd think he remembered the lies the West conspired in concocting about WMD in Iraq!

Someone flagged this up on CiF, I thought some folk here might find either of interest / or complete nonsense (take your pick), it's quite provocative:

What Neocons Want From Ukraine Crisis

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 11:25 PM

bobad: "It turns out that invading your neighbour isn't too good for your economy....."

Who's 'your'?....the global bankers?...or the individual country's?...keep in mind, corporations and banks have different borders....and they'll 'play the national interests' against each others, within their own borders, if they can capitalize on it.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Janie
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 10:11 PM

Thank you, Rob Naylor.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 08:13 PM

"It turns out that invading your neighbour isn't too good for your economy"

It never seemed to hurt the Vikings, invading Ireland, and elsewhere:)

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 08:05 PM

Look at the record of the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 07:51 PM

That never stops people doing it. Look at the record of the USA in Latin America.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 07:42 PM

It turns out that invading your neighbour isn't too good for your economy - the Russian stock market is down 12%.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 05:32 PM

"...in 1997 it was agreed that Russia would be allowed to base its fleet at Sevastopol for 20 years."

Time to ring in George Santayana- for how many centuries has Russia been set on having a "warm water port"........ this recent business comes as a surprise to someone? This goes WAY beyond Putin.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 03:54 PM

One of the unnamed 'Guests': "Russian-Ukrainian Conflict Spilling Beyond Borders And Into Natural Gas Markets"

Key words are 'Beyond Borders And Into Natural Gas MARKETS'.......

This will eventually be 'solved' financially....if it can't, or doesn't, then it will get blown wide open.....UNTIL it will be...(BUT, you never know, there are naive 'patriots' still out there!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 03:45 PM

Forbes- Business

Russian-Ukrainian Conflict Spilling Beyond Borders And Into Natural Gas Markets

Natural Gas

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 02:56 PM

Q, You post is dead on...especially, "Does not concern the 'Yankee dollah,' but the euro-"......different banking systems! (Just like when the U.S. invaded Iraq, because Iraq was making moves to going to the Euro..

Q: "Putin wants the Ukraine in the Russian orbit; he was pushing a regime under Yankovich that was favorable to strong ties with Russia, but the revolt and moves toward the EU decided him to annex the Crimea, an economically important autonomous parliamentary republic within Ukraine"

RIGHT, again!...besides that, the Crimea has the only other Russian warm water port, other than the one in Syria...which you covered, Q: "Russia has important naval installations in Crimea."

Q: "The EU and NATO members may impose some sanctions, but their efforts will be useless to change Putin's thrust."

Right....Governments are not the ones making these decisions ...companies (corporations/banksters) DO!

The rest is just excuses for propaganda purposes.
(Q, read my last post, before this one).

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 02:03 PM

Russia has given Ukraine's military in Crimea a deadline to surrender or "face storm," Ukrainian defense sources say, as deputies in the Russian lower house prepared a bill to annex Crimea.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 01:42 PM

Does not concern the 'Yankee dollah,' but the euro-

Putin wants the Ukraine in the Russian orbit; he was pushing a regime under Yankovich that was favorable to strong ties with Russia, but the revolt and moves toward the EU decided him to annex the Crimea, an economically important autonomous parliamentary republic within Ukraine.
58% of the population is ethnic Russian. Industrial plants deal with chemical production, mechanical work and petroleum. Farming is important (60 percent of the industry market).

Russia has important naval installations in Crimea.

All the Ukraine can do is capitulate, allowing Russia to take control of Crimea.
The EU and NATO members may impose some sanctions, but their efforts will be useless to change Putin's thrust.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 12:53 PM

I just got extra parts for my Lada, downed the last of my ruski-vodka and sold all my rubles (going rate is a wheebarrow load for a "yankee dollah").

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 12:48 PM

I don't think the only outside influence stirring things up is Putin. And what gets stirred up in such circumstances tend to involve ethnicity.

Thanks Rob Naylor for giving us some more in-depth stuff. It's all clearly a very complicated and ambiguous situation. The last thing that is needed is clumsy bluster from Foreign politicians.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 11:10 AM

The conflict is about the influence of the Putin regime, scarcely about ethnicity.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 08:37 AM

Wonder if any of this will make a difference to Britain's arms sales policy - doubt it?

"The scale and detail of the deals emerged after a forensic investigation by a committee of MPs, who also discovered that strategically controlled items have been sent to Iran, China, Sri Lanka, Russia, Belarus and Zimbabwe – all of which feature prominently on the Foreign Office's list of states with worrying civil rights records."
Arms sales to Russia
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 07:15 AM

Just background on the region:

"Geographically, Turkey straddles the boundary dividing Europe and Asia. Sitting astride the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, Turkey controls the warm-water naval access of Russia, the Ukraine, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Control of the straits between the Black and the Mediterranean Seas has long been a matter of keen interest to Russia, as well as other nations bordering the Black Sea. Historically, Russia has viewed such control as the sine qua non of its own sovereignty."

a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/naval-arms-control-1936.htm">Montreux Convention 

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 06:56 AM

Ethnic groups 

Interesting information on the ethic make - up.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 06:48 AM

Right wing nationalism
Ukrainian fascism
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 06:00 AM

Depends whether rUK (not "England) has a lease agreement on the bases with Scotland, I should think.

The fact that Russia's 20 year leases on their Crimean bases run out in 3 years time and that a west-leaning government might not automatically renew them may have some small bearing on Russia's action. No-one, extremist or otherwise, was threatening their bases. No demos outside them, nothing.