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.

I was pondering Mr Putin's support for secessionists. Bearing in mind that in Russia, demonstrators can be arrested for not holding up protest banners, I wondered if he would support them and quickly arrange a referendum with two alternatives to vote for, neither of which was "stay in Russia"

I see that Mr Putin's own law prescribes up to five years in prison for talking about it. I dread to think what would be the penalty for seizing government buildings with guns and firebombs.

As claig said not long ago:
"The hypocrisy in this whole thing is laughable."

The WSJ reports on German public misgivings about German involvement in the US State Department's Ukrainian adventure. This article also points out that with Germany's and Russia's economies firmly linked, when Russia sneezes it is likely that Germany and by extension the rest of the EU will catch a cold. British reluctance to shoot the City in the foot by means of sanctions has already been noted.

Interesting Wall Street Journal article linked by mathanxiety about the German public's lack of support for German intervention. My guess is it will be almost the same throughout Europe as far as the European public, as opposed to the politicians, is concerned.

The Russian analyst, Nekrossov, who is often on C4 and BBC, was on Russia Today yesterday and he said that the Western public does not understand how serious this could get. He said something like America was broke and would not be able to pay its debts and that it needs a "confrontation" (he didn't say what kind) and that it wanted to draw Europe in, so that when it emerged from the rubble, it would not need to pay its debts back.

The whole thing is very strange; that the coup was legitimised etc. Why? As the German in the Wall Street Journal said

"With the Ukraine crisis increasingly taking on Cold War-style overtones, many Germans are wary of getting drawn into a fight alongside an ally they distrust.

"I don't understand why they are getting involved in this at all," Ronald Markgraf, a 34-year-old cook in Berlin, said of the U.S. role in the crisis.

Mr. Markgraf says that while he is no Putin fan, he believes the Russian president had little choice but to send troops into Crimea to protect the Russian navy's key base on the Ukrainian peninsula."

But, what is amazing is that Yats and the gang may not be able to pull it off. It looks like some police forces have switched sides and now we have reports that some Ukrainian military have switched sides and joined the people in Donetsk. Will the Ukrainian forces really move in on old women with religious icons and unarmed civilians and on the armed self-defence forces? I don't know. It seems that Yats can talk about the "earth burning under their feet" and threaten 15 year prsion sentences for the armed separatists, but will he have to do it himself, because so far it seems that he may not have full support?

There is always the old fallback - the Right Sector. But I don't think they will be successful against the people of Donetsk etc.

There seems to be people who want confrontation.

But will Germany fall for it and will the Ukrainian military go along with it, or will the plan crumble and will Yats and the gang be left stranded?

I hope Yats's passport is up-to-date, because it may end up with him needing to get out sharpish.

The Economist reporter, Edward Lucas, is in today's Daily Mail

"EDWARD LUCAS: I hope I'm wrong but historians may look back and say this was the start of World War III"

"Deep in the flat and featureless landscape of eastern Ukraine, it is all too ­possible that the outline of World War III is taking shape."

...

As the centenary of the Great War in July approaches, historians are vying to pinpoint the chain of events which started that conflict.

I may be wrong, but in 100 years time, will their successors look back at the events in Ukraine to make sense of the beginnings of the next world conflagration?"

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2605578/Edward-Lucas-I-hope-Im-wrong-historians-look-say-start-World-War-III.html

What a tragedy if this happens over this. Will Europe, the world and billions of people be dragged into a calamity to save the bankers and their debts? Will the hawks get their way, will the gang hold sway?

There is a lot of heated rhetoric coming from Kiev on the lines of the burning earth (and the previous ill-judged Tymoshenko remarks). Very atavistic. This sort of thing may be contributing to the misgivings of the German public. The American public is also very ho-hum about all of this and not too happy about rising petrol prices in the wake of a harsh winter across the US and accompanying high heating bills. The British government is keen not to hurt the City.

This is a big difference (among many differences) between this situation and that of 1914 -- jingoism is conspicuously lacking.

BBC reporter Olga Ivshina:
'People are very nervous. Many have not slept for several nights. When Ukrainian armoured personnel carriers appeared in the town, people quickly surrounded them. Some accused soldiers of "acting against their own people."

"Why did you come to our land?" a man from the crowd asked. "Why are you driving over our fields? We are peaceful people! And we just want our demands to be respected!"

Soldiers were sitting on the APCs with automatic guns, in full combat gear. "I know they can shoot at us, but we are miners, we see death every day," the man said. "So we are not afraid. We will stand here until victory. We want a referendum to be held. We should decide our future for ourselves."

"We are just obeying orders, let us go!" the commander shouted. "We didn't come here to fight. We are just moving around. I will never shoot at my own people!"

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27045534

'A soldier guarding one of the carriers told Reuters he was a member of Ukraine's 25th airborne brigade from Dnipropetrovsk, a city also in eastern Ukraine.

He said the soldiers had had no food for four days until local people fed them.

"All the soldiers and the officers are here," he said. "We are all boys who won't shoot our own people."

