Thread: The Ukraine Situation

Just think if the U.S invaded Mexico for whatever reason. What is the world going to do? They might do the same as they are doing now. In the end any major power can do as they please.

If China invaded Taiwan it would be the same. A lot of talk and nothing else.

In the end it's a matter of who the foreign player is and how rational he is and how far the world is willing to go for a faceoff.

It very well could be a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis not too far down the road. I hope not but history has shown again and again if you do not face a bully he keeps taking and getting stronger.

The situation in Ukraine has been brewing since the end of the Cold War in some ways.

The West I feel wasted a huge opportunity to bring the Russian nation into the European community, in many ways the end of the Warsaw pact was seen as an "end of history" scenario, with the feeling that liberal democracy was the inevitable end state of the world. In that scenario, Russia in particular as well as places like the former Yugoslavia were left in a limbo bereft of any real support, and what was labelled as support was mostly an excuse for looting, not just by the mafia in those places but by Western powers themselves, particularly the US, where various schemes were drawn up for the US government by the Harvard Institute for International Development which contained guys like Andrei Schleifer, Larry Summers, Jeffrey Sachs, etc.

Andrei Schleifer was a personal adviser to Anatoly Chubais, who managed the privatization of former state industries under the Yeltsin government through what was termed "shock therapy", the initial implementation of which was under the auspices of Jefrrey Sachs, the US appointed economics adviser to Russia, collaborating with Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsins Deputy PM.

Schleifer would eventually be investigated by the General Accounting Office for insider trading in the Russian securities market, along with his wife Nancy Zimmerman, resulting in USAID pulling the plug on HIID.

A swift and radical re-orientation of the Russian economy to the "free market" followed. Various US backed schemes were used to supposedly invest in the economy, one of the most destructive being the shares for loans scheme. The auctions for the scheme were rigged to the point where shares were being sold for incredibly low amounts, cents on the dollar kind of thing. The Harvard Management Company was the only foreign entity allowed to participate in the auctions. Needless to say large shares were acquired by Harvard in important companies such as Novolipetsk due to the rigged auctions. The oligarchs enabled by these schemes ended up controlling an estimated 50-70% of the economy. The major player was Boris Berezovsky, who had already made a lot of money from the illicit activities of his own consultant firm, LogoVAZ, during Perestroika. Notably, current UK billionaire, Roman Abramovich, was something of a right hand man to Berezovsky.

Needless to say, the economic "reforms" were a disaster when implemented, but further yet, whilst they were going on they were deeply unpopular with the population, so much so that Chubais was at one point labeled the most hated man in Russia, and he ended up relying on Yeltsin to pass the reforms by decree, bypassing the parliamentary process.

The Yeltsin presidency became more and more unpopular, the president having an approval rating of 6% going into the 1996 election, the communist opposition leader Gennady Zyugenov was the clear front runner and was expected to oust Yeltsin. The oligarchs pumped about $200 million into the Yeltsin campaign, and Berezovky's near monopoly on the media allowed constant propaganda against Zyugenov, in the midst of this the Clinton administration send advisors to help Yeltsins' failing public image out, and lot's of cash. Under campaigning rules Zyugenov couldn't spend more than $3 million on his campaign, while estimates put the campaign spending for Yeltsin at anywhere from $700 million to $2.5 billion. At this time the IMF gave Russia a $10 billion emergency fund, ostensibly to buoy the poor economic situation. Most of the money dissappeared.

The result of this economic plundering was that the life expectancy fell from 65 years to 57 years, capital flight was estimated at $1-2 billion a month, Russian GDP fell by half, surplus deaths from poverty, substance abuse, was is estimated at 5-6 million between 1992 and 2000.

And who was watching from the sidelines? None other than Vladimir Putin, eventual successor to Yeltsin. Yeltsin thought Putin would follow through on the shock therapy, but soon after his election, he gathered the oligarchs to the Kremlin and basically told them that everything they had plundered was going back to the state. Many fled to cities like London, which is now awash in oligarch cash, currently being targeted by sanctions, yet most was made under the prior admin.

