Can we have a Ukraine/ Russia/ Crimea thread for dummies?

[chicaguapa]

In other words, could someone explain the situation in really simple terms please. I don't understand it but feel it's important and I should know what's going on.

And because DD(12) asked me this morning and I couldn't answer.

goat, are you also thinking what made the Russians so oblivious, so easy for them to carry on with their lives while millions were being slaughtered? For example, when an entire generation of educated Poles was exterminated by being individually shot in the back of the head, and their bodies piled into pits?

"64 percent of the British public oppose deploying Western troops to defend Ukraine from Russia, while 59 percent also oppose sending military aid to the Ukrainian government. The figures, published by YouGov for the Sunday Times, also show that 38 percent even oppose giving any financial aid to the Ukrainians.

48 percent would also oppose military action by the USA and other Western countries to stop Russia annexing the Crimea."

www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/10/Poll-Brits-Oppose-Military-Intervention-in-Ukraine

The gap between Brussels and the elites, and the public is huge. Farage spoke forthrightly about the situation in Ukraine and you can see all the spinners and elites saying what he said was "outrageous". But the public does not agree with them.

I am a little puzzled by the shape of 'democracy' in Latvia. They are members of EU and are supposed to truly embrace respect for human rights, equality and democracy.

I don't really understand why 13% of population born and bread in the country don't have the right to vote and are given the status of "non citizen". It's beyond me how in EU you could have a section of people without rights, non humans on the ethnic principle...

An EU society segregated along ethnic lines, where 42% of population don't have any representation in government, because racist coalitions are formed.

Yet, NAZI SS veterans march in the capital as heros.

We wouldn't concider that acceptable in Britain, would we?

No wonder when russo-phobic Ukrainian nationalist decided to embrace 'European values and laws', the Crimeans wanted to get out.

goat, are you also thinking what made the Russians so oblivious, so easy for them to carry on with their lives while millions were being slaughtered? For example, when an entire generation of educated Poles was exterminated by being individually shot in the back of the head, and their bodies piled into pits?

What are you talking about? Do you mean the Volhyn massacre committed by the Badera collaborators under orders from the Nazi? The same Bandera that president Youshenko made into a national hero and who is worshiped as the spiritual father of the Svoboda party currently in the interim government in Ukraine? 100000 Poles were shot by the Ukrainian nationalists. The Russians (along with other nationalities in USSR) faught the Nazis and liberated Ukraine from them and the Banderas. I find it revolting that some western leaders stir that Bandera ideology now because they think the can use them against the Russians. I am confused by the Polish Foreign minister participating in this, with all those Polish lives lost.

No Hopefulgoat, PigletJohn is talking about the Katyn massacre carried out by the Soviets and blamed on the Nazis.

That appears to be a "no"

I can't tell if you are truly ignorant of the Katyn atrocities, or if you are just pretending.

I am always interested to see you dragging up 70-year-old tales of wrongdoing, while evading equivalent atrocities performed by your favourites.

goat, are you also thinking what made the Russians so oblivious, so easy for them to carry on with their lives while millions were being slaughtered? For example, when an entire generation of educated Poles was exterminated by being individually shot in the back of the head, and their bodies piled into pits?

Or maybe you mean the Katyn massacre?

But don't you know it was committed by Stalin's secret police. The people in Soviet union didn't know anything about it until the early 1990. It is strange that you would want to blame "Russian people" for being oblivious to something they didn't agree to and knew nothing about.

Stalin was a psychopathic dictator and all of his policies had mass casualties. The whole point is that he was not a democratic leader, he didn't have the mandate from the people to do those atrocities. Those casualties were always kept secret, even after his death, because that information would undermine the support for the regime.

I am really surprised that you are so intent for blaming ethnic Russians for all the evils of the world, even on the basis of distorted facts and misinformation.

This being said it is trully strange that the Right Sector and Svoboda parties are so palatable to the Polish government given the Volhyn massacre of Poles by the Banderas.

'This being said it is trully strange that the Right Sector and Svoboda parties are so palatable to the Polish government given the Volhyn massacre of Poles by the Banderas.'

