BREAKING: Moscow announces END to massive troop buildup near Ukraine - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15169086
@Heisenberg

That's a pretty unfair comparison given that Afghanistan gave safe haven to terrorists that killed 3,000 civilians on American soil. America had plenty of justification in striking Afghanistan to root out those same terrorists that killed 3,000 Americans on American soil. Would you want Germany to sit idly by after 3,000 German civilians were killed on German soil in a terrorist attack and just do nothing? Just sit there and wait for the next terrorist attack that could possibly kill even more German civilians the next time around in such a hypothetical situation?
#15169096
Heisenberg wrote:American discussion of NATO enlargement began under Bush Sr, before the EU even existed.


"discussion", what a meaningless term. NATO expansion would not have happened without the approval of Germany and France. NATO and EU expansion coincided, for obvious reasons.

Heisenberg wrote:Alaska is American territory. Lithuania is not.


It is EU territory, and NATO is de facto responsible for EU defense.

Heisenberg wrote:Now you're getting it! Of course, after the collapse of the USSR and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, there quite literally was no "frontier" between NATO and Russia at all in continental Europe.


The dissolution of the Warsaw pact didn't mean a recovered Russia couldn't basically walk through Eastern Europe.
#15169109
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Times of Israel wrote:
The unorthodox path of a Jewish man in the ‘new’ Ukraine

Asher Cherkasskiy has been propelled to unlikely fame as one of the few religious Jews to join a pro-Kiev militia
By DMYTRO GORSHKOV

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine (AFP) — Asher Cherkasskiy lived a modest life in peaceful southern Ukraine, observing Orthodox Jewish custom and putting his three children through religious school.

But when war against pro-Russian insurgents broke out in 2014, everything changed.

Cherkasskiy became one of the few religious Jews to join a pro-Kiev militia and his bearded, bespectacled face — so different from the others — turned him into an unlikely icon of the conflict.

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“I had to protect my children,” said the 45-year-old former handyman whose fame has since propelled him into politics. “If the territorial integrity of your country is broken, you have to defend it.”

Cherkasskiy left his small town of Feodosia in Crimea after the peninsula was annexed by Russia in March 2014. Its new status, he said, “went counter” to his conscience and convictions.

He moved to the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk, the heartland of the Jewish community in the country’s east. There he joined the Dnipro battalion, a group fighting the pro-Russian insurgency in the region.

The Dnipro militia was established by Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoyskiy, also a Jew, who like Cherkasskiy ridicules allegations by Russian state media that pro-Kiev militias are full of “fascists.”

Symbol of a new Ukraine
Cherkasskiy conceded that his Orthodox practice and kosher diet were difficult to observe at the front.

But he says he never encountered anti-Semitism from fellow fighters in this mainly Christian country, where Jews have been massacred and faced extreme anti-Semitism over history.

“We acted as a single unit without any suspicion of one another,” he told AFP in an interview at a Jewish center in Dnipropetrovsk.

He also says he has “a good relationship” with ultranationalist lawmaker Dmytro Yarosh, whom Moscow brands a neo-Nazi and wants on an international arrest warrant on charges of “inciting terrorism.”

Yarosh, former head of the Right Sector which is both a party and a militia, is the point man between pro-Kiev volunteer battalions and the army general staff. He defends groups like his as “nationalist not fascist.”

But he is infamous for espousing the views of World War II Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, a man Israel blames for colluding with the Nazis to murder thousands of Jews who had survived the pogroms first practiced by Russia’s czar and then continued with abandon by its first Communist leaders.

Historians believe that the Holocaust erased the lives of up to 900,000 Jews living in modern Ukraine, leaving slightly more than 800,000 survivors in the first decade after the war.

The country’s Jewish population remained largely unchanged until the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. But tacit — if not overt — anti-Semitism witnessed in the more nationalist western and other parts of country saw hundreds of thousands of Jews flee to the United States, Israel and other countries when the Cold War’s borders evaporated.

Jews today account for just 0.2 percent of Ukraine’s population of slightly more than 40 million, or about 80,000 citizens.

Yet some see Cherkasskiy as the symbol of a new Ukraine that has parted ways with its Moscow-tied past and is eager to fall into the West’s embrace.

It was Cherkasskiy’s looks, in striking contrast to his comrades, that shot him to fame thanks to a video filmed on the frontline in late 2014. He stood proud with his bushy orthodox beard, a Jewish warrior in combat fatigues.