So what was the average Russians experience of US style capitalism, democracy and "human rights" after the end of communism. Well not great would be to put it mildly.

Not to dismiss the personal wealth Putin has looted for himself in the years since, but the average Russian is much better off today than they were in the 90's.

And on top of that, in the military sphere, NATO was eating up all it could, much of this pushed diplomatically by Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany. Kohl's Defense Minister suggested a more cautious approach to expansion. To quote Defense Minister Genscher, "Foreign policy was (for Kohl) like mowing grass for hay, you had to gather what you had cut in case of a thunderstorm." The gains weren't exactly a curse for Washington. Regardless of the actual reasons for expansion, Russia was obviously being treated with mistrust at a time it was also being robbed blind, not a winning 'realpolitik' strategy in the long run.

Bismarck called politics 'the art of the possible' but in the heady days at the end of the Cold War, the possible was neglected for what we thought would be inevitable.

As far as Ukraine, it isn't exactly clear if there wasn't direct interference from the USA in the fall of the Yanukovych government. We have the leaked Nuland-Pyatt call for sure, not to mention acknowledged US operations to collapse democratically elected governments such as the Mohammed Mossadegh government of Iran. And that's just the ones we are allowed to know about officially. Calls to "defend democracy" ring hollow, as well as calls for respect for sovereignty. If the powers who continually talk about how important the rules are, keep breaking the rules, at some point another power is going to take the chance also. All sides have been lazy in implementing Minsk II, with the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission reporting violations from all sides, a side effect of Russian armed insurgents and huge weapons shipments from the USA. Ukraine is a victim of a proxy war that was simply frozen after the wall fell.

Originally Posted by thp001

The situation in Ukraine has been brewing since the end of the Cold War in some ways.

The West I feel wasted a huge opportunity to bring the Russian nation into the European community, in many ways the end of the Warsaw pact was seen as an "end of history" scenario, with the feeling that liberal democracy was the inevitable end state of the world. In that scenario, Russia in particular as well as places like the former Yugoslavia were left in a limbo bereft of any real support, and what was labelled as support was mostly an excuse for looting, not just by the mafia in those places but by Western powers themselves, particularly the US, where various schemes were drawn up for the US government by the Harvard Institute for International Development which contained guys like Andrei Schleifer, Larry Summers, Jeffrey Sachs, etc.

Andrei Schleifer was a personal adviser to Anatoly Chubais, who managed the privatization of former state industries under the Yeltsin government through what was termed "shock therapy", the initial implementation of which was under the auspices of Jefrrey Sachs, the US appointed economics adviser to Russia, collaborating with Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsins Deputy PM.

Schleifer would eventually be investigated by the General Accounting Office for insider trading in the Russian securities market, along with his wife Nancy Zimmerman, resulting in USAID pulling the plug on HIID.

A swift and radical re-orientation of the Russian economy to the "free market" followed. Various US backed schemes were used to supposedly invest in the economy, one of the most destructive being the shares for loans scheme. The auctions for the scheme were rigged to the point where shares were being sold for incredibly low amounts, cents on the dollar kind of thing. The Harvard Management Company was the only foreign entity allowed to participate in the auctions. Needless to say large shares were acquired by Harvard in important companies such as Novolipetsk due to the rigged auctions. The oligarchs enabled by these schemes ended up controlling an estimated 50-70% of the economy. The major player was Boris Berezovsky, who had already made a lot of money from the illicit activities of his own consultant firm, LogoVAZ, during Perestroika. Notably, current UK billionaire, Roman Abramovich, was something of a right hand man to Berezovsky.

Needless to say, the economic "reforms" were a disaster when implemented, but further yet, whilst they were going on they were deeply unpopular with the population, so much so that Chubais was at one point labeled the most hated man in Russia, and he ended up relying on Yeltsin to pass the reforms by decree, bypassing the parliamentary process.

