The Russians have denied their armed forces are active in Crimea, but an Associated Press reporter trailed one military convoy Saturday afternoon from 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Feodosia to a military airfield at Gvardeiskoe north of Simferopol, over which a Russian flag flew.
Some of the army green vehicles had Russian license plates and numbers indicating that they were from the Moscow region. Some towed mobile kitchens and what appeared to be mobile medical equipment.
I find the thing with the different factions of a country's armed forces taking different sides in a conflict very interesting. I mean, it is horrible that it is actually happening, or starting to happen, but it is intriguing, especially compared to the thing in the USA of viewing the whole military as one giant organism.
I mean as far as I know Ukraine's naval forces have been, for the most part, pretty loyal to the Kievian government too.
So it's interesting that Russia has denied that they have any forces in Crimea at all.
Like I said earlier, Putin's getting cold feet now that neither Ukraine nor the West have folded. It no longer seems like a done deal and all of a sudden he's not so eager to unveil his masterstroke.
Moscow's hand is a whole lot weaker than I think they realized going in. They can't play their big scary trump card, turning off the gas pipelines, because literally all of Russia's social spending is funded by European gas revenue. If they try to do that in the middle of U.S. and European sanctions, they'd better fucking pray that there's no sudden cold snap in mid-March or the Kremlin doors are going to be kicked in by millions of furious Russians wondering where their heating subsidies went.
The Russians have denied their armed forces are active in Crimea, but an Associated Press reporter trailed one military convoy Saturday afternoon from 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Feodosia to a military airfield at Gvardeiskoe north of Simferopol, over which a Russian flag flew.
Some of the army green vehicles had Russian license plates and numbers indicating that they were from the Moscow region. Some towed mobile kitchens and what appeared to be mobile medical equipment.
Totally baffling.
However one theory I heard that would make the claim "technically" true is they're not Russian Army divisions, but a Russian Private Military Contractor.
I highly recommend Vice News' on-the-ground coverage. It's not all that illuminating from a macro point of view, but it's fascinating and heart wrenching and very very human.
However one theory I heard that would make the claim "technically" true is they're not Russian Army divisions, but a Russian Private Military Contractor.
There's pretty much no chance that they're anything other than the Russian army - I can't think of any PMCs that can operate on anything close to the divisional scale, which is what's going on in Crimea if the claims about 15-30,000 soldiers on the ground is true. And, well, the Russian Air Force transport planes that flew several thousand of them in when this flared up.
There's a whole lot of for-form's-sake stuff going on with denials like that, where it's obvious to anyone with half an eye and a quarter brain that the claims being made are completely false. They were pretty common during the Cold War - one big example was Soviet pilots in Korea pretending to be North Koreans down to the uniforms and phrasebooks (other than speaking Russian to each other in combat - oopsie) - mostly because the consequences if people didn't go along with the fictions were pretty dire. That's not really the case this time, since the odds of foreign counter-intervention in Ukraine are slim to none, but it's a pretty long-established pattern to give at least a layer of diplomatic insulation.
(That said, in this case it also feels like a bit of a middle finger, with Moscow essentially saying "prove us wrong, and what're you gonna do about it anyway?")
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Yeah isn't a lot of vice's reporting sorta... fabricated for page views?
Most of what I turned up seemed like sour grapes criticism from staid news organizations who characterized their reporting style as generally "shallow".
I don't know that I disagree with that criticism, but I think the on-the-ground view is still really valuable as long as you contextualize it properly.
and considering Ukraine were the victims of their very own holocaust at the hands of Communist Russia in the 1930s I'm not sure you can blame them for recalling the Nazis as the good guys
While we're at it, can we blame people for hashing out the "Ukrainians support/are Nazis," "western Ukrainians support/are Nazis," and "eastern Ukrainians are all for being annexed" lines over and over as though the populations are hivelike monoliths?
Most of what I turned up seemed like sour grapes criticism from staid news organizations who characterized their reporting style as generally "shallow".
