Ukraine Thread

[Gilrandir]

“Having been a military once you know perfectly well that soldiers do (or don't do) something not because they feel it is worth/not worth doing” Absurd. You will sacrifice yourself as soldier not because you were ordered to. Watch Black Hawk Down, and tell me why the 2 Special Forces descended to what they knew was their death: because it was what they had to do. For the same reason that the French Imperial Guards couldn’t surrender after Waterloo, because it is what to do when you are a soldier. Rhaa, I even don’t know why I bother to try to explain…. “Honneur et Patrie” is on our flags…

You know perfectly well that in "emergency" conditions (under a threat of invasion or during one or in times of war) disobeying orders is punished severely and court martial steps in. In the examples you referred to soldiers disobeyed the orders, but they knew that they would face something more terrible than court martial - a sure death. Now let's imagine that in those situations the soldiers were told to hold out but they escaped the battlefield. Would it be a different disobeyance? Or soldiers can choose to obey one order and disobey another just because they are wise enough (or knowledgeable enough) to pass a judgement on the quality of the order?
In the case of the Crimea, soldiers knew that court martial may await them if they disobeyed the not-to-shoot order and acted correspondingly displaying all the resistance they could without disobeying the order. Plus there were other factors at work (and I explained them). Do you think a Canadian soldier would shoot at Americans surrounding a military base? I think he would not, hoping that their bosses will sort out the conflict sooner or later (preferably sooner), so there is no need to make steps that may be irrevocable. Putin knew that so he utilized the situation to the full extent.

“And as for me, I don't vote against anyone, I vote for someone.” That is because you don’t have habits of democracy…” So, what I said is, in democracy you don’t always vote for someone but sometimes against someone. So what is your point, as it doesn’t exclude no-vote?

You try to teach others but don't follow your own edifying advice.

“Keep staying away and you will not recognize good merry France couple of elections later.” In a country where millions gathered to protect Freedom of Speech after a coward attack of fanatic Muslims? I have more faith in my people than you have in yours.

They gathered and marched. Then they bottled up their righteous anger, dispersed and let the nazis take over. Not much use of the march, is it?
As for my faith in my people:
I said that the popularity of Svoboda was explained by its presenting itself as a counter balance to depredations of Yanukovych's regime and the exclusion of "I support neither candidate" option from the ballots. I said that they would merge into the background as soon as the turmoils ebb. I said that Ukrainians are now more united and no division within the society (either geograpical or linguistic) is in evidence anymore.
And my faith was corroborated by further developments.

“Go on juggling figures and offering lame excuses. The fact is the fact” Facts are facts: In the Presidential Elections Le Pen got around 6,000,000 votes, Next Elections, 5,000,000. These elections, 5,000,000. So no increase. These are facts.

Whatever absolute figures you might refer to they don't work the way you want them to. The PERCENTAGE of FN voters is 26. Do you have faith enough to predict that (in spite of the same absoulte figures of their supporters) they would not get more people in power because of absenteists like you? You said you fight the nazis and now claim that you relegate that responsibility to others. What if all the voters are of the like mind? Marching out and waving flags is not enough. It seems that you have to choose between the two dictatorships you mentioned. It is time to make up your mind which one looks more appealing to you. This is what I was pointing at.

You started to attack my use of the word lethal and you were wrong and now you blame me? Bad move. And you're also wrong again:

No, I'm not. It is again a case of polysemy (and I was aware of it when I posted my message). So to avoid further misunderstanings one should specify the meaning of a word one used.

According to this timeline the new government was already in place before any land was occupied by foreign troops however:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A270PO20140308

The parliament changes on Feb 22 and the armed men seize the crimean parliament on Feb 27, clearly a reaction to the regime change and not vice versa.

Check the time when the timeline was published - it was a year ago. Since then we have learnt things that may question its adequacy. Some of them can be inferred from the notorious medals, others were admitted openly (or boasted of) by Putin in his Crimean movie. Conclusion: whenever the then Ukrainian government might have stepped in and whatever it might have done, it wouldn't have been able to flag Putin down.