Ukraine Crisis

[Famous Mortimer]

Stupid obvious question I'm ashamed not to know and I should have asked early but probably a lot of other people were afraid to ask as well.

Is there actually a difference between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians? Beyond language, it's pretty much entirely self identification, isn't it?

What difference, other than language and self-identification, do you want? All Europeans, broadly, look the same

Language, names, history, traditions, religion all vary somewhat - though, of course, they also all vary within each country as well. The differences are quite serious between, say, Moscow and Kiev (and still more so between Vologda and Lviv), but, of course, they are rather slight between Belgorod and Kharkiv (the Russian and the Ukrainian cities 40 minutes apart by car). The same would be the comparison between the Ukrainians and Poles, for that matter. Or the Germans and the Dutch, if you prefer that.

Yeah, but at least Poles have been calling themselves Poles for centuries. I was reading somewhere that in 1990, a third of Ukrainians just called themselves "Slavs"

[Famous Mortimer]

There's a significant number of Russian speakers who call themselves Ukrainians though. Isn't that more a political statement than something backed up by genetics?

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't think we're that out of the loop.

There are plenty of Ukrainian and Russian news services with English language coverage.

Even the ones that don't have it can be easily translated with Google.

We're seriously all probably better informed than the average Ukrainian.

[Famous Mortimer]

Has Mustafa Dzhemilev said what his plans are? He's still a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

Also, what's up with Lyudmyla Denisova? She's from Crimea and she's Minister of Social Policy in the Ukrainian government. Has she said what she's going to do?

[Famous Mortimer]

America would have a chance against Russia.

Ukraine wouldn't.

That's why they aren't making a lot of noise. They are trying not to provoke a full scale invasion.

[Famous Mortimer]

The mayor of Kharkiv was severely wounded in a shooting.

Moderate PORer. Shot by either pro-Russians or Ukrainians trying to frame Russians.

[Famous Mortimer]

Ukrainians won't fight because they are a (relatively) well off country. It's not worth it to give up their comfortable existence to maybe die fighting the Russians.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, was a third world country. Even if a Mujaheddin died, he wasn't losing much.

[Famous Mortimer]

Full on civil war will probably start after Russia wins the Donesk referendum.

[Famous Mortimer]

Here is my point of view on the situation in Ukraine:

This conflict is clearly escalating, and the Ukrainian government is lucky that the international attention has been focusing on other things. The loyalists are now shelling the big cities controlled by the rebels and there are many civilian casualties. It's a bit sad to see a European country bombing its own citizens in 2014, and getting away with it.

So now the loyalists are making progress towards the main cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and are clearly determined to get rid of the rebels, at almost any price. On the other side, the main political leaders of the rebels are fleeing now that things are looking bad for them. But the local guys, the normal fighters really believe that they are fighting against neo-nazis (which is not 100% false) and keep referring to a new Stalingard. They seem determined to fight until the last man.

This situation is a bit embarrassing for the European countries and the US who blindly supported the loyalists at the beginning, but now this conflict really has the potential to turn very ugly, and something has to do about it.

While the Western opinion is looking somewhere else, Putin is under heavy internal pressure to do something. The military conflict is about to be lost for the rebels, Putin knows it and anyway he also realized that they are not reliable at all. But he really has to do something, and the least he can do is to help the civilian population.  

So I think the convoy is not a trojan horse. The Ukrainian government is understandably paranoid and it would be a good compromise to allow international inspectors to verify it at the border. Ukraine is now afraid to be seen as the bad guys, so they are sending their own convoy too.

It's a good thing that both Russians and Ukrainians are sending humanitarian in Donetsk and Luhansk. They are also going to serve as human shields and fighters on both side will have to refrain from getting crazy.

Remember that many have been saying for weeks that this conflict needs to end in an honorable way for Putin. That's probably it. Both sides need to start negotiating soon, and the battles of Donestk and Luhansk must not happen because they would be really awful.

Pretty much totally agree with this except for the "not 100% false part." Why are you keeping up that nonsense? Svoboda isn't even in government anymore.

[Famous Mortimer]

American tried to keep Yanyukovych in power. The phone call with Victoria Nuland proves that. Nuland was urging the opposition the accept Yanyukovych's peace deal of getting to take the PM's office while Yanyukovych remained president. The opposition rejected it because it was a terrible deal, the PM under the then constitution had no power, Nuland wanted them to take it anyway.

[Famous Mortimer]

I have a friend who's pretty much a libertarian on most things, who's prepared to criticise the West to no end about anything, yet will go to great lengths to defend Putin's decidedly not libertarian regime and his actions in Ukraine.

I'd say it's a knee jerk reaction made out of pure opposition to the Western powers more than anything based in logic and reality. I suspect it might the same here.

Maybe also a knee jerk reaction to the media, since the corporatist and/or liberal media must always be lying. Not that they cover Ukraine that much but when they did cover it for about 2 days (when the president fled, when Tymoshenko got let out) the coverage was sort of fluffy and inspirational in tone.

[Famous Mortimer]

As a Libertarian I hate Putin. I also hate the fact that people seriously care about Crimea. I don't want to defend Putin, but what he does in Russia's sperhe of influence isn't a serious threat unless he invades a NATO country.

Boko Haram killing 2000 people is bad. Even if it doesn't happen in a NATO country you can still acknowledge it's bad and not defend the people who did it.

[Famous Mortimer]

Anybody know the reason for the fist fight today between the Fatherland MP and the Self Reliance MP?

[Famous Mortimer]

Well in the past fights were always pro-Russian vs. pro-Western.

This time it's two pro-Western parties.

I've heard that it's over an anti-corruption bill but nothing more than that. If I had to guess, I would guess that the Fatherland party is against it?