In Donetsk, where activists have been occupying the regional government building since 6 April, gunmen met no resistance as they entered the mayor's office.

They told an AFP correspondent their only demand was for the region to stage a referendum on turning Ukraine into a federation with broader local rights.'

Morale seems to be a bit iffy then, and relying on locals for food doesn't reflect well on superior officers.

Jingoism was used to whip up the public in 1914, but as always the real reasons for war then and now are financial and strategic, and puppets' strings are pulled by the real power elite.

What reason is there to support a coup in Ukraine against an elected government - a coup in part carried out by extreme right wing puppets? Why try to split Russia from Europe? Who gains and why do they gain more than expanding world trade and peace and good relations between nations? Why has it happened?

"All the soldiers and the officers are here," he said. "We are all boys who won't shoot our own people."

'Morale seems to be a bit iffy then, and relying on locals for food doesn't reflect well on superior officers.'

Yes, Yats, the gang and the pals will not be able to pull the scheme off, unless they use their mates in the Right Sector, who are prepared to do nearly anything.

Using their pals in the Right Sector will be the last throw of the dice in trying to stir up the conflict. But that will probably fail spectacularly and the Right Sector will be chased out and will probably have to go back to Galicia.

The world is changing. BRICs countries are rising. China is rising. Russia is growing and stopped the attack on Syria. The elite's power is declining. The bankers are bust, their rigging schemes and scams are being exposed. The dollar's reserve currency status may one day go. What will the elite do? Will they accept the new world or will they pull the house down in a desperate bid to maintain control?

We are being told that we must stop Russia redrawing the map of Europe for world peace and stability. We are being told it is like Hitler's Anschluss. The BBC has wheeled out all the favourite figures and reporters to tell us that World War I was not a futile war, they even started telling us that German war atrocities in World War I were true and were not just propaganda.

The drums of war are slowly being banged, just like they were over Syria. We are being told about necessary wars, just wars. The media ignores the Right Sector but films Yanukovych's palace.

The peopel are buying it, just like the people in Donetsk and even the Ukrainian police and troops aren't buying it. The gang is outnumbered, Yats is ranting and raving but seems almost powerless because teh people aren't with him.

There are European elections in a month's time. Poland, whose politicians have been hawkish, has seen its current government revive its fortunes in the polls as they play up the Ukraine crisis. But elsewhere in Europe, I think it will be the opposite.

Our media did not even give any publicity to Marine Le Pens visit to Moscow a few days' ago. Why not? Is it because of what she said and because of teh coming EU elections?

"France's Le Pen, in Moscow, blames EU for new 'Cold War'"

"Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front, blamed the European Union for declaring a new Cold War on Russia that would hurt all concerned, Russian media reported on Saturday as she paid an official visit to Moscow.

Europe-Russia relations are at their lowest ebb in decades after President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea prompted the EU to impose sanctions on dozens of prominent Russian officials and lawmakers.

However Le Pen, along with other Eurosceptic leaders of the far left and nationalist right, believe the original fault lies with Brussels for offering closer ties with Ukraine, a move Russia opposes.

"I am surprised a Cold War on Russia has been declared in the European Union," French National Front leader Le Pen said at a meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house."

Her comments echo those of Austrian far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache who has openly sided with Putin, condemning the EU sanctions as a farce. Le Pen's Dutch political partner Geert Wilders has also said the EU made the first mistake.

The way Europe has handled the crisis over Ukraine could become an issue in the European Parliament elections in May . Opinion polls suggest right-wing nationalist parties will perform well. French polls show the National Front emerging as the leading French party in the European elections."

www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/12/us-ukraine-crisis-le-pen-russia-idUSBREA3B09I20140412

Farage said that the "EU has blood on its hands over Ukraine".

Will the European people support Yats and his fiery talk or will they back populist right-wing parties that oppose the conflict with Russia?

Sorry, meant to say "The people aren't buying it"

mathanxiety Wed 16-Apr-14 18:38:17
"The WSJ reports on German public misgivings about German involvement in the US State Department's Ukrainian adventure"

Russia's Ukrainian adventure is very much more a European issue.

Angela has had far more experience than any other world leader of trying to tactfully and constructively deal with Russia and the Soviet Union, and is the one most familiar with Putin.

Marking my place for later

The Russian economy may see zero growth this year because of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's finance minister has admitted.

"Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev recently told residents of Crimea that the government would be increasing salaries and pensions, in addition to putting extra money into the peninsula's infrastructure, following its recent controversial annexation.

Mr Siluanov warned Mr Medvedev not to spend too much in the region, stating that announcements were made "without analysing the real needs of Crimea and Sevastopol".

Or to put it another way, Russia's finance minister asks "how the hell do you think you are going to pay for it?"

Perhaps China will make them a loan. Russia does need to look for new friends to replace those it has alienated.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26769481

"Putin restored some Soviet symbols. He brought back the Soviet national anthem and Soviet emblems, and praised the Soviet triumph in World War Two. But he embraced pre-Soviet themes too. He befriended the Russian Orthodox Church, and name-checked anti-Soviet philosophers like Ivan Ilyin, whose remains he had repatriated to Russia and buried with honour.