I don't know that I disagree with that criticism, but I think the on-the-ground view is still really valuable as long as you contextualize it properly.
VICE is completely shallow, they've only ever put out maybe a handfull of interesting pieces. The "Inside North Korea" one in 2009 was really good, but then I went and watched the unbelievably horrible Chernobyl piece and decided Shane Smith is just an idiot at heart who happened to get rich through incredible luck. His charisma and willingness to go anywhere are his only real assets.
They've grown a lot and release a ton of content, but the core of their brand is basically to put annoying and uninformed hipster-types into the field and just let them do whatever.
While we're at it, can we blame people for hashing out the "Ukrainians support/are Nazis," "western Ukrainians support/are Nazis," and "eastern Ukrainians are all for being annexed" lines over and over as though the populations are hivelike monoliths?
Aren't the Crimean Tatars that are in the East like completely against anything Russian?
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
While we're at it, can we blame people for hashing out the "Ukrainians support/are Nazis," "western Ukrainians support/are Nazis," and "eastern Ukrainians are all for being annexed" lines over and over as though the populations are hivelike monoliths?
Aren't the Crimean Tatars that are in the East like completely against anything Russian?
crimea is fucking complicated
like
really complicated
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MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
While we're at it, can we blame people for hashing out the "Ukrainians support/are Nazis," "western Ukrainians support/are Nazis," and "eastern Ukrainians are all for being annexed" lines over and over as though the populations are hivelike monoliths?
Aren't the Crimean Tatars that are in the East like completely against anything Russian?
The youngest generation of them, the Tatar tots, are
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
While we're at it, can we blame people for hashing out the "Ukrainians support/are Nazis," "western Ukrainians support/are Nazis," and "eastern Ukrainians are all for being annexed" lines over and over as though the populations are hivelike monoliths?
Yeah, things aren't quite as clean cut as people seem to keep saying.
Like, for example, the guy who tried to pull a coup in Donetsk and invite the Russians in was this guy.
Does anyone else get the feeling that a chunk of the pro-russian demonstrations in the eastern section are likely transported russian activists?
there were reports that some of the people at pro-russia rallies in russia were just there because their bosses told them they were going to go to the rally and hold signs, so the scope of actual support is a bit hard to get a read on
Does anyone else get the feeling that a chunk of the pro-russian demonstrations in the eastern section are likely transported russian activists?
I'd assume that most of the demonstrators (on both sides) are for the most part utterly sincere local residents.
The demonstrations in support of the invasion in Russia proper, and other things like the Crimean parliament voting unanimously-minus-the-abstentions-but-let's-ignore-that to be annexed? I'm just a little more cynical about those. (Not to mention in Crimean cities in particular, since even the Ukrainian army can't safely show its face there right now.)
After living in Ukraine, being around for the political election of Yanukovich, and dating someone from Ukraine who has family in the military in Sevastopol , I can say Russia is dumb and even pro Russians don't want Russia in charge of them. A lot of what is happening in Ukraine is really Putin forcing what he wants there.
I'm really happy Joeuser started this discussion, this is potentially a moment of history which will have a global impact on the lives of people for the next 10 to 50 years.
Also uh, lets not dehumanize folk in this thread. The world is made up of people with different opinions and motivations, and it's disengenious to have discussions generalizing folk into imature children.
I really value people in this community's thoughts, and we risk losing valuable discussion if even one individual gets hurt or riled up.
Posts
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-03-08/pro-russia-forces-mount-pressure-on-ukrainians
He would be Napoleon.
Ghandi is pure evil, Napoleon is the one who starts wars and then asks for peace the next turn
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
Like I said earlier, Putin's getting cold feet now that neither Ukraine nor the West have folded. It no longer seems like a done deal and all of a sudden he's not so eager to unveil his masterstroke.
Moscow's hand is a whole lot weaker than I think they realized going in. They can't play their big scary trump card, turning off the gas pipelines, because literally all of Russia's social spending is funded by European gas revenue. If they try to do that in the middle of U.S. and European sanctions, they'd better fucking pray that there's no sudden cold snap in mid-March or the Kremlin doors are going to be kicked in by millions of furious Russians wondering where their heating subsidies went.
