War in Ukraine

This is all nothing more than posturing?  I believe it is so of the US.

ETA: Mr O has dealt with the military here similarly.

It's very simple, Russia is sabre-rattling, they signed the Budapest Memorandum which means that, if they renege on it, they will lose face. This is all Krushchev's fault, he ceded the Crimea to Ukraine. I think the leasing of the Crimean ports by Russie runs out in 2042. As I said before, they should give the Crimea back to the Russkies. But if they were to, what would the Tatars do? There are approx 300,000 of them living there; I think they are the indiginous population. They are of Turkic-Mongolian descent and almost all are Muslim. They have allied themselves with the Ukranians in Kiev, can you imagine the repercussions if the Crimean Russians, all Orthodox, were to succeed in making the Crimea part of Russia again? It's a bag of worms. LL

OMG, LL. That doesn't bear thinking about.

It is of no wonder to me for why Russia was so hard on these people, and I did think this years ago. The Satellite States are forever a minefield. I make no difference between Christian and Muslim. It is just a recipe for disaster and prejudice.
I don't know what went on when Russia was in control, but were there any massacres?

If you read some very ancient history then you would see that the practice of a different religion, what ever that meant in days gone by, was the cause for war between tribes, although at the time it was just the worship of a different God, and a different Shaman.

Massacres? Try mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, deliberate famine, etc. All of which led many foolish Ukrainians to welcome the German troops.

The Soviets treated their subject states just the same as the Nazis di most of Europe. You stepped out of line, you were dead meat. Whole villiages in the more remote parts of the Soviet Union wdere razed to the ground, their occupants sent to gulags, Soviet concentration camps - where 99% of them died. The reason why not much ever came out re what was happening in Russia was because they were on the same side as the US and the UK in the 2nd WW - you don't query your allies' internal affairs, do you? When the Cold War erupted as lot of what was going on leaked out and later when the Soviets fell and the subject states in Europe were free a lot more was revealed. Putin is a product of the KGB and his actions reflect that. LL

Muslims obviously regard those of the same religion as preferable.  Christians are second and so on.  They do not mind Jews but do Israelis because of Palestine.  They are all the three religions from Abraham.  

They cannot abide those who do not believe in God.  

Exactly so, Bonny.

bb1 wrote:Massacres? Try mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, deliberate famine, etc. All of which led many foolish Ukrainians to welcome the German troops.

Of course, in the same way as the Hungarians, stripped of 70% of their land in the Trianon Treaty of 1920 foolishly believed Hitler would restore their lost lands. The Russians have hands drenched in blood from way, way back - the Cossack slaughter of the Jewish villages and the massacre of the Pollish intelligensia etc at Katyn, which they tried to blame on the German army but were exposed as liars when a newspaper buried with one of the dead men had a date on it at a time when the Germans were nowhere near Katyn, are but two examples. LL

It's all an appalling mess, isn't it? And it won't be helped by Hague and co stirring the pot.

Quite right, Bonny. What are Hague & Co going to achieve anyway? Do they want to show the world that they can er flex their muscles?

I saw those earlier LL. It seems like it's not clear cut at all.

Thanks, LL, any accurate information is welcome in such a confusing, delicate situation.

bb1 wrote:Thanks, LL, any accurate information is welcome in such a confusing, delicate situation.

You are welcome, as always.  I am now going to vanish for about an hour as I am rewatching CNN's excellent 26 part series on the Cold War.  LL  >>>>>>  
ETA  I am bl**dy angry - instead of the program I wanted to watch, CNN is going on and on about Putin etc.  Much as I like Wolf Blitzer I was really looking forward to my program!!!!  And the acting PM of the Ukraine is saber rattling and the Ukrainian army is now on very high alert.   LL

I never used to take her very seriously but look.   

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/28/palin-on-ukraine-i-told-you-so/

You know it's bad when Sarah Palin's right.....

Bonny, I was shocked but have to admit it is really bad. She gets it but O doesn't?

Ukraine Finds Its Forces Are Ill Equipped to Take Crimea Back From Russia

By STEVEN ERLANGER and ANDREW E. KRAMERMARCH 1, 2014



KIEV — The new government of Ukraine called an emergency session of its national security council on Saturday in the face of the Russian military’s seizure of Crimea, but the leaders are facing a grim reality: Their armed forces are ill equipped to try to reconquer the region militarily.

Crimea has always been a vital base for the Soviet and then Russian Navy, serving as the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, which has controlled the waters off southern Russia since 1783. After a period of tension following Ukraine’s independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia got to keep its base in Crimea under its own control on a lease, extended until at least 2042 by the now-ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.



A senior NATO official said that Ukraine’s small naval fleet, which was originally part of the Black Sea Fleet, had been boxed in by Russian warships.

The Russian takeover of Crimea was relatively easy, in part because the Ukrainian military was careful not to respond to a provocation that would excuse any larger intervention. The military — which has seen its top leader change constantly with the political situation — has also made a point of staying out of the internal political conflict in Ukraine.

