Ukraine PM Tells Germans: Russia Toppling Hitler Was Aggression
http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/09/2299Crazy Ukraine PM Tells Germans: Russia Toppling Hitler Was Aggression (Video)
Just how crazy is this guy? Told German TV Russia invading Ukraine and Germany as it did in WWII must never be allowed to happen again
by Daniele Pozzati
Fri, Jan 9
Live before millions of German viewers, in Berlin with the Reichstag in the background, Ukraine's PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced to universal amazement: „nobody is entitled to rewrite the outcome of WW2“.
The setting is an interview with Tagesthemen („Issues of the day“)- Germany's second most important TV news magazine.
Which outcome, we beg his pardon? But the – wait for it – the Soviet invasion of Germany of course! How is that for rewriting the outcome of WW2?
In a country where the denial of the Holocaust a criminal offense, and where Nazi insignia – so popular in Ukraine today - is illegal, Yats had just declared:
„Russian aggression in the Ukraine is a threat to world order“
„We can all very well remember the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine and Germany. This must be prevented from happening again”
more...
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here, standing in front of a Chevron logo (the same company that named an oil tanker after Condi Rice) Victoria Nuland gushes about the $5 BILLION DOLLARS that disappeared in the region
A few billion here and a few billion there and pretty soon we're talkin' real money
Rice and Nuland trade Cookie Recipes
In 1992, George P. Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan and, as a Soviet specialist, Rice knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf and, in honor of her work, in 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice. During this period, Rice was also appointed to the boards of Transamerica Corporation (1991) and Hewlett-Packard (1992).
It's a small small world for the 1%
And it's not getting any less bogus:
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/
You got me, champ. 
Last edited Sun Jan 11, 2015, 11:47 AM - Edit history (1)
and it was too difficult for the interviewer to ask back, what with the simultaneous translation and everything. Besides, he answered the questions in Ukrainian (Russian?) but used the English word 'invasion', which was translated for the interviewer to 'Anmarsch' (advance) in German, so nobody really understood what he was talking about ...
https://www.facebook.com/tagesschau/posts/10152968920374407
It is true that many Germans in the east experienced the Russian 'advance' as an 'invasion'. I recall the stories told by my grandaunt, the Russians marching in like boars and rounding up the remaining Germans in order to shoot them, the tales about pillage and rape. I also recall that the good Germans had overwhelmingly supported the Nazis and their preceding 'advance' to the east. That very grandaunt and her siblings, for example, had all settled in occupied Poland to further the 'cause', and because housing was available there cheaply, once the former owners had left. Which happened to be Jewish, I heard, but nobody knows where they went.
Somehow I doubt that the 40-year-old Prime Minister recalls these events. I doubt even his parents were old enough at the time to 'remember'. But it seems he was fed the same stories as we were in post-war Germany, circulating among the former Nazis in the Vertriebenenverbände, and he is brazen or stupid enough to remind us of this 'perspective' now, when he comes asking for money.
The German media largely ignored the interview, except for some isolated comments, e.g. in the satire section of Der Spiegel:
'We can all remember very well the Soviet invasion in Ukraine and in Germany', said Yatsenyuk to moderator Pinar Atalay.
And indeed, since 1942 Russian troops had recklessly advanced towards the west. In their pursuit of the armies commanded by the elected Chancellor of the German Reich, they did not shy away from crossing right through Ukrainian territory. The longer and more cumbersome route south of the Black Sea - bypassing Ukraine - was apparently eschewed in order to spare the extra effort.
Finally, the Soviets violated the eastern border of Germany and penetrated German sovereign territory, as we all, together with Mr Yatsenyuk, remember very well. It is unclear if Ms Atalay does, though. Anyway, the little digression into the history of Russian aggression didn't seem to raise any questions whatsoever with her.
http://www.spiegel.de/spam/satire-spiegel-online-jazenjuk-sowjetischer-einmarsch-a-1011915.html
Yep no Nazis in that clown car of a government.
to provision Fort Sumter! Good 'ole P.G.T. Beauregard was just defending South Carolina's honor and states' rights.