I agree with you there. It is very strange. I can only assume that they feel that these groups will lose influence over time.

PigletJohn, Hopefulgoat is right about the Russian people not knowing that the Soviets had carried out the Katyn massacre.

The Western allies and the Soviets had been complicit in pretending that the Nazis had done it even though the Nazis had discovered the graves and invited the Red Cross in. It was only in the 1990s that the real truth was revealed to the world.

"An investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004), confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

oh, do you really think that when she said "I was thinking what made thew Germans so oblivious, so easy for them to carry on with their lives while millions were being slotered. Those people manning the concentration camps just used to come home to their families as if they were back from a day on the market"

she thought that the Russians at Katyn finished their day's work feeling any different? Where does the idea come from that murderers of one nationality are better or worse than murderers of another?

I agree with you. Murderers are murderers.

It strikes me that a lot of Britons would be disenfranchised if they had to pass an English language test.

I think the oblivion of Latvians to the plight of Russian-speaking Latvians speaks volumes. And the silence of the Allies about Katyn was also eloquent. Poland was thrown under the bus by the western Allies and not just in the matter of Katyn.

Which is maybe a lesson Ukraine should take to heart.

you are, raking up story after story of wrongdoing from the past, in order to show your enemies in a bad light, while acting affronted at the mention of equivalent atrocities by your favourites

What enemies? What favourites? Are you Brzezinki's apprentice?

I don't understand why you are using this thread to accuse Russian people of Katyn massacre comitted by the Stalin's secret police and kept secret, but not worried about equally murderous Volhyn massarcre of the Poles committed by Banderas, the spiritual basis of Svoboda party in Ukraine.

Right Sector and Svoboda parties are in the current Ukrainian government, very much in the present, as well as the ethnic divisions in Latvia, and Estonia. I am concerned by this as I think it undermines our own democracy.

You are consistently distorting what others say and pedaling your accusations in ethnic terms. I am not packaging historic grievances into ethnic divisions. You are.

Stirring racism can never be a legitimate mean to promote democracy, and this is what Right Sector, Svoboda and Timoshenko do.

Russians at Katyn finished their day's work feeling any different? Where does the idea come from that murderers of one nationality are better or worse than murderers of another?

Piglet, I said nothing of the sort. It is all your own sick interpretation. Stalin's secret police came home after murdering the Poles, and woke up the next morning to torture political prisoners and Russian people in Gulag.
They were pathological murderers as were the Nazi and the Banderas.

Even in 195)'s Khrischev started to dintance the Soviet policy from Stalin's crimes, but kept it secret. In 1990's Stalin's crimes were revealed and widely discussed in the Russian media and society.

The Russians went through a process of "Destalinisation"
The Germans went through the process of "Denazification".

We don't blame today's Germans for the Nazi crimes, nor should we package all evils of Stalin's and soviet regime as 'Russian' and blame that on today's Russian people. This would be promoting racism.

That's what the Ukrainian and Latvian nationalists do.

The only people who will emerge from this well in a financial sense are Russia. Well, China too. Russia are the leading oil producer, China the leading importer. They will do a deal, probably in Yuan, for Russia to export oil to China.

China has enough gold to back the Yuan. This will make the dollar, pound and euro completely irrelevant. Also, the largest holders of US bonds are China and Russia. Imagine what would happen to the dollar and interest rates if both dumped their bonds on the market. The west is seriously hard of thinking on this.

As an aside, Crimean prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya is bloody gorgeous.

If I was in Ukraine I'd vote for the Ukraine Internet Party: their candidate is Darth Vader. :o

"I am not packaging historic grievances into ethnic divisions."

yes you are

"every family has a personal experience of WWII and Nazi occupation"

"For Ukrainian people the Nazi are not "Halo, halo", they are the memory of a genocidal occupation and of a total war their grandfathers fought in"

"I was thinking what made thew Germans so oblivious, so easy for them to carry on with their lives while millions were being slotered"

"100000 Poles were shot by the Ukrainian nationalists"

but as for atrocities committed by your friends:

"it was committed by Stalin's secret police. The people in Soviet union didn't know anything about it"

???
none of the quotes above packages historical facts into ethnic division, unless you equate the Ukrainiand and Germans with the Nazi? I certainly don't.

Yam, Darth Vader is cool and sexy

PigletJohn Sat 29-Mar-14 18:12:26.

Where does that thought of yours come from PigletJohn?
Tales? What tales are you referring to?
Highly partisan propaganda? What propaganda is this you refer to?
Raking up story after story? Stories? What stories are you talking about there?

And do you sincerely there is an 'equivalent' to the pursuit of a war whose sole intent was the systematic extermination of every single ethnic group east of the Polish frontier and one particular ethnic group wherever they were encountered, east or west?

"When Vladimir Putin says the U.S. is endangering the global economy by abusing its dollar monopoly, he’s not just talking. He’s betting on it.

Not only has Putin made Russia the world’s largest oil producer, he’s also made it the biggest gold buyer. His central bank has added 570 metric tons of the metal in the past decade, a quarter more than runner-up China , according to IMF data compiled by Bloomberg. The added gold is also almost triple the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

“The more gold a country has, the more sovereignty it will have if there’s a cataclysm with the dollar, the euro, the pound or any other reserve currency,” Evgeny Fedorov, a lawmaker for Putin’s United Russia party in the lower house of parliament, said in a telephone interview in Moscow."

www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-10/putin-turns-black-gold-into-bullion-as-russia-out-buys-world.html

I think this is why things are very dangerous. If Al Capone was under threat of losing power, what did he do? He sent the Mob round.

PigletJohn -- Do you deny therefore that Ukrainians suffered under the Nazis or was that just something that went on in the Soviet period?

I have not denied that numerous atrocities occurred. Do you really think I have done? Or is that just a smear you've made up?

When I see someone pointing out atrocities committed by one side only I do sometimes mention that atrocities were also committed by others.

Additionally, if I see someone saying that Ukrainians suffered under the invasion and occupation of Germans and their allies, I sometimes point out that the Ukrainians also suffered under invasion and occupation of Russians and their allies.

May is the critical month when the world will see what happens. Putin has a vist to China in May.

" Final agreement of the deal ­ including financial and monetary provisions ­ is set for May, during Putin's state visit to China. Russian Finance ministry officials note that China overtook Germany as Russia's biggest buyer of crude oil in early 2014, thanks to Rosneft securing deals to boost oil supplies via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, and another crossing Kazakhstan"

May is also the time of Euro elections, which will deliver a crushing defeat to the political parties of the elites, and is also the time of the Ukrainian election.

"The political spark igniting the powder keg has been glowing ever brighter since the G7 countries bungled their Syrian intervention attempt, and reacted with barely concealed hysteria to the bloodless Russian annexation of Crimea. One collateral impact is that a massive dent in the petrodollar and petroeuro system and its gas counterpart, and gold pricing, is looming. While “the west” is focused on day to day developments in Ukraine as it shores up the unelected Kiev Flash Mob government, its theatrical antics and strange 19th century Imperialist kneejerk behavior has hardened the resolve of Russia, China and India - three-quarters of the fabled BRICs quartet - to use their own currencies, commodity and manufactured product swaps, trade offsets and other ways of eliminating their need to buy or use the USD and EUR, especially for oil and gas buying and settlements."

...

"One Russian economic historian interviewed by the US Capitol political site Moyers & Company, last week, said it reminded him of the last days of the Roman Empire."

...

"The latter-day Petrodollar Empire only exports cartloads of chaff money in return for the real goods and raw materials it sucks in from the rest of the world. Its supreme arrogance is to imagine the scam is ­ to use the favored slogan of the climate crazies and green boomers, ­ "sustainable."

rense.com/general96/g7.html

Maybe our elites want to bring in their green agenda and cast us into a low growth downward spiral as they ration our energy and turn our lights off.

One has to wonder if all countries are being played - and that includes the US, Russia and China - and that someone above Presidents and leaders is moving the world to their longed for low growth green New World Order through a clash of civilizations or a clash of cultures over seemingly small issues - just as happened with the outbreak of the First World War.