The current military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Mykhailo Kutsyn, was named to the job only on Friday, after Adm. Yuriy Ilyin, 51, was relieved of his post after traveling to Crimea and, reportedly at least, having a heart attack. Admiral Ilyin had only been in the post for a short time himself, appointed by Mr. Yanukovych on Feb. 19 after Col. Gen. Volodymyr Zamana was fired for being unwilling to attack protesters in Kiev. All these changes have been an object lesson for the military to try to stay out of politics and civil unrest.

Even so, Ukraine had no realistic contingency plan for a Russian takeover of Crimea, given the size of Russian forces legitimately based there, Mr. Sutyagin said. But he also said that he doubted that Russian forces would intervene elsewhere in Ukraine, because Russian forces would be too stretched to control much territory and even in the largely pro-Russia east, Ukrainian forces would be expected to fight back, aided by self-defense militias and partisans.

Matthew Clements, editor of Jane’s Intelligence Review, said that while the Ukrainian military was largely underfunded, “in a major land war, it would be fighting on reasonable terms,” and was “far more capable than the Georgian army.” Any major conflict with Ukraine, he said, “would also expose a lot of key weaknesses in the Russian army.”

Steven Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine now at Brookings, said that if Russian forces tried to move into eastern Ukraine, “there will be some Ukrainian units that will resist, and a flood of people from western Ukraine saying this is my chance to be my grandfather and fight the Communists.”

According to its website, the Ukrainian military has a total of 130,000 people under arms, with reserves of some one million. While conscription recently ended, it remains a largely conscript army. Ukraine has partially reformed its military since the Soviet days, when it was organized in large-scale divisions for a major land conflict. It is now organized on the more flexible brigade system and has been reducing the size of its military forces, but it is underfunded with a lot of outdated hardware.




Ukraine had accomplished some military reform with NATO advice, but since President Yanukovych said that Ukraine was not interested in full NATO membership, cooperation has lagged, the NATO official said. Still, Ukraine has taken part in some military exercises with NATO, contributes some troops to NATO’s response force and helped in a small way in Libya.

“I’d say they’re of medium quality, but thin near Crimea,” the NATO official said, “and whatever forces they have seem to been boxed in.”

In general, the Ukrainians are considered to have excellent home-produced tanks, but have also relied in part on the BMP-1, an infantry fighting vehicle that is a combined armored personnel carrier and light tank dating from the early 1970s. Ukrainian air defenses, all produced in Russia and a generation behind, are considered weak.

Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a military research institution in Moscow, said that the Ukrainian military inherited a vast supply of legacy weapons from three Soviet military districts. “But 22 years have gone by during a state of near continuous economic decline and the Ukrainian military has received practically no new equipment,” he said. “Now the force is somewhat pathetic.”

Owing to its legacy of Soviet bases to support any ground war to the west, the military is poorly positioned to counter an attack from the east, Mr. Pukhov said. The thin military presence in the east complicates any response if Russia chooses to back pro-Russian activists who have reportedly seized administrative buildings in Kharkiv.

The forces in Crimea were there less to defend Crimea than to prevent Crimean Tatar separatism and even more unofficially, Russian separatism, Mr. Pukhov said. During Ukraine’s recent military reforms, contract soldiers were allowed to serve near their homes, meaning that many of the junior officer corps on the peninsula are also residents of Crimea, which is majority ethnic-Russian, so they are possibly more pro-Russian in their views.

On Saturday, Pyotr N. Mekhet, a reserve colonel offered a top position in the Ministry of Defense, said the government should mobilize, or “the people will form militias,” suggesting a partisan movement could emerge.

Yuri Lutsenko, an opposition leader, reached out to residents of eastern Ukraine on Saturday who might be watching on television, saying the protesters who had populated the Maidan, or Independence Square, in Kiev had never harbored anger at those in the east.

“We reach out our hands from Maidan to Donetsk, to Kharkiv, to Dnepropetrovsk and to Simferopol,” he said, speaking in Russian, spoken by many in the eastern part of the country.

Mr. Lutsenko also discouraged street fighters from arming themselves immediately. “The hour for a partisan movement has not yet come,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/world/europe/ukraine-finds-its-forces-are-ill-equipped-to-take-crimea-back-from-russia.html?_r=0

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday condemned Russia's ‘incredible act of aggression’ in Ukraine and threatened ‘very serious repercussions’ from the United States and other countries including sanctions to isolate Russia economically.
‘You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pre-text,’ Kerry told the CBS program Face the Nation


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2571309/Ukraine-calls-military-reservists-Russian-troops-mass-close-Ukrainian-borders-regional-capital-Simferopol.html#ixzz2upuQDwHI
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Oh, the irony.

Oh yes. Mind you, I don't know what the very serious repercussions could be.....

Obama won't send Vlad a copy of his latest jogging video?

The head of the Ukrainian navy has pledged alliance to Crimea and therefore to Russia.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-live.html

bb1 wrote:Obama won't send Vlad a copy of his latest jogging video?

Finally watched it last night, Bonny. Painful.       

Thanks LL. We know how this will end?

Er, the Crimea will return to Russia and the rest of the Ukraine will be over-run with neo-Nazis, muslim extremists, etc?

And Putin will sit and laugh as the west pours billions into this entirely predictable shambles?