Here's the bit. What I can hear on my cheesy laptop is either necessarily Ukrainian or ambiguous between Russian and Ukrainian (there's some overlap in words, and when there's a choice many bilinguals opt for the Russian variant; some even fairly well-spoken bilinguals lapse into a kind of low-grade surzhyk, with extensive code-switching and even language mixing--it's not always easy to tell since the pronunciation systems of S. Russian and Ukrainian are closer than of standard Russian and Ukrainian).
(http://ua.112.ua/politika/zmi-povidomlyayut-pro-netochnosti-perekladu-interv-yu-nimeckomu-telekanalu-yacenyuka-171463.html)
"Russian military aggression against Ukraine was an assault on world order and this assault (was) on European security. You and I well remember the Soviet invasion both in Ukraine, including Germany, as well. This we have to avoid. And nobody should to rewrite the results of the Second World War (sic) as the president of Russia Mr. Putin is attempting to do.
Yup, the word "invasion" doesn't need to be translated into English. Simultaneous translators really nenavidiat when people decide to cambiarse de lengua in the middle of an interview comme ca. Explains the pause in the przeklad. Gotta think, "Not the L2 I'm expecting, what the f**k was that, is it really English... Okay, it was, but it's missing all the grammatical bits, how do I make it make sense, why didn't he use the word in his language--does it not mean what the Ukrainian word would mean?--should just say screw it and repeat the foreign word ... because I'm getting behind and have to catch up!"
I put (sic) after Second World War because it's telling: Had a Russian been speaking I'd have defaulted to the same translation in this context but the Russian would have said "Great Patriotic War." Yats is using the general European term, not the Soviet/Russian term.
The bit in italics is the problem. I don't have an answer for that. If I code switch it's for a reason: the other word is tres chic, perhaps; often it's because the word expresses my intent better. And, if I'm code-switching with somebody who knows the same languages I do, it's often for neither reason but because I've mostly been exposed to that idea or that utterance in that language. (If you go to school in English and live at home in Spanish, you naturally tend to use English words in discussing school--even if you know the Spanish words. You match your language to the content's original language.) I have no intuition or suggestion as to why he used the English word. The exegesis I've seen strikes me as forced: It must mean something, so out of the range of possibilities it must mean this. Why?
There was Russian military aggression against Ukraine. There was a Soviet invasion of Germany and Ukraine. An "invasion" isn't the same as "an attack." If there hadn't been an invasion, then the Soviet troops never would have entered Germany. The whole "it was easier to invade Ukraine instead of going around it" claim is a waste of space--with the "go south of Ukraine" alternative being goofy if not subversive.
The "aggression" is only said to be "Russian"--current, not pre-1991--against Ukraine even if commentators are trying to make it refer to Soviet aggression against Germany. Lots of countries were invaded by Russia, some ex parte and some in search of retreating enemy troops. It's the results of WWII that can't be rewritten, re-edited, though. After the invasion there wasn't a full redeployment or consensual bilateral treaties. There was some annexation. Some colonialism. Some oppression and domination as part of a "sphere of influence". There was a splitting of East Germany from West, a Soviet annexation domination of part of Ukraine and occupation of E. Germany that was oppressive, leading to a cold war that hurt everybody. The "rewriting" is that this wasn't domination and everybody was happy except fascists. The USSR under Stalin and Brezhnev was a happy, prosperous place. The only discontent was from the CIA and Western agents. Some want to make Ukrainians fascists and pretend that what the USSR did--territorial annexations, ethnic cleansing, resettling populations, despoiling the territories, purges, human rights violations, etc., etc., never happened or was a good thing. (Try that discussion with a Palestinian. Typically they switch sides immediately. Good when Russians did it, horrible when Jews do it.)
That's a bit strained. But it's less strained than trying to make this into a defense of Nazi Germany and saying that Russia unilaterally attacked a poor innocent Hitler. Even if it is a defense of Germany that doesn't make it into a defense of Nazi Germany--it's far from clear that E. Germany deserved any greater punishment under Stalin and the Soviets than West Germany did. (I mean, even JFK was in solidarity with the Germans, and that just 15 years after the war.)
Making what I say a bit less strained is that it's part of the standard rhetoric from the Ukrainian side. It's not a digression, it's not a new addition to the discourse. It's more of the same.