This trend towards a uniquely Russian form of conservatism accelerated after the wave of protests against electoral fraud that struck Moscow in 2011-2, which alienated Putin from Russia's liberals. Among his favourite ideologues is Vladimir Yakunin, an old friend, a fellow KGB graduate, an Orthodox believer and now head of Russian Railways, one of the country's most strategically significant companies.

"Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilisational space, where Russia unites the civilisational communities of East and West," Yakunin said in a recent interview with Itar-Tass.

Last week, he was added to the US sanctions list for "membership of the Russian leadership's inner circle", following the annexation of Crimea.

The idea of Russia being separate from but equal to the West is convenient, since it allows the Kremlin to reject Western criticism of its elections, its court cases, its foreign policy, as biased and irrelevant.

Many of Putin's friends, though dismissive of the West's economics, politics, values and structures, are, however, much attached to its comforts. Both of Yakunin's sons live in Western Europe - one in London, one in Switzerland - and his grandchildren are growing up there.

According to the anti-corruption campaigner, Alexei Navalny, Yakunin has built himself a palace outside Moscow using foreign limestone and building materials brought in from Germany - a strange step for a man supposedly wedded to creating a Russian economy independent of the West."

"It is not easy re-shaping a country on your own, and Putin has needed the assistance of one key group within Russian society. While he has cracked down on independent journalists, businessmen and politicians, he has relied on state officials to make sure his ideas are implemented.

They have been well rewarded for their help. Wages for top officials increased last year by 20%, four times the increase in the general budget. Putin's spending binge means that, for the budget to balance, Brent crude must now average around $117 a barrel, more than five times the level needed in 2006, according to analysis from Deutsche Bank.

Even that is not enough for top officials. Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, said last week that, in 2013, the average bribe in Russia had doubled to $4,000. Last year, Transparency International gave Russia 127th place on its Corruption Perception Index, rating it as corrupt as Pakistan, Mali and Madagascar.

"Putin has really painted himself into a corner by destroying every independent source of power in Russia. He now has only the bureaucracy to rely on, and must keep increasing its funding to keep ensuring its loyalty," says Ben Judah, the British author of Fragile Empire, a study of Putin's Russia.

"Eventually, the money is going to run out, and then he will find himself in the same position Soviet leaders were in by the late 1980s, forced to confront political and economic crises, while trying to hold the country together. He looks strong now, but his Kremlin is built on the one thing in Russia doesn't control: the price of oil."

Putin has succeeded in building a version of the country of his childhood, one that can act independently in the world, and one where dissent is controlled and the Kremlin's power unchallenged. But that is a double-edged sword, because the Soviet Union collapsed for a reason, and a Russia recreated in its image risks sharing its fate."

""He does not understand that the collapse of the Soviet system was predetermined, therefore he believes his mission is to restore the Soviet system as soon as possible," he says.

As a middle-ranking KGB officer who loved the Soviet Union, Putin lacked the perspective of senior officers, who knew full well the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency rather than because of Western plotting, Bukovsky says.

"It leads him exactly to… repeat the same mistakes. He wants this whole country to be controlled by one person from the Kremlin, which will lead to disaster," he says.

Putin's decision to invade Crimea was taken quickly and impulsively, by a small group of his favoured top officials. That means Putin has no one to warn him of the long-term consequences of his actions, and until he finds out for himself, he will maintain his course."

Russia's Ukrainian adventure is very much more a European issue. Angela has had far more experience than any other world leader of trying to tactfully and constructively deal with Russia and the Soviet Union, and is the one most familiar with Putin.

And she was getting on very well until Victoria Nuland and the State Department threw a spanner in the works and instigated regime change in Kiev.

Merkel has had her hand forced by the State Department and now risks alienating her core voters and important supporters, and throwing the German economy into jeopardy.

This in the wake of the NSA eavesdropping problem.

You posted all of that 'analysis' before. All it proves is that paper never refused ink.

"And she was getting on very well until Victoria Nuland and the State Department threw a spanner in the works and instigated regime change in Kiev."

Wrong.

She was managing fairly well until his military adventures of intimidating, invading and occupying Russia's weaker neighbours became an issue.

Merkel has had her hand forced by the Putin and his ambition of recreating the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin’s use of Soviet-era symbolism has alarmed those already fearful for the future of the country’s democratic institutions says the FT

blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/04/the-putin-show/

"Although the president pledged that he would always listen to critics, his response may do little to reassure them. He rebutted comments on a stricter domestic political environment with the argument that things were nowhere close to the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin. “Nobody is being sent to labour camps, as happened in 1937. People express their opinions freely, and they look healthy doing that,” Mr Putin said. “But our intelligentsia is used to thinking that what they say is the truth, and they’re not used to being opposed. Some intellectuals want defeat for their own country.”

Not as bad as under Stalin, FFS.
Set the bar low, Vlad!

Maybe you would like to start an obsessive thread about Putin somewhere else.