“Cherkasskiy is one of the symbols of a new Ukraine, he is a link between the nations that consider Ukraine their motherland,” local journalist Dmytro Rozmeritsa told AFP.

His beard became “a bridge,” he said, a potent, if ironic, symbol of unity.

“Russia attacked Ukraine. It’s a full-scale war,” Cherkasskiy said of the 20-month conflict that has claimed more than 9,000 lives.

‘Not very typical’
Some of the country’s Jewish community leaders say their members support Kiev against pro-Russian rebels.

“We are all citizens of Ukraine and we have to fight for our country,” said Iosif Zisels, who heads the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine.

But he admits that “Asher Cherkasskiy’s position is not very typical.”

Few Orthodox Jews have flocked to join volunteer battalions. In general, religious Jews worldwide — as in Israel — shun military service as an institution of secular society that disrupts religious practices.

While sporadic clashes continue on the frontline, a series of truce agreements have significantly reduced fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Cherkasskiy, meanwhile, has traded combat for politics, winning a seat on Dnipropetrovsk’s city council in November local elections, beating out powerful businessmen and politicians.

His new enemy: corruption plaguing Ukraine’s economy.

This is also the primary foe of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who was recently urged by US Vice President Joe Biden to fight the “cancer” of government graft that has hounded a succession of Ukraine’s post-Soviet governments.

That campaign has so far had mixed results, although men like Cherkasskiy and those who spearheaded Ukraine’s 2014 pro-European revolution vow to never give up.

Cherkasskiy is still, above all, a militia member. “But if I feel military service is preventing me from being an effective city councilor, I will opt for being a lawmaker because I think I can do more in this job,” he said.
#15169129
Rugoz wrote:The dissolution of the Warsaw pact didn't mean a recovered Russia couldn't basically walk through Eastern Europe.

In other words, the assumption was that Russia could never be anything other than an enemy country.

There would be no reason to fear Russia "walking through Eastern Europe" if a serious effort was made to have friendly relations. America and its allies instead decided to try and give Russia the Versailles treatment, which is a major cause of today's problems.
#15169136
Heisenberg wrote:There would be no reason to fear Russia "walking through Eastern Europe" if a serious effort was made to have friendly relations. America and its allies instead decided to try and give Russia the Versailles treatment, which is a major cause of today's problems.


Russia is and has been very welcome to be friends with everyone in Europe and the west, and even now despite invading several countries and destroying any form of opposition in the country, Europe and the west more generally are still being friendly to Russia by failing to do anything meaningful.

The idea that Russia is somehow justified to invade the Ukraine and create a new partition issue in Europe so that it holds the Ukrainians by the neck for the next several decades and beyond is total nonsense.

The west and Europe are guilty for tacitly supporting Putin not for provoking him as you are claiming.
#15169139
Heisenberg wrote:In other words, the assumption was that Russia could never be anything other than an enemy country.

There would be no reason to fear Russia "walking through Eastern Europe" if a serious effort was made to have friendly relations. America and its allies instead decided to try and give Russia the Versailles treatment, which is a major cause of today's problems.


"Let us begin with this evident fact: "Russia" (Muscovy) does not belong at all to Europe, but to Asia. It follows that judging "Russia" (Muscovy) and the "Russians" (Muscovites) by our European standards is a mistake to be avoided."—gonzague de reynold, 19501

In methodological terms, one should de-Europeanise any analysis of "Russian" (Muscovy ) policy.— thomas gomart, 20062

I am reading this book right now, and I want to share with your board members parlors from this book, in order to better understand the character of the second cold war and end the endless discussions around very nature of Moscow empire . the major problem with analysis of Moscow aggression against us" de-Europeanise any analysis of Muscovite policy" , " Muscovy doesn´t belong at all to Europe, but to Asia. It follows that judging Moscow and the Muscovites by our European standards is a mistake to be avoided." https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/up ... 48_ch1.pdf

noemon wrote:Russia is and has been very welcome to be friends with everyone in Europe and the west, and even now despite invading several countries and destroying any form of opposition in the country, Europe and the west more generally are still being friendly to Russia by failing to do anything meaningful.

The idea that Russia is somehow justified to invade the Ukraine and create a new partition issue in Europe so that it hold the Ukrainians by the neck for the next several decades and beyond is total nonsense.