The Yeltsin presidency became more and more unpopular, the president having an approval rating of 6% going into the 1996 election, the communist opposition leader Gennady Zyugenov was the clear front runner and was expected to oust Yeltsin. The oligarchs pumped about $200 million into the Yeltsin campaign, and Berezovky's near monopoly on the media allowed constant propaganda against Zyugenov, in the midst of this the Clinton administration send advisors to help Yeltsins' failing public image out, and lot's of cash. Under campaigning rules Zyugenov couldn't spend more than $3 million on his campaign, while estimates put the campaign spending for Yeltsin at anywhere from $700 million to $2.5 billion. At this time the IMF gave Russia a $10 billion emergency fund, ostensibly to buoy the poor economic situation. Most of the money dissappeared.

The result of this economic plundering was that the life expectancy fell from 65 years to 57 years, capital flight was estimated at $1-2 billion a month, Russian GDP fell by half, surplus deaths from poverty, substance abuse, was is estimated at 5-6 million between 1992 and 2000.

And who was watching from the sidelines? None other than Vladimir Putin, eventual successor to Yeltsin. Yeltsin thought Putin would follow through on the shock therapy, but soon after his election, he gathered the oligarchs to the Kremlin and basically told them that everything they had plundered was going back to the state. Many fled to cities like London, which is now awash in oligarch cash, currently being targeted by sanctions, yet most was made under the prior admin.

So what was the average Russians experience of US style capitalism, democracy and "human rights" after the end of communism. Well not great would be to put it mildly.

Not to dismiss the personal wealth Putin has looted for himself in the years since, but the average Russian is much better off today than they were in the 90's.

And on top of that, in the military sphere, NATO was eating up all it could, much of this pushed diplomatically by Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany. Kohl's Defense Minister suggested a more cautious approach to expansion. To quote Defense Minister Genscher, "Foreign policy was (for Kohl) like mowing grass for hay, you had to gather what you had cut in case of a thunderstorm." The gains weren't exactly a curse for Washington. Regardless of the actual reasons for expansion, Russia was obviously being treated with mistrust at a time it was also being robbed blind, not a winning 'realpolitik' strategy in the long run.

Bismarck called politics 'the art of the possible' but in the heady days at the end of the Cold War, the possible was neglected for what we thought would be inevitable.

As far as Ukraine, it isn't exactly clear if there wasn't direct interference from the USA in the fall of the Yanukovych government. We have the leaked Nuland-Pyatt call for sure, not to mention acknowledged US operations to collapse democratically elected governments such as the Mohammed Mossadegh government of Iran. And that's just the ones we are allowed to know about officially. Calls to "defend democracy" ring hollow, as well as calls for respect for sovereignty. If the powers who continually talk about how important the rules are, keep breaking the rules, at some point another power is going to take the chance also. All sides have been lazy in implementing Minsk II, with the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission reporting violations from all sides, a side effect of Russian armed insurgents and huge weapons shipments from the USA. Ukraine is a victim of a proxy war that was simply frozen after the wall fell.

Politics is a dirty business from a town with a population of a thousand with little dirt to New York City with a lot. On a national scale the dirt becomes orders of magnitude greater and on the international stage it's greater still.

The U.S has it's fingerprints on regime changes all over the world going back a very long time. Other countries do too and it was probably going on during the Roman Empire.

You could go back to WWll or heck before that and argue what was Ukraine and who was it aligned with and who has a hand in the current situation. No doubt there is plenty of blame to go around. Who knows, if our generals after WWll had their way they would have invaded Russia and gotten rid of Stalin and history might be different.

The fact is right now Ukraine is an independent sovereign country and it has been invaded by a foreign power. You can try and ameliorate Russia as you please but the basic fact is just the facts. A bankrobber can justify hitting a bank because they destroyed his business but he's still a bank robber. Really, when it comes down to it you can justify just about anything and the history of the world is replete with colonialism and Imperialism and all the other isms you can think of. Everyone is guilty of something.

