Please... Don't Let This Be True...

[WillyT]

More than 15,000 Russian troops amassed along border with Ukraine: U.S. ambassador to NATO

Link to Tweet: https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/492716843854204929

Found through: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/25/russia-troops-ukraine-border_n_5621300.html

[sabrina 1]

1. It will make the Neocons warmongers very happy, if it is. This is what they have been

itching for. WW111. Let's hope wiser heads will prevail.

The Kiev coup government is collapsing, much like all the others have since the Orange Revolution. It would be plain stupid of Russia to give the war criminals what they have been trying to achieve at this point.

[Igel]

4. The coup government are the elected parliamentarians from before the coup.

That's sort of the problem. Some of the regionals have walked out and come back, some were expelled, some support the rebellion. There haven't been new elections to the Rada in over a year. The "coup legislature" is pretty much the old legislature.

Just like the "junta leader" was elected with over 50% of the vote. Crimea didn't vote of course. And the "rebels" kept a lot of presumably opposition voters from the polls. This is a problem. Then again, most people don't mind that President Lincoln was re-elected in 1864, without the participation of some of the Southern states. Nobody calls Lincoln a "junta leader".

The Communists are under fire in the Rada. And that's a problem that's not going away. The Communist Party in the Donbas has openly gone over to the rebel side--moving entirely into the LPR and DPR camp in local politics, taking a number of "cabinet" or "vice-pr." posts (premier or president, whichever) in the rebel administrations. The Russian Communist Party has openly taken the rebels side, offering to support them at the highest level and collecting "humanitarian supplies" (which also means setting up recruitment centers) for them.

This has the effect of putting the CP leaders in the Rada in a tough situation since the CP-Ukraine hasn't disowned the CP members in the rebel government and is on decent terms with the Russian CP. Worse, in some cases individual CP members from the Rada have gone to rebel-held territory for negotiations and appeared to support the rebels.

The Regionals have the exact same problem.

Poroshenko will stay along. They've been arguing for the last month about how to dissolve the government. The latest scuffle involves, among other things, how to handle the CP and PR deputies and whether to ban the CP-Ukraine entirely; budgetary matters, such as accepting IMF and EU contraints in exchange for the next tranche of assistance; and how to arrange the budget to make sure that soldiers' pay and weapons/armor/etc. are bought and paid for while keeping all the social programs that are in place funded.

The corruption that was inherited from Yanukovich (and his predecessors) doesn't help--scandals over the price of body armor, for instance, or claims that part of the problem in some areas was that money that was to fund social programs and infrastructure lined the pockets of the local polity apparatuses (with even the claim that in Sverdlovs'k the local politicians welcome bombing, because if the infrastructure is destroyed it'll be funded again, while the funding that was intended to have rebuilt it in the last few years was siphoned off to party bosses).

[sabrina 1]

5. Corruption has been rampant in Ukr since as long as I remember us following

it, at least since the Orange Revolution. Yanu et el all came out of that period.

The fact is WE should have had nothing to do with it, certainly should not have been pushing for 'our guys', which we got, both times, we pushed for Yanukovich too airc, back in those days. We don't have a great record on running the business of other countries, not in Ukr, Iraq, Libya, Syrian etc, not to mention our history in Latin America.

Maybe we ought to start fixing our own problems rather than picking 'leaders' for everyone else, none of has worked out too well and generally seems to end up getting a whole lot of people killed.

So now we got the Billionaire we wanted, with 'our guy Yats' for PM, and once again, it is a disaster. Wherever neocons, see Nuland et al, are, disaster follows and death and destruction. But they themselves seem to profit no matter what.

Putin is a first class idiot if he allows them to draw Russia into war, NATO is standing by just itching for another war, at least the US part of NATO. For Europe this is bit close to home so not sure how they feel about another glorious war.

What a total mess, tragedy, whatever it all is and we are always right there in the middle of it all.

[morningfog]

2. Dempsey gave some troubling (and largely overlooked) comments:

Dempsey said Putin’s decision to launch artillery strikes across the border into Ukraine has changed the entire equation and relationship between Russia and the United States and Europe.

Dempsey warned that Russia’s escalation of violence has sparked a “rising tide of nationalism” that could spread throughout Europe, which he said, “I find quite dangerous.”

Tensions have also been heightened by the downing last week of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner in eastern Ukraine. The United States has said there is evidence that the jet with 298 aboard was hit by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired by the separatists battling Ukraine's government.

As an early precaution, Dempsey revealed that the Pentagon is already looking at possible U.S. and NATO military responses to Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine, such as U.S. military “basing, lines of communications, sea lanes.”

According to Dempsey, U.S. military planners are looking at options that “we haven’t had to look at for 20 years,” since the end of the Cold War. Dempsey suggested the U.S. and its European allies would discuss a potential response at a NATO summit in September.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/u-s-general-dempsey-putin-may-light-fire-he-cant-n164586

[kelliekat44]

3. Why do we shudder at the belligerence of Putin who thumbs his nose at the international community?

Netanyahu has been doing it all along and receiving cheers from our government. Why are we so upset about how Putin seems to disregard anything we have to say? Our Congress almost applauded the military coup of an elected government in Egypt...just because of WHO was elected. We can tolerate all kinds of war crimes and inhumane treatment as long as it comes from the people we either like or who control us in one way or another. Although it saddens me, I fully understand why Hamas acts the way they do and why Putin thumbs his nose. They are taking their cues from the greatest teachers of indifference and intolerance in history...the Israel and the US (Congress). When others begin to play the game by the same rules...change the rules.

[sabrina 1]

6. Great question. I can't answer it, maybe someone else can, but it sure makes us look

pretty hypocritical. We are selective in who we hate and who we love. Still trying to find out why we are financing one of the world's worst dictators in Uzbekistan, Karamov.