The west and Europe are guilty for tacitly supporting Putin not for provoking him as you are claiming.


'Resets' to Muscovy does not work. On the contrary, a more muscular approach to the country will yield results."
" Moscow is not interested in maintaining the strategic status quo, especially around its borders. Rather, Moscow wants to ‘regain’, not ‘maintain’, influence in the shared neighbourhood with the EU. If the West wants resets, the Russian thinking goes, it is up to the West to retrench. ... Russia has found its own ways to circumvent the barricade of EU and US foreign policy positions: stick it out until a new offer to start again comes along. To a degree, each new reset offer only fuels Russian reluctance to truly engage: why make mutual concessions if chances are in a few years’ time new leaders in key Western countries will offer a new reset? This rewind-and-repeat approach only suggests to Russia that the West is softening. " https://ecfr.eu/article/why-attempts-to ... ways-fail/
#15169144
litwin wrote:You made many good points, I can make it short Iranian sanction will cripple Moscow imperialism in 5 days.
Still do you agree that Moscow imperialism has no chances in a long run?

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That is the million dollar question isn't it. To be frank here, current version of Moscow imperialism can be maintained indefinitely and it just a question of will and not resources. Russia will always have enough resources to do this compared to any of its neibhours who are not China or members of NATO. Even if Russia turns in to North Korea it will still be Russia with a massive army, nukes and so on. The better question is how can that will be changed and can that will be maintained indefinitely. The theoretical answer to that is also yes as the North Korean situation shows but in practice it is not so since Russia is a very large country. At some point Putinism will break itself the same way as the Soviet Union broke itself. This process though is slow and is dependant on Russias neibhours to a large degree.

If Ukraine, Belarus, Caucuses countries, central asia continue being as they are then there won't be any real pressure on Russia to change. There will always be an argument that look we might not be Europe or US but we sure as hell are not as poor as all of our neighbours so what are you whining about.

But in a medium to long term, i do not see how Russia will not descend in to either a short coup, prolonged civil strife or a full blown civil war. It might not happen under Putin but this process is ongoing even with him being around. He is just slowing things down but the process is moving. It will be far worse for Russia once he is gone.

Another scenario is when Putin is gone then there will be a very severe struggle for power which is not a bug but a feature of any autocratic/totalitarian regime. So if Putin is gone then a reformer might win the power struggle but ultimately he will probably be another Gorbachev who will understand that reform is needed but won't be able to go far enough with them on top of being not competent enough.


Politics_Observer wrote:@JohnRawls

A little off topic and I do apologize. I was watching this video where Putin says the US is not a "christian country" anymore. And I am sitting here watching the video and Putin all of the people at the table nodding on. They all look so serious and intent. Never smiling. Which to me, as an American, it's kind of funny in a way. Is this the nature of Estonians too? I find Putin's views on things overly simplistic and because it's overly simplistic, it's funny.

The world according to Putin. I remember when listening to some of our diplomats and generals talked of meeting with Soviet diplomats and generals during the Cold War and they would remark how they all looked so serious and rarely if ever smiled. They had like mean faces. Which it didn't seem that they were aware of that which made it funny. Is this the nature of Estonians as well?



It is a legacy of the Soviet Union of sorts. If we talk about politicians and people representing a country in events of any sort then Estonians will behave normally like any Westerner. Estonians as a people are pretty Nordic in this regard, we will smile but ultimately we like our peace, quite and distance between people of sorts.
#15169224
@JohnRawls

You have to bear in mind that armies cost a lot of money. If Russia wants a massive army to threaten it's neighbors, it has to have the money to pay for it. That comes down to what kind of economy Russia has. If the economy isn't there, then Russia cannot indefinitely keep a strong a military because they can't afford to pay for it in the long term. It all depends on the Russian economy and if Russia's economy is good, it depends on who is in charge of Russia in whether Russia is a threat or not.
#15169274
Politics_Observer wrote:@JohnRawls

You have to bear in mind that armies cost a lot of money. If Russia wants a massive army to threaten it's neighbors, it has to have the money to pay for it. That comes down to what kind of economy Russia has. If the economy isn't there, then Russia cannot indefinitely keep a strong a military because they can't afford to pay for it in the long term. It all depends on the Russian economy and if Russia's economy is good, it depends on who is in charge of Russia in whether Russia is a threat or not.


Well it depends, NK has a huge ass army with a lot of outdated equipment. This doesn't make North Korea less threatening although it has an outdated military. Same applies 10 fold for Russia, basically even with outdated equipment the sheer volume of that manpower and equipment that Russia has at its disposal is more than enough to stomp any of its neibhours who are not part of NATO or China. This won't change in any realistic scenario any time soon in the next 50 years irrelevant of Russia turning in to NK or Luxembourg.
#15169316
Politics_Observer wrote:@JohnRawls

You have to bear in mind that armies cost a lot of money. If Russia wants a massive army to threaten it's neighbors, it has to have the money to pay for it. That comes down to what kind of economy Russia has. If the economy isn't there, then Russia cannot indefinitely keep a strong a military because they can't afford to pay for it in the long term. It all depends on the Russian economy and if Russia's economy is good, it depends on who is in charge of Russia in whether Russia is a threat or not.

not just money , + technologies which Nigeria with snow of ´cos doesn´t have

Ukraine crisis: Why a lack of parts has hamstrung Russia's ...
https://www.bbc.com › news › world-europe-33822821
8 Aug 2015 — Russia's defence firms are hit not only by Western sanctions but also a freeze in ... Russian Mi-26 helicopter: Ukraine stopped delivering engines for the ... That is a serious problem, he admitted, and Moscow could resolve it ... In February, Russia closed another programme - Rokot space rockets, which had ...

Image
#15169378
litwin wrote:not just money , + technologies which Nigeria with snow of ´cos doesn´t have

Ukraine crisis: Why a lack of parts has hamstrung Russia's ...
https://www.bbc.com › news › world-europe-33822821
8 Aug 2015 — Russia's defence firms are hit not only by Western sanctions but also a freeze in ... Russian Mi-26 helicopter: Ukraine stopped delivering engines for the ... That is a serious problem, he admitted, and Moscow could resolve it ... In February, Russia closed another programme - Rokot space rockets, which had ...

Image


Russia has decently advanced technology of its own that its neibhours won't be able to match once again besides NATO or China. That won't change even if Russia turns in to NK, at least in the military aspect of things.
#15169539
Heisenberg wrote:In other words, the assumption was that Russia could never be anything other than an enemy country.

There would be no reason to fear Russia "walking through Eastern Europe" if a serious effort was made to have friendly relations. America and its allies instead decided to try and give Russia the Versailles treatment, which is a major cause of today's problems.




A certain kind of Russia was never gonna be accepted as a friend by Nato/EU. A Russia with even traces of superpower ambitions was not gonna do. What is wanted is a neutered Russia. The present Russian Federation is still far too large a morsel to be digested by the voracious Nato/EU. Provoke a few more pomegranate revolutions, or olive revolutions inside the Federation itself. Support the aspirations to independence of Dagestan, Chechenya, Tartars etc. The remaining rump Russian principality- on a level with the Baltic midgets- can then be invited to take a seat in Nato/EU.
#15169553
Russia is the one invading & occupying its neighbors, not the other way around.

Putin has not made any effort to turn his country normal, instead he goes around imprisoning all opposition and classifying everyone as terrorist and extremist, while invading his neighbors. Such a Russia is certainly not welcome, but a democratic Russia where the opposition does not die in gulags would do.

The EU has already taken in Poland and Hungary so they would easily take Russia in with the bare minimum of effort on the part of Russia.

Erdogan's Turkey is still somehow a candidate country and one that already enjoys a higher level of integration than the Ukraine-EU agreement, despite turning Turkey into an aggressive and revanchist autocracy while imprisoning everybody.

So the pro-Russian propaganda that the west is somehow unwelcoming or provoking Russia is total nonsense of the lowest order.

The west and especially Europe is guilty for tacitly supporting Putin not for provoking him.

Europe constantly fails to take any meaningful action even in the face of outright invasions and war threats.
#15169581
Juin wrote:A certain kind of Russia was never gonna be accepted as a friend by Nato/EU. A Russia with even traces of superpower ambitions was not gonna do. What is wanted is a neutered Russia. The present Russian Federation is still far too large a morsel to be digested by the voracious Nato/EU. Provoke a few more pomegranate revolutions, or olive revolutions inside the Federation itself. Support the aspirations to independence of Dagestan, Chechenya, Tartars etc. The remaining rump Russian principality- on a level with the Baltic midgets- can then be invited to take a seat in Nato/EU.

Precisely. The funniest thing to me is that American geopolitical experts admit all of this quite openly, and yet the populace still doggedly cling to this belief that it's all about "human rights" and "self defence".

As an example, George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor (hardly some fringe figure with no understanding of American foreign policy), gave an interview to Russian newspaper Kommersant very shortly after the coup in Ukraine explaining very plainly why it happened and why the US wanted to contain Russia (see here for an English translation).

George Friedman wrote:Russia's strategic imperative is to have as deep a buffer zone on its western borders as possible. Therefore, Russia has always been particularly concerned about its relationship with Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States and other countries in Eastern Europe. They are of great importance for Russia's national security.

At the beginning of this year there existed in Ukraine a slightly pro-Russian though very shaky government. That situation was fine for Moscow: after all, Russia did not want to completely control Ukraine or occupy it; it was enough that Ukraine not join NATO and the EU. Russian authorities cannot tolerate a situation in which western armed forces are located a hundred or so kilometers from Kursk or Voronezh.

The United States, for its part, were interested in forming a pro-Western government in Ukraine. They saw that Russia is on the rise, and were eager not to let it consolidate its position in the post-Soviet space. The success of the pro-Western forces in Ukraine would allow the U.S. to contain Russia.

Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'etat organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history.


Naturally, this went completely unacknowledged in the west, and I expect it will continue to fall on deaf ears (or perhaps trigger furious denials) within this thread. :lol:
#15169589
Heisenberg wrote:In other words, the assumption was that Russia could never be anything other than an enemy country.


Doesn't follow at all. What follows is that the assumption was that Russia could by something else than a friendly country.

Heisenberg wrote:There would be no reason to fear Russia "walking through Eastern Europe" if a serious effort was made to have friendly relations.


:roll:

Heisenberg wrote:America and its allies instead decided to try and give Russia the Versailles treatment, which is a major cause of today's problems.


Nah. Russia wasn't punished economically and trade with the EU flourished for a long time into Putin's presidency. Mistakes were made, but there was certainly an attempt to develop friendly relations with Russia.
#15169591
@Rugoz

That's right, there was a very serious attempt to have friendly relations with Russia but Russia didn't want to have friendly relations. That's nobody's fault but Russia's. There was no Versailles Treaty that forced Russia to pay reparations to the West and to give up land that legitimately belonged to Russia unlike the case of Germany in the aftermath of World War I. And guess what, the U.S. had nothing to do with the Treaty of Versailles against Germany after World War I. That was France and Britian's doing. We signed a separate peace treaty with Germany. I think it's safe to say that @Heisenberg is not an objective or impartial observer here given he doesn't follow the facts and the logical conclusions from the facts.
#15169593
Politics_Observer wrote:That's right, there was a very serious attempt to have friendly relations with Russia but Russia didn't want to have friendly relations. That's nobody's fault but Russia's. There was no Versailles Treaty that forced Russia to pay reparations to the West and to give up land that legitimately belonged to Russia unlike the case of Germany in the aftermath of World War I. And guess what, the U.S. had nothing to do with the Treaty of Versailles against Germany after World War I. That was France and Britian's doing. We signed a separate peace treaty with Germany. I think it's safe to say that @Heisenberg is not an objective or impartial observer here given he doesn't follow the facts and the logical conclusions from the facts.


NATO expansion certainly pissed off Russia and more economic aid and better advice during Russia's economic transition might have prevented somebody like Putin, though I doubt it. Putin was appointed by Yeltsin and he rode the commodity boom like Chavez.
#15169594
@Rugoz

Why would NATO expansion piss Russia off when it clearly did not present a threat to Russia? There was no troops or offensive weapons that appeared in NATO countries at the time of NATO's expansion close by Russia's borders. So what would it be about NATO that would piss Russia off?
#15169595
Rugoz wrote:Mistakes were made

You might be Swiss, but you have a very British sense of understatement. ;)

Politics_Observer wrote:Why would NATO expansion piss Russia off when it clearly did not present a threat to Russia? There was no troops or offensive weapons that appeared in NATO countries at the time of NATO's expansion close by Russia's borders. So what would it be about NATO that would piss Russia off?

You simply cannot be this naive. :eh:
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