NATO And the US Need Back Off On The Ukraine!

[icyfroth]

"Kerry's (John Kerry) rush to punish Russia and Nato's decision to respond to Kiev's call by holding a meeting of member states' ambassadors in Brussels today were mistakes.

Ukraine is not part of the alliance, so none of the obligations of common defence come into play. Nato should refrain from interfering in Ukraine by word or deed.

The fact that it insists on getting engaged reveals the elephant in the room: underlying the crisis in Crimea and Russia's fierce resistance to potential changes is Nato's undisguised ambition to continue two decades of expansion into what used to be called "post-Soviet space", led by Bill Clinton and taken up by successive administrations in Washington.

At the back of Pentagon minds, no doubt, is the dream that a US navy will one day replace the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Balaclava.

Since independence, every poll in Ukraine has shown a majority against Nato membership, yet one after another the elites who ran the country until 2010 and who are now back in charge ignored the popular will.

Seduced by Nato's largesse and the feeling of being part of a hi-tech global club, they took part in joint military exercises and even sent Ukrainian troops to Iraq and Afghanistan."

From Here

And we wonder why there are so many displaced persons looking for refuge!

[the_hawk*]

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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

The problem s not with the Ukraine as a whole but with the Crimea.As I understand it,  This region was annexed to Ukraine in the 1950 by Nikita Kruschev, without any consultation and against the wishes of the local population who still consider themselves to be Russian.

The setting up of arbitrary and artificial borders has been the curse of Europe  and indeed of many other regions for centuries.  

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And a great arguement for a one world government with a sponsored amry to make any non compliant country tow the line

[the_hawk*]

A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.

Ian Williams Goddard:

[the_great_she_elephant]

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@the_hawk* wrote:

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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

The problem s not with the Ukraine as a whole but with the Crimea.As I understand it,  This region was annexed to Ukraine in the 1950 by Nikita Kruschev, without any consultation and against the wishes of the local population who still consider themselves to be Russian.

The setting up of arbitrary and artificial borders has been the curse of Europe  and indeed of many other regions for centuries.  

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And a great arguement for a one world government with a sponsored amry to make any non compliant country tow the line

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A one world government sounds great in theory, Hawk, but I doubt it could ever work in reality. What sort of a government would it be - bearing in mind that, on a world scale, democracy is probably not the norm   who would put it in power and who would dismiss it if it  if it overstepped it's authority? 

[icyfroth]

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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

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@the_hawk* wrote:

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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

The problem s not with the Ukraine as a whole but with the Crimea.As I understand it,  This region was annexed to Ukraine in the 1950 by Nikita Kruschev, without any consultation and against the wishes of the local population who still consider themselves to be Russian.

The setting up of arbitrary and artificial borders has been the curse of Europe  and indeed of many other regions for centuries.  

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And a great arguement for a one world government with a sponsored amry to make any non compliant country tow the line

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A one world government sounds great in theory, Hawk, but I doubt it could ever work in reality. What sort of a government would it be - bearing in mind that, on a world scale, democracy is probably not the norm   who would put it in power and who would dismiss it if it  if it overstepped it's authority? 

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I think Hawk was being wry

[the_great_she_elephant]

This article from the BBC seems to offer a balanced assessment of the crisis and the reasons behind it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26415508

[fourandsixpants]

cheers sheheffalump.

Maybe the whole thing is true but perhaps many historical events are being put forward as an excuse fby all interested parties (Russians and NATO and US included.....amongst many) simply to get better access to the gas fields/supplies, nuclear power and port with all the infrastructure, ships and nuclear subs?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26387353

[catsnknots]

I heard someone talking on the BBC radio last night and they live in Ukraine. 

They are saying that Russia has been heading back to the Cold War days. Where people around them have been reducing their army Russia has in fact being increasing theirs. They were saying that Russia wants control over them and they don't want to be controlled. Georgia is a classic example of how Russia is behaving. 

NATO would have been seeing this happen don't you think and maybe are trying to stop a massive takeover? 

[fourandsixpants]

hi catmad:)

Trouble is, which media storyline/branch do we believe??????

There are always many sides and angles to every situation.

Do we believe that the Russians are the bad guys?

or

Do we believe that the USA supporters are the bad guys?

....seems like all the media reports are supporting either one or t'other.

I feel for the civilians caught up in all this.

[catsnknots]

Actually this person was for neither Russia or the USA. They were for an independant Ukraine and wanted to have new elections and have the people actually have a say rather than a leader that was buddies with Russia. 

They felt that they were not being listened too. 

They also said the Russians and Ukranians lived happliy together and no matter who they ended up going to pair up with they would alaways live happily together. 

The whole of the Ukraine parliament voted out the President. Not just one side but all of them voted him out. For that President that was lawfully voted out to then go to his mate and say help me was inappropriate. The natural system should have been left to play out. 

The Ukraine's UN Ambassodor has pleaded with the UN to help them. 

Russia is going in and going to shoot first.... in fact they already have with one Ukranian soldier with brain damage after being shot at. 

For Putin to say that they were invading Ukraine because of the risk to their peoples lives shows that he is a nut case and from what I have just been reading he is behaving very much like Hitler did. 

‘PUTIN ACTING LIKE HITLER’

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of acting in Crimea much like Adolf Hitler did in central and eastern Europe in the late 1930s.

“What’s happening in Ukraine is history repeating itself,’’ former Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg said in an interview with Austrian daily Osterreich.

“Putin is acting along the same principle as Adolf Hitler’’ did during his invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938 and 1939, he said.

Mr Putin asked Russia’s parliament on Saturday to allow him to send troops to Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea and elsewhere in south-eastern regions of the ex-Soviet country, which has ancient historical and cultural ties to Moscow.

“Since he wanted to invade Crimea, he needed a pretext and said that his compatriots were oppressed,’’ the 76-year-old Mr Schwarzenberg said, adding that Russians in Crimea, where they are a majority, were not facing any discrimination.

“When Hitler wanted to annex Austria, he said that Germans there were oppressed,’’ he said.

Europe should “clearly tell him that this is a violation of law that will not pass,’’ said Mr Schwarzenberg, who served as Czech foreign minister from 2007-2009 and 2010-2013.

Hitler annexed then Czechoslovakia’s northern and western regions in 1938 under the pretext of protecting the ethnic German population there. The following year his forces occupied the rest of the country.

Austria was annexed into the Third Reich in March 1938.

http://www.news.com.au/world/ukraine-russia-says-surrender-crimea-or-face-allout-assault/story-fndir...

[icyfroth]

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@catsnknots wrote:

I heard someone talking on the BBC radio last night and they live in Ukraine. 

They are saying that Russia has been heading back to the Cold War days. Where people around them have been reducing their army Russia has in fact being increasing theirs. They were saying that Russia wants control over them and they don't want to be controlled. Georgia is a classic example of how Russia is behaving. 

NATO would have been seeing this happen don't you think and maybe are trying to stop a massive takeover? 

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I think it's more like Russia wants to continue holding it's traditional territories and it's the US and NATO are trying for a massive takeover

Malcolm Fraser on the subject:

"There were many ways in which the former members of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe could have been given security for the future.  Nato chose to provide that security by moving eastward to the borders of Russia.

The then president, Gorbachev, in negotiating with secretary of state, James Baker, had insisted that Nato should not move one foot east – this was an area of traditional Russian influence. 

President Clinton pushed to expand the Nato alliance to the very borders of Russia.  There was talk of Ukraine and Georgia being included.

The move east, despite the negotiations held with Gorbachev, was provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia: we are not willing to make you a co-operative partner in the management of European or world affairs; we will exercise the power available to us and you will have to put up with it.

The message was re-emphasised years later, when President Bush sought to place elements of the anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.  America said this was aimed at Iran.  Russia would not have believed that.  The west was acting as though the cold war still persisted. 

What happened a while ago in Georgia, and what is happening now in Crimea, grows directly from those early mistakes made by the west.  The west has been angling over the years to draw Ukraine into Nato.  It has been doing whatever it could to support a pro-European government in the Ukraine, and to oppose or to bring down a pro-Russian government. 

In January, Seumas Milne described those fighting against the then government. If but a small part of what he then said was correct, the west has once again chosen some unsavoury partners and that does not augur well for the future. Milne then described the elements then fighting the government as pro-fascist, pro-nazi, anti-Jew."

From Here

and:

"At the back of Pentagon minds, no doubt, is the dream that a US navy will one day replace the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Balaclava."

From Here

Why shouldn't Russia defend it's territories against an invasion? Especially strategic ports like the above?  It wouldn't be the first time the west has tried to grab it:

"The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the Anglo-French-Turkish campaign to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea. The engagement followed the earlier Allied victory in September at the Battle of the Alma, where the Russian General Menshikov had positioned his army in an attempt to stop the Allies progressing south towards their strategic goal.[4] Alma was the first major encounter fought in the Crimea since the Allied landings at Kalamita Bay on 14 September, and was a clear battlefield success; but a tardy pursuit by the Allies failed to gain a decisive victory, allowing the Russians to regroup, recover and prepare their defence."

From Wiki