I don't know much about the geopolitical landscape between Russia and Ukraine, but what I do know is.

Ukraine was not always part of Russia, it was part of the former USSR and only because it was annexed. If it were always part of Russia it would be called Russia, not Ukraine.

I was in the British Army (Royal Tank Regiment) during the cold war and spent many hours in vehicle recognition lectures and lectures about Russian tactics etc, every exercise (maneuvers) we did, the USSR was the imaginary enemy.

My humble opinion is that the west (NATO) is worried, even frightened of Russia, in the same way Russia is frightened of NATO.
Putin has the button and can with one finger destroy the States, the world in fact. The US could do exactly the same to Russia and also the world so this mutual destructive power kept the status quo. I don't think the day will ever dawn when we see NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine unless Russia withdraws first, and even then I don't think it's likely.

Now of course we have a Russian leader, ex KGB that wants the glory days of the USSR back and will I think actually press the button if he feels pushed.

I of course did a lot of NBC training as a soldier in the Cold War and know that I don't want to live through a Nuclear exchange and the radiation sickness, nuclear winter etc that would follow, forget duck and cover, that will not help at all. Assuming the blast and shock wave didn't kill me first, I live 45 minutes from Detroit and 30 minutes from the Nuclear Power Station so I imagine I am very close to a primary target. For the best probably.

Of course, Russia is not nearly as big and powerful as the former USSR was, a situation that will change if Putin gets his way in the fomer USSR countries like Ukraine.

On the up side, the Ukrainians will be able to stop footing the bill for the upkeep of Chernobyl and Pripyat.

Just my humble opinion of course.

As amazing and interesting a country's history is pre it becoming an independent sovereign country, once that country is invaded by an aggressor nation knowing that background will not get the aggressor country to stop it's invasion and leave. The only relevant question post invasion becomes what the world will do to stop the invasion and get the aggressor nation to leave.

Active military intervention in Ukraine will likely not come from NATO as it's charter only covers NATO members of which Ukraine is not. The UN is not likely to intervene militarily as both Russia and China are permanent members of the UN Security Council and will no doubt veto any such action. That leaves only a coalition of independent countries to intervene militarily. In any military intervention there is always the risk of starting WWIII in the shadows.

Then there is the option of a negotiated truce and withdrawal of Russian military forces involving China backed up by sanctions against Russia.

Lastly, do nothing and let the chips fall where they may. No matter which it turns out to be Ukraine's citizens will bear the brunt of the suffering as long as the present invasion is allowed to continue.

Bob

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

The fact is right now Ukraine is an independent sovereign country and it has been invaded by a foreign power. You can try and ameliorate Russia as you please but the basic fact is just the facts. A bankrobber can justify hitting a bank because they destroyed his business but he's still a bank robber. Really, when it comes down to it you can justify just about anything and the history of the world is replete with colonialism and Imperialism and all the other isms you can think of. Everyone is guilty of something.

"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime." — Lavrentiy Beria

I read this morning that the UN votes on Russia/Ukraine will have no veto's. Just a majoriy vote is all that will be needed to take whatever action they deem fit!

Originally Posted by STF

I read this morning that the UN votes on Russia/Ukraine will have no veto's. Just a majoriy vote is all that will be needed to take whatever action they deem fit!

Please provide a link to where you read that. I believe you may have misread the article.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

Please provide a link to where you read that. I believe you may have misread the article.

Bob

UNITED NATIONS -- Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Friday demanding that Moscow immediately stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw all troops, a defeat the United States and its supporters knew was inevitable but said would highlight Russia’s global isolation.

The vote was 11 in favor, with Russia voting no and China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstaining, which showed significant but not total opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country's smaller and militarily weaker neighbor.

The resolution's failure paves the way for supporters to call for a quick vote on a similar resolution in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes. There was no immediate word on a timetable for an assembly vote.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/...raine-83119442

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhum...=RussiaInsight

If they approve it, it's just a piece of paper.