The Situation in the Ukraine. #30

par far wrote:

Hole wrote:I can´t find the word "deal" spoken by Putin. Instead he spoke about the lies and broken promises of the western saints.

Putin has learned in 2014 to not trust the west and that the west won't respect any deal they sign.

flamming_python wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:
Russia is stronger without it. Without a lot of baggage.  I guess Russian true weakness is its inability to work with foreign entities around it to spark a pro Russian population and youth. Instead it does the cheap and easy way - looking through to just basic oligarchs and politicians.  When instead, it needs to look at the people as a whole.   So it loses allies quickly due to these colored revolutions.

That much is very true.

But it's really a reflection of Russia itself. Russia looks at other countries through the perspective of building such ties of the nobility; understandings with local ruling clans, oligarchs, individual statesmen.

It does not spend energy on trying to win the people over to its side especially, some primitive hearts & minds initiatives like in Syria and the Central African Republic aside. This is because it considers that the people are irrelevant, that everything that ever happens is the result of some political clan's machinations, oligarch plot, someone giving money, etc... it views the greater people as controllable and easily appealable through material improvements.
But this fails to take into account the very much organic, bottom-up changes, revolutions, protests, etc... that countries sometimes face. The people as a whole, are not going to plot or decide some new course for foreign policy or on a new ideology, but they have a mind of their own and can decide who they will support and what's in their interests. They decide when enough is enough and in the most extreme case, they can mobilize behind some radical force willingly, as long as it means the assholes in power being thrown out of power.

For this reason the mass protests in Khabarovsk last year after the referendum and the arrest of the local governor took the Kremlin completely by surprise. They tried to figure out who was behind it, who planned it, which oligarchs, which party, etc... but as it turns out nobody did. It was the people themselves who came out en masse, the whole city rose up to give the finger to Moscow. The referendum was viewed as a farce and the arrest of the governor was the spark that ignited the petrol.
As it was a completely grass-roots event with no organization or party behind it (those that attempted to co-opt it were simply unable to), no ideology and only a shared interest of displaying disagreement with the federal authorities - it did not amount to anything ultimately. It died down after some weeks. However the discontent that it demonstrated is still there. If someone were able to harness it, through argument, charisma, popularity and winning the trust of people - they would quickly amass a considerable amount of political power in the country, and without necessarily having much backing by domestic or foreign power-brokers.

kvs wrote:@flamming_python

That is a comically reductionist view.   Russians love to bitch a lot about how they don't have it good enough in their "abnormal"
country.   They should move to their mythical west, as I have done, and live it up.   People love their myths and delusions.    Russians
have it better than Canadians who are told what to do by their regime and obey.   Canadians think they live in a democracy.   LOL.

The idea that Putin and the Russian government believe and act as if the people are irrelevant is complete nonsense.  That is actually
a better description of the Orwellian west where the elites do think of the electorate as trash and treat it accordingly.   You confuse
optics with substance.   In Russia there is always a degree of flexibility since for centuries nobody was a goose-stepping conformist.
In the west, you better love the law and don't get any strange ideas about accommodation.   The western decoration of democracy
is to cover up its long history of all or nothing politics.   Russia has a tradition of inclusion and that is why the term was Tsar of all
the Russias.

You clearly have an axe to grind against Russia.   Supposedly you are a communist.  Regardless, you try very hard to paint Russia
like some copy of Ukraine where everything is about oligarchs and mafia clans.   Your example shows that there is a lack of the
tyranny that anti-Russian projectionists always yammer on about.   A mafia state like Ukraine makes sure that all the clans are
in tight coordination.   That is the nature of organized crime.   Putin not micro-managing every crack in Russia proves that it is
not a mafia state.  If it was one you would never see any such problems.

flamming_python wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:
that I dont believe at all.

I was reading various sources like antimaiden and they themselves proved it was backed by LDPR and to some degree, libtards.  The referendum wasn't even close to a farce as it was national voted.

Oh everyone certainly rushed to get a piece of the popularity train. Communists arrived there, liberals, people from every party great and small. Someone living in America was talking about setting up a national 'congress' (he considered it important to use the word 'congress') and then angling for recognition by South Korea, Japan and other countries.

But none of them created it. Even the local governor didn't create it. The local people created it and their only motive was to tell Moscow that they don't agree either with the referendum, or its arbitrary decisions about getting rid of legitimately elected governors who happen to disagree with the center.

But you kinda showed your hand in your bias so I dont really take what you say about the events in place at face value (communists live in a strange fantasy).  Things in Russia has been far better for people on the individual level than anything else and so it isn't about them not caring about the "small people".

No I'm explaining the symptom that you yourself noticed. I'm telling you what problem it's indicative of, the Russian ruling class neither trusts its own people nor respects them as a potential force in their own right, and this projects to their dealings with other countries around the world too, including failures in their policies like what happened in the Ukraine through their support of Yanukovich.

