Are you willing to fight a war in Ukraine? Or you are just signing up Ukrainians to fight it?
Granted, we screwed the pooch in Serbia and Kosovo, but Russia absolutely knows it has nothing to fear from NATO unless it is in a defensive posture. True democratic republics seldom start wars, and Europe is especially hesitant to start a real, serious war. Intervene in small nations for human rights, yes. Engage a major first world power & heavily armed nuclear power like Russia, no.Because the claim that Europe is peaceful and friendly is not truthful.
They bombed electric plants, water treatment facilities, schools, and hospitals with cluster bombs. All civilian targets. Thousands of civilians were killed. European NATO members also supported US invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.
Russia is not going to allow an anti-Russian foreign military alliance in Ukraine. They don't have oceans to protect them, so they will maintain a buffer between themselves and potential threats.
You don't have to agree with it, but forcing the issue will lead to war. They are making it abundantly clear, if it's not getting through, then we are unfortunately going to have a real war in Ukraine, which will probably split the country in half. Maybe some abridged version of Western Ukraine will make it to NATO. Maybe.
ok there chamberlain.
I am going to take that as you want to sit home and watch Ukrainians fight.
and you want to sit home and watch ukrainians become subserviant to a increasingly extremeist fundamentalist dictatorship
Civilian infrastructure not used by the military was not targeted. Not to mention the ethnic cleansing that prompted this campaign and the fact that Serbia was so damned intransigent that it took a campaign like that to get them to withdraw their troops. Are you suggesting that West should've just stood by and did nothing while genocide raged on?
And don't deflect: what happened during the NATO (not EU; remember, it's EU association that was at stake, not NATO membership) air campaign in Serbia doesn't change the fact that Putin is protecting Putin at the expense of Russia.
Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is same as WMDs of Iraq: facts simply don't support it. Percentage of Albanians in Kosovo:
1991 - 81%
1995 - 90%
2011 - 93%
It was excuse to start the war. I am not saying that nothing bad has happened, just that the claim of ethnic cleansing against Albanians is absurd. How do you remove them from 90% of land where they are not only the majority, but where nobody else lives?
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kosovo#1991_census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs_of_Kosovo
After the Dayton Agreement of 1995, the Kosovo Liberation Army began attacking Serbian civilians and Yugoslav army and police, bombing police stations and government buildings, killing Yugoslav police and innocent people of all nationalities, even Albanians who were not on their side.
This triggered a Yugoslav interior ministry counter strike, aiming at crippling KLA-members, but since this was a guerilla organization it was hard to establish civilians from insurgents, and Albanian Americans started a lobby in the United States congress.
The numbers that US, UK, NATO and UN officials operated with were around 100,000 Kosovo Albanians killed.
This triggered a 78-day NATO campaign in 1999.
When UN-authorities took over administrative power in Kosovo in accordance with UN-Resolution 1244, it was discovered that the number of those killed did not exceed 10,000.
Summary if you don't get it:
1 : Kosovo guerrillas (KLA) started killing Serbians and Yugoslav army/police, including Albanians who didn't help them.
2 : The Yugoslav Gov't struck back
3 : Albