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Ukrainian Conflict - Donetsk Boogaloo

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ksan said:
While it's a simplification, their broadest audience don't seem to be significantly more impressive. Rather it seems to be people who aren't generally well-informed and didn't start reading about the revolution in the earlier stages.
Time and time again I see the criticism of the western media not bringing up the far-right elements of the protests, which simply isn't the truth. Unless these people for some reason have selective memory, decided to not read the actual articles, or simply started reading about the events last week, anyone would have known that.
Click to expand...

That's not my criticism of Western coverage personally. I think they allow too much bs from politicians to go unchallenged. They're all pretending like the Nuland phone call didn't happen and that the US has clean hands in this conflict while blaming Russian for pretty much everything. When John Kerry can say 'you can't just invade countries under false precepts' and no one in the press challenges him on that blatant and duplicitous double speak (except for independent media), it's no surprise that people lose faith in Western MSM and start watching RT instead.

Partial Gamification said:
Have any of the European leaders asked the US to back away from this issue?
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I don't think they are allowed to.

Besides, they all want Ukraine in NATO/EU/EU's sphere of influence. That's why we saw EU members on the ground along with McCain and chocolate chip cookie provider Nuland.

Just imagine if that kind of interference was ran by Mexico or Canada. US wouldn't stand for it.
 
Outside Army base in SImperfol. Russians do in fact seem to be pulling back or at the very least ditching uniforms perhaps to be militia.

Bh9YdynIQAA5bJC.jpg


Things are heating up unfortunately. Women Protesting the "miltia" get signs ripped up and men attempt to shove them into traffic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QfTahsai0k&feature=youtu.be
 
FreedomFighter said:
That's not my criticism of Western coverage personally. I think they allow too much bs from politicians to go unchallenged. They're all pretending like the Nuland phone call didn't happen and that the US has clean hands in this conflict while blaming Russian for pretty much everything. When John Kerry can say 'you can't just invade countries under false precepts' and no one in the press challenges him on that blatant and duplicitous double speak (except for independent media), it's no surprise that people lose faith in Western MSM and start watching RT instead.
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So you're actually arguing for MORE editorialized content in straight news reports?
That seems like a weird way to solve the problem with any type of media, don't you see the problem in that?
 
FreedomFighter said:
Ugh. I mispoke there. I wanted to say what if Russia ran interference in Mexico or Canada. My bad.

Would like to see you expand on what you said though.
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China is another good example. Of course meddling to control the internal affairs and stage riots is not something anyone wants, well no one that isn't concerned with human rights and democratic processes. That said, I don't think that is what the US is doing. Its being an actor in an international community and here its has exacerbated the situation in Ukraine along with Russia by not finding a solution that converges with Ukraine not becoming some quasi vassal State to the Us, the EU, or Russia.

The language issue isn't a great parallel but let's say that US genuinely wants to see human rights maintained and the diverse languages of Ukraine to be maintained. With Mexico, immigration is a big issue that involves both countries. Why shouldn't Mexico try to shape the relations with its neighbor? There is a resistance to learning other languages and I'm not saying it should be forced but its crazy to think that the US has remained majority monolingual for so long. Does this tie into other issues like education? Could China (or any other country) and the United States mutually benefit from more Chinese (insert other language) speakers?
 
Partial Gamification said:
I think Merkel has point but Sec of State Kerry, Sen Graham, Sen McCain, and Pres Obama are expected by members of the global community and also their constituents to speak out [edit: not that I agree with any or all of them or think this is reason enough for them to do so, but its pressure on them as politicians]. What it can antagonize are the thugs and people posing as local thugs looking to vandalize, harass, and destabilize.

Have any of the European leaders asked the US to back away from this issue?
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Graham and McCain are irrelevant to the global community.
 
The EU is offering €11bn in aid to Ukraine.
The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled the EU’s aid package for Ukraine, totalling at least €11bn, including a new €1bn in assistance that could be injected quickly to stabilise Kiev’s teetering finances.

The package, a mix of short-term cash to meet urgent budget needs and longer-term assistance to finance infrastructure, is contingent on Ukraine’s new government reaching agreement with the International Monetary Fund on economic reforms.

...

The EU’s package includes €1.6bn in loans as well as €1.4bn in grants, of which €600m will be able to be disbursed in the next two years.

Much of the rest of the assistance is for longer-term investment projects, including €3bn in financing from the European Investment Bank that will be distributed through 2016; another €5bn from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where the EU is a majority shareholder. Another €250m will come from the EU’s “neighbourhood development facility”, which can be used to back lending for up to €3.5bn.

The bulk of the intermediate aid is expected to come from a full-scale IMF programme. An IMF team arrived in Kiev Monday to conduct a “needs assessment” to determine the size and scope of the package.
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/617b9516-a443-11e3-9cb0-00144feab7de.html#axzz2v4vUiWMp
(FT requires you to sign up to read the article, but the important parts are quoted above).

Note that this aid would be in addition to whatever Ukraine might get from the IMF, which is probably why a lot of it is more longer term investment.
 
avaya said:
Graham and McCain are irrelevant to the global community.
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In the big picture but they are there even if they are widely considered a joke they are still the goto critics of Obama's forgeign policy. When it comes to relevance in the global community, with all due respect, these two senators (sadly) are apparently more relevant than a fraction of the leaders of many countries.
 
The foreign policy analysts at the bank are all saying the Germans will scupper any kind of targeted sanctions and try and press ahead with he G8 meeting. The government is said to fear a trade war with Russia given that they are dependent on Russian energy exports.
 
ksan said:
So you're actually arguing for MORE editorialized content in straight news reports?
That seems like a weird way to solve the problem with any type of media, don't you see the problem in that?
Click to expand...
Not sure I understand what you mean here...

Guileless said:
Such as?
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How they frame the conflict as being, as I said earlier, completely Russia's fault and the US/EU having clean hands in the whole ordeal. It's like the order from the US gov't is to vilify Russia - which we saw in the laughably unprofessional Sochi coverage - has spilled over to the Ukraine ordeal. It's as if the US had nothing to do with this fiasco if you hear it from them.

They're also not calling out US officials on their blatant hypocrisy, such as being advocates of international law all of a sudden, Kerry calling out Putin on 'invading on false pretenses' while no one in the MSM press calls him out on that BS, and how they're suddenly all advocates of "non-intervention" after being shameless cheerleaders for every US intervention or near intervention (most recently Syria). This isn't journalism to me, it's just being the mouthpiece for those in political and economic power. They don't challenge anyone. The closet we get to anyone getting challenged is when Matthew Lee and some other journo grill Jay Carney or Jen Psaki at press conferences. That's about it. Never on television. People in political and economic power positions get greeted with hagiographic softball questions. It's quite pathetic.
 
FreedomFighter said:
How they frame the conflict as being, as I said earlier, completely Russia's fault and the US/EU having clean hands in the whole ordeal. It's like the order from the US gov't is to vilify Russia - which we saw in the laughably unprofessional Sochi coverage - has spilled over to the Ukraine ordeal. It's as if the US had nothing to do with this fiasco if you hear it from them.
Click to expand...

Who are "they" specifically? Do you have links and examples to illustrate your points? Which government agency or official gave the order to vilify Russia during the Olympics and how was it passed down? How do you know about it?
 
zomgbbqftw said:
The foreign policy analysts at the bank are all saying the Germans will scupper any kind of targeted sanctions and try and press ahead with he G8 meeting. The government is said to fear a trade war with Russia given that they are dependent on Russian energy exports.
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What a shock. EU will never implement any serious sanctions to Russia.
 
FreedomFighter said:
How they frame the conflict as being, as I said earlier, completely Russia's fault and the US/EU having clean hands in the whole ordeal. It's like the order from the US gov't is to vilify Russia - which we saw in the laughably unprofessional Sochi coverage - has spilled over to the Ukraine ordeal. It's as if the US had nothing to do with this fiasco if you hear it from them.
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I would say the conflict is very clearly Russia's fault though. If Russia hadn't been economically bullying Ukraine then it would have signed the EU association agreement as it wanted and there would have been no protests. This is completely ignoring the fact that Russia is the one that went in and occupied parts of another country, regardless of what happened before that it's pretty hard to say that Russia isn't in the wrong there.
 
FreedomFighter said:
Not sure I understand what you mean here...


How they frame the conflict as being, as I said earlier, completely Russia's fault and the US/EU having clean hands in the whole ordeal. It's like the order from the US gov't is to vilify Russia - which we saw in the laughably unprofessional Sochi coverage - has spilled over to the Ukraine ordeal. It's as if the US had nothing to do with this fiasco if you hear it from them.

They're also not calling out US officials on their blatant hypocrisy, such as being advocates of international law all of a sudden, Kerry calling out Putin on 'invading on false pretenses' while no one in the MSM press calls him out on that BS, and how they're suddenly all advocates of "non-intervention" after being shameless cheerleaders for every US intervention or near intervention (most recently Syria). This isn't journalism to me, it's just being the mouthpiece for those in political and economic power. They don't challenge anyone. The closet we get to anyone getting challenged is when Matthew Lee and some other journo grill Jay Carney or Jen Psaki at press conferences. That's about it. Never on television. People in political and economic power positions get greeted with hagiographic softball questions. It's quite pathetic.
Click to expand...

Russia got shit for sochi after the anti homosexual law it passed. No one gave a shit about them before actually. Before that the most you'd heard was about how far-right russians are, with fascism movements, anti-gay and anti-immigrants etc... no one cared about politics, just human rights.

As for UA, yeah it's very much russia's fault. EU didn't send troop there from nowhere, neither it did menace to take Crimea to "protect ethnic europeans". This shit is just stupid.
 
FreedomFighter said:
Not sure I understand what you mean here...


How they frame the conflict as being, as I said earlier, completely Russia's fault and the US/EU having clean hands in the whole ordeal. It's like the order from the US gov't is to vilify Russia - which we saw in the laughably unprofessional Sochi coverage - has spilled over to the Ukraine ordeal. It's as if the US had nothing to do with this fiasco if you hear it from them.

They're also not calling out US officials on their blatant hypocrisy, such as being advocates of international law all of a sudden, Kerry calling out Putin on 'invading on false pretenses' while no one in the MSM press calls him out on that BS, and how they're suddenly all advocates of "non-intervention" after being shameless cheerleaders for every US intervention or near intervention (most recently Syria). This isn't journalism to me, it's just being the mouthpiece for those in political and economic power. They don't challenge anyone. The closet we get to anyone getting challenged is when Matthew Lee and some other journo grill Jay Carney or Jen Psaki at press conferences. That's about it. Never on television. People in political and economic power positions get greeted with hagiographic softball questions. It's quite pathetic.
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1. Plenty of people have called Kerry out.

2. It IS Russia's fault.

3. You seem to want to be angry about a lot of stuff that is only tangentially realted to whose fault the situation is and are directing that at attacking the US for the situation. It's not very convincing.
 
Lagspike_exe said:
What a shock. EU will never implement any serious sanctions to Russia.
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Well there are also talks of impropriety because SDP grandee Gerhard Schröder sits on the Gazprom board and if Germany declines Russian gas Galleon shares would be down very heavily. Merkel is said to be open to the idea of personal sanctions targeted at Putin's mates and their wealth but the SDP controlled foreign office are blocking everything.

It's all very messy for the Germans.
 
FreedomFighter said:
They're also not calling out US officials on their blatant hypocrisy, such as being advocates of international law all of a sudden, Kerry calling out Putin on 'invading on false pretenses' while no one in the MSM press calls him out on that BS, and how they're suddenly all advocates of "non-intervention" after being shameless cheerleaders for every US intervention or near intervention (most recently Syria). This isn't journalism to me, it's just being the mouthpiece for those in political and economic power. They don't challenge anyone. The closet we get to anyone getting challenged is when Matthew Lee and some other journo grill Jay Carney or Jen Psaki at press conferences. That's about it. Never on television. People in political and economic power positions get greeted with hagiographic softball questions. It's quite pathetic.
Click to expand...

You may not have noticed but the US has been bending over backwards to follow the norms of international law in Syria, almost entirely because of Russia and then when things don't go Putin's way he invades another sovereign country. The contrast between the two is pretty amazing.
 
zomgbbqftw said:
Well there are also talks of impropriety because SDP grandee Gerhard Schröder sits on the Gazprom board and if Germany declines Russian gas Galleon shares would be down very heavily. Merkel is said to be open to the idea of personal sanctions targeted at Putin's mates and their wealth but the SDP controlled foreign office are blocking everything.

It's all very messy for the Germans.
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Where is this information from? Schröder seems to have very little influence in German politics today. He left politics 10 years ago.
It's almost the opposite, since taking the position at North Stream (the pipeline project) was a big scandal, he got a lot of flak for that and it largely ruined his image.
Of course he is invited to talks and stuff, because he was the chancellor once, but in the actual SPD (not SDP btw)? I can't see that, especially not since this would just be a favour of sorts.
Germany doesn't want sanctions because it would hurt economically, same as the UK.
 
Kadayi said:
Hand on knee for sure. :D

TBH I think the US should back off and let Merkel handle everything. She has a good working relationship with Putin, plus he speaks German so they can converse face to face without the need for translators. This is really a European issue at the end of the day and despite the US governments belief that they need to stick their nose into everyone's business they're doing more harm than good with a lot of the rhetoric.
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That's how I feel as well. This is Europe's issue not ours. We stick our noses in enough shit despite crazed right wingers in our government wanting more conflict.
 
Enkidu said:
The EU is offering €11bn in aid to Ukraine.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/617b9516-a443-11e3-9cb0-00144feab7de.html#axzz2v4vUiWMp
(FT requires you to sign up to read the article, but the important parts are quoted above).

Note that this aid would be in addition to whatever Ukraine might get from the IMF, which is probably why a lot of it is more longer term investment.
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So why does the US need to give them anything. Let the EU handle its backyard. I can think of a dozen better ways to spend a billion domestically than hand it to Ukraine.
 
DrBo42 said:
Fascinating. He's also a black nazi? She's got a very interesting perspective on things.
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Embarrassing really. I almost wish we give up Crimea. If Putin came with money instead of weapons and said - sell me Crimea, I would most likely vote "yes".
 
zomgbbqftw said:
Well there are also talks of impropriety because SDP grandee Gerhard Schröder sits on the Gazprom board and if Germany declines Russian gas Galleon shares would be down very heavily. Merkel is said to be open to the idea of personal sanctions targeted at Putin's mates and their wealth but the SDP controlled foreign office are blocking everything.

It's all very messy for the Germans.
Click to expand...

Russia is a important trading partner, russia buys machinery (25% of all imported machinery), cars (156.000 2012) and chemistry (5,8 billion 2012). Germany exported 36 billion € worth of goods, Merkel will never kill around 300.000 jobs for Ukraine.

source: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/un...-fuerchten-eiszeit-mit-russland-a-956883.html
 
FreedomFighter said:
Not sure I understand what you mean here...
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You are essentially arguing that people are too dumb to understand themselves that it wasn't the brightest statement of all time, and that they need guidance to understand that from editorialized content in the news article itself.
 
mnz said:
Where is this information from? Schröder seems to have very little influence in German politics today. He left politics 10 years ago.
It's almost the opposite, since taking the position at North Stream (the pipeline project) was a big scandal, he got a lot of flak for that and it largely ruined his image.
Of course he is invited to talks and stuff, because he was the chancellor once, but in the actual SPD (not SDP btw)? I can't see that, especially not since this would just be a favour of sorts.
Germany doesn't want sanctions because it would hurt economically, same as the UK.
Click to expand...

This is just what the foreign policy analysts are saying. They believe (and so do I) that Schroeder's public image is of little value and that he is still a big power broker in the party and he is protecting Gazprom's interests.

As for sanctions, targeted ones against Putin's friends would not hurt economically. Freezing assets of Putin's oligarch mates held within the EU isn't going to cause any real job issues. The facts would still remain that Germany need Russian gas and that the Russians need German capital goods/machinery or financing from London.

That's why they say Merkel is open to the idea of targeted sanctions, rather than broad ones. As is Cameron FWIW. Neither wants a broad brush against them though and full on economic sanctions or a trade war, that would only serve to damage the EU nations and Russia with no winners. Specifically targeting Putin's oligarch friends is something that can be done, and our analysts say that the SPD (it's SDP in English) are blocking these moves and linking that to Schroeder sitting on the board of Gazprom (and soon Rosneft).
 
zomgbbqftw said:
This is just what the foreign policy analysts are saying. They believe (and so do I) that Schroeder's public image is of little value and that he is still a big power broker in the party and he is protecting Gazprom's interests.

As for sanctions, targeted one's against Putin's friends would not hurt economically. Freezing assets of Putin's oligarch mates held within the EU isn't going to cause any real job issues. The facts would still remain that Germany need Russian gas and that the Russians need German capital goods/machinery or financing from London.

That's why they say Merkel is open to the idea of targeted sanctions, rather than broad ones. As is Cameron FWIW. Neither wants a broad brush against them though and full on economic sanctions or a trade war, that would only serve to damage the EU nations and Russia with no winners. Specifically targeting Putin's oligarch friends is something that can be done, and our analysts say that the SPD (it's SDP in English) are blocking these moves and linking that to Schroeder sitting on the board of Gazprom (and soon Rosneft).
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Do they(/you) have any evidence to support this theory? Because for all we know his influence in the SPD is pretty close to... zero. Also it's the SPD (not CDU/CSU) that has so far chosen the more aggressive stance against Russia.

Btw. it doesn't make sense to make SDP out of SPD in English ;) It's short for Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, which would translate into Social Democratic Party of Germany or either SDPG or SPG, but definitely not SDP.
 
zomgbbqftw said:
This is just what the foreign policy analysts are saying. They believe (and so do I) that Schroeder's public image is of little value and that he is still a big power broker in the party and he is protecting Gazprom's interests.

As for sanctions, targeted ones against Putin's friends would not hurt economically. Freezing assets of Putin's oligarch mates held within the EU isn't going to cause any real job issues. The facts would still remain that Germany need Russian gas and that the Russians need German capital goods/machinery or financing from London.

That's why they say Merkel is open to the idea of targeted sanctions, rather than broad ones. As is Cameron FWIW. Neither wants a broad brush against them though and full on economic sanctions or a trade war, that would only serve to damage the EU nations and Russia with no winners. Specifically targeting Putin's oligarch friends is something that can be done, and our analysts say that the SPD (it's SDP in English) are blocking these moves and linking that to Schroeder sitting on the board of Gazprom (and soon Rosneft).
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I don't know, the CSU (Merkel's CDU's sister party) just came out of political ash wednesday in support of Russia and pretty much against sanctions, that seems way more important for Merkel to me. I have not heard anything like that from the SPD (I don't get how it's SDP in English, the D stands for Deutschland...). Do you have a link to your analysts? It would be a pretty interesting for me, if this were true.

Also, Schröder is not on the board of directors at Gazprom, he is chairman of the board at Nord Stream, the pipeline project.
 
Kurtofan said:
Someone who doesn't agree with Russia's current leadership.
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I suspect that 99.9% of neo-nazis roaming the streets of Russia are pro-Putin. I always wondered how these latest events are discussed on stormfront. Surely white pride/power groups can't blame the evil Jews/gays/immigrants/liberal media for this?
 
Frankfurter said:
Do they(/you) have any evidence to support this theory? Because for all we know his influence in the SPD is pretty close to... zero. Also it's the SPD (not CDU/CSU) that has so far chosen the more aggressive stance against Russia.

Btw. it doesn't make sense to make SDP out of SPD in English ;) It's short for Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, which would translate into Social Democratic Party of Germany or either SDPG or SPG, but definitely not SDP.
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Not in particular. They aren't usually wrong though so I trust them. It's the same as Labour taking a soft stance on some Middle Eastern countries because of Tony Blair's links or Cameron taking it easy on banks because of the huge party funding the Tories get from the City. Nothing can really prove the influence, but one can be sure it exists.

"Sozialdemokratische" is two words in English. They are usually referred to as "Germany's SDP" or "the German SDP" over here.

On the stance, given that it is the SDPG(!) controlled foreign office saying they would like to continue with the G8 summit and they are ruling out sanctions while Merkel has pretty much stayed quiet (other than the outburst about Putin being crazy), it is difficult to say they are being harsher (or softer given Merkel's lack of opinion) than the CDU/CSU.
 
fizzelopeguss said:
Putin is one of the oligarchs bleeding Russia dry, Russia with its vast resources and unassailable size should be paradise on earth, instead it's a squalid shithole and it's people seemingly at their happiest when they're terrorising their neighbours.
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While you are absolutely right that the expansion of NATO proves you right, this invasion of the Ukraine is apparently tremendously unpopular in Russia itself, so I wouldn't say that the Russian people are at their happiest, but rather it is a tactic of the Russian leadership which has helped to fuel NATO membership among neighboring countries that are trying to protect their fledgling democracies.

Maybe if Putin hadn't allowed Russia to be a such a dick to its former satellite nations, we wouldn't have seen countries begging Clinton/Bush Jr to expand NAto to include them.

PhoenixWrong said:
Such an ignorant and silly thing to say, oh my.

And yeah, this thread is an amazing collection of some good russophobic stuff. Will read again, A+++++++
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You're not wrong that what he said (specifically about the Russian people is wrong) but you seriously need to take a step back and re-evaluate if "russophobic" is a term you employ in your lexicon.
 
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