Russia has 20 different countries that observe its elections.  And elections have shown that in the end, the current party hold the most popular.  There wouldn't be mass protests and those protests in Khabarovsk dwindled and died down rather quickly compared to most countries.  So it wasn't really strong to begin with.

And all of those countries are going to say what Moscow wants to hear, why would they say different. And when Russia observes their elections, our election observers will also tell those countries what they want to hear.
The scheme is not difficult to figure out and you don't have to be some opposition liberal to realize the obvious.

The mass protests in Khabarovsk were massive and included the entire population of the city. Those that were not directly marching, were beeping their car horns while driving by. I think there were some brief strikes at factories as well. By most estimates some 10% of the city's population was marching at some point - that's a far far greater percentage than any Navalny has ever achieved or that old fossil Zyuganov or the government's now defunct Nashi movement or anything else.
It most closely compares with the scale of the protests in Minsk at the same time. In that case, the protests were orchestrated by foreign intelligence agencies and liberal, pro-Western regime opponents in advance, but the motive force was given by the faked elections which outraged the population. You would hardly accuse Minsk and the wider Belarussian population of being liberals, or wanting some Ukrainian-like nationalist government, that's not at all true, but they were ready to march and be led by the nose because of the callousness with which Lukashenko regarded his own people and how transparent it was to them. His arrogance nearly caused his own downfall, and Moscow got a taste of the same lesson in Khabarovsk.

In the case of Khabarovsk it died down quicker than the protests in Minsk because the government adopted the right tactics. It sent people there to negotiate with the protestors, and absolutely avoided using a heavy hand. No political party or force were able to take advantage of the protests because the people were not protesting for that aim and themselves had disparate and varying political sympathies, they were only there because they were united in opposing the arrest of their governor.

flamming_python wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:

Actually, US is part of those 20 countries you know.

And they're always going to say what's in their interests to say too

flamming_python wrote:Welp, looks like the rhetoric is heating up

https://twitter.com/PolitNavigator/status/1466120328145477633
“You will wash yourself with blood! Ten Russians for a Ukrainian! " - Pastor Turchinov delivered his favorite sermon on the Maidan.

(Turchinov was installed as the acting president of the Ukraine right after the coup, and started the war in the east)

https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1465641168872611842

flamming_python wrote:As they get closer to the rim of no return, they swirl around the toilet bowl faster and faster

But make no mistake this is a dangerous situation
The Ukraine has the full support of the West in creating a suicide torpedo out of itself and money, militants and arms may flow as soon as the conflict re-enters it's hot phase.

Russia should restrict itself to destroying any attempted Ukrainian offensive, and leave it at that. All these fantasies about reunifying Russian lands, getting rid of all the Nazis and so on are ultimately the same fallacy of nation building that the US made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Little different.

No reason for Russia to get mired into a quagmire, or resolve any problems in the Ukraine. There is no-one left to talk to there. Keep the objectives limited, and restricted to military ones only. Time will sort all the rest of the issues out, once any offensive is dissolved.

flamming_python wrote:As they get closer to the rim of no return, they swirl around the toilet bowl faster and faster

But make no mistake this is a dangerous situation
The Ukraine has the full support of the West in creating a suicide torpedo out of itself and money, militants and arms may flow as soon as the conflict re-enters it's hot phase.

Russia should restrict itself to destroying any attempted Ukrainian offensive, and leave it at that. All these fantasies about reunifying Russian lands, getting rid of all the Nazis and so on are ultimately the same fallacy of nation building that the US made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Little different.

No reason for Russia to get mired into a quagmire, or resolve any problems in the Ukraine. There is no-one left to talk to there. Keep the objectives limited, and restricted to military ones only. Time will sort all the rest of the issues out, once any offensive is dissolved.

PapaDragon wrote:Just ten?

That's pussy numbers, their role models were doing hundred back in a day

How the "mighty" have fallen



But seriously, they will either start war again as a hail Mary and a distraction for sheep or they will all freeze to death soon

Problem is that they know that they will get assraped if they try anything so it's Sophie's choice for 404

x_54_u43 wrote:

PapaDragon wrote:Just ten?

That's pussy numbers, their role models were doing hundred back in a day

How the "mighty" have fallen



But seriously, they will either start war again as a hail Mary and a distraction for sheep or they will all freeze to death soon

Problem is that they know that they will get assraped if they try anything so it's Sophie's choice for 404

Far more Axis troops died on the Eastern European front than Soviet when the war was over.

It's a common sore loser myth trotted out of muh Aryans killing 10 for every death or whatever, but when you actually start including the enormous amounts of troops(Italian, Romanian, there's a long list) that weren't Nazi German oriented, the myth starts to die out.