Totally baffling.
However one theory I heard that would make the claim "technically" true is they're not Russian Army divisions, but a Russian Private Military Contractor.
There's pretty much no chance that they're anything other than the Russian army - I can't think of any PMCs that can operate on anything close to the divisional scale, which is what's going on in Crimea if the claims about 15-30,000 soldiers on the ground is true. And, well, the Russian Air Force transport planes that flew several thousand of them in when this flared up.
There's a whole lot of for-form's-sake stuff going on with denials like that, where it's obvious to anyone with half an eye and a quarter brain that the claims being made are completely false. They were pretty common during the Cold War - one big example was Soviet pilots in Korea pretending to be North Koreans down to the uniforms and phrasebooks (other than speaking Russian to each other in combat - oopsie) - mostly because the consequences if people didn't go along with the fictions were pretty dire. That's not really the case this time, since the odds of foreign counter-intervention in Ukraine are slim to none, but it's a pretty long-established pattern to give at least a layer of diplomatic insulation.
(That said, in this case it also feels like a bit of a middle finger, with Moscow essentially saying "prove us wrong, and what're you gonna do about it anyway?")
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/03/vice-founder-famous-for-truth-telling-has-history-of-lies/
Most of what I turned up seemed like sour grapes criticism from staid news organizations who characterized their reporting style as generally "shallow".
I don't know that I disagree with that criticism, but I think the on-the-ground view is still really valuable as long as you contextualize it properly.
Actually you really really can.
VICE is completely shallow, they've only ever put out maybe a handfull of interesting pieces. The "Inside North Korea" one in 2009 was really good, but then I went and watched the unbelievably horrible Chernobyl piece and decided Shane Smith is just an idiot at heart who happened to get rich through incredible luck. His charisma and willingness to go anywhere are his only real assets.
They've grown a lot and release a ton of content, but the core of their brand is basically to put annoying and uninformed hipster-types into the field and just let them do whatever.
Aren't the Crimean Tatars that are in the East like completely against anything Russian?
crimea is fucking complicated
like
really complicated
The youngest generation of them, the Tatar tots, are
Like, for example, the guy who tried to pull a coup in Donetsk and invite the Russians in was this guy.
literal nazis all over.
there were reports that some of the people at pro-russia rallies in russia were just there because their bosses told them they were going to go to the rally and hold signs, so the scope of actual support is a bit hard to get a read on
I'd assume that most of the demonstrators (on both sides) are for the most part utterly sincere local residents.
The demonstrations in support of the invasion in Russia proper, and other things like the Crimean parliament voting unanimously-minus-the-abstentions-but-let's-ignore-that to be annexed? I'm just a little more cynical about those. (Not to mention in Crimean cities in particular, since even the Ukrainian army can't safely show its face there right now.)
Rome Rule is Best Rule!
Meanwhile, an interesting article on why Putin appears to be rejecting our reality and substituting his own.
tl;dr: It's a Soviet tradition to report how you want the world to be and use that report as a tool to make it so.
Oh, and reading comments is a bad idea, obviously.
Steam
This one feels a bit phoned in.
$15 billion in gold gifts buys a lot of hired assassins; even a high intrigue character like Putin has to get unlucky eventually.
I wish he'd labeled the bear.
I would like to know who that bear is.
Also uh, lets not dehumanize folk in this thread. The world is made up of people with different opinions and motivations, and it's disengenious to have discussions generalizing folk into imature children.
I really value people in this community's thoughts, and we risk losing valuable discussion if even one individual gets hurt or riled up.
or, if possible, leave ukraine whole and hurt the nation enough that pro russians retake control of the government.
I'm not sure the EU is ready to take any substantive actions aside from helping whatever's left of ukraine into it's union.
I think China's response to this has been interesting. Basically, "yo we don't want to give any of our regions ideas, keep ukraine whole."