Ukraine Thread

[Gilrandir]

So Putin is digging himself deeper into a hole and his approach is really bad for him in the long term, but the strategies of the Western countries have also completely failed, so who is going to "win" this? Putin? Apparently not, he's digging a deeper hole all the time and cannot go back. The West? Apparently not, their tactic has failed. Sounds like the situation will either disappear magically or WW3 as I said earlier. Or am I getting something wrong here?

You are getting everything right. I don't see any solution either. Perhaps, if Putin magically disappears (and he hasn't shown himself in public for ten days or so having cancelled some important visits (namely to Kazakhstan), the signing of the union treaty with South Ossetia and the NSDC sitting in Pyatigorsk (IIRC) which he heads and has never missed) than for a time Russian elite will be too busy with sorting things out among themselves to pay all other events more than a cursory look, the rest of the world will have a chance to come up with something. Mind you, I don't hope for any successor with a milder attitude. As many experts claim, Putin's environment now consisits of "the party of blood and money" and "the party of Big blood". Whichever wins the outlook is not bright, yet while they are bickering the world will have a breathing space and might be able to do somehting (hopefully).

Maybe Putin didn't expect his strategic friends to dump him for the EU with the whole Maidan thing either, which happened before he showed his "attitude and actions".

I have answered this one, yet I can do it again: some countries (Turkey, Israel) are perfectly well having free trade agreements both with the EU and Russia. Even Yanukovych in summer of 2013 said that he would like to see the same future for Ukraine. Russia thought (and still thinks) that it should be a matter of choice - either the former or the latter.
Anyway, the way Putin enforces friendship is unlikely to get him friends.

What's the problem with telephones? Political polls in the West aren't conducted by magic mind readers either, telephones are a common tool.
https://www.boundless.com/political-...ling-275-6802/

You evidently have no experience of living in the USSR and modern Russia which increasingly reminds the former. Ask GenosseGeneral, for example, what a modern Russian is likely to say when he is asked by an unknown person on the telephone about his attitude to Putin. Of course, there are some (or very many) that genuinely support him (see the video on celebration Putin's birthday in Grozny), but I would say that a considerable portion would just freak out and say that they worshipped their leader. So the 85-88% figure that Russian media boast of is in fact bloated out of proportion. The real figure (though great in fact, I'm sure) is far less.

“Now consider it: Nato keeps menacing, Russia keeps waging wars. An equal exchange?” Not factual. NATO waged more war than Russia (legitimate and not). This is a fact.

I speak of wars IN THE NEAR VICINITY. No one beats Russia in that.

“A question: are you sure Putin lives in the same reality as all the world around him and respects international rules, laws and treaties?” Of course not but I am sure that the world around him doesn’t either, repeatedly.

What is then the purpose to talk and negotiate with Putin?

“No flank attacks to justify the fears Russia is having.” Ask the Russians: due to History, they’ve got a point.

No they don't. Since the time Nato was created Russia has NEVER been attacked by any of NATO members. On the contrary, any nations Russia had wars with ceased any military aggression against Russia since they joined NATO. So for any country joining NATO seems a safeguard against any attacks on Russia through point 5 of the treaty.

The most funny thing in all these Brenus' anti-NATO philippics is the fact that they come from a person who at least once (in Bosnia) was instrumental in NATO's depredations. I wonder where is genuine Brenus - the one that is now denouncing NATO's hideous ways or the one who put his signature against his name on the payroll and got his salary from NATO.

From which perspective I'm afraid he will eventually escalate to formally invading your country to annex the other Russian-majority regions.

He realizes that now he has not enough manpower and money to capture them and still less to hold them. Right now he is bent on destroying Ukraine from within, but Ukraine got a respite with the IMF money. This evidently will demand the adjustment of his policies. What he comes up with we will see pretty soon (that is if he emerges from his hiding).
http://www.bloombergview.com/article...ike-a-dictator

A potential war in a country which has a nuclear plant named Chernobyl

It has been shut down years ago.

So, in term of what can be done, only de-escalation is an option.

And Russia thinks so too:
http://sputniknews.com/politics/2015...019309874.html

Ukraine has now no other solution than federalisation, negotiation and talk.

I don't agree on the first, while the second and the third have been tried repeatedly bringing no palpable improvement.

As Gilrandir often said, they were all neighbours (even if it doesn’t always make it easier).

We still are and we are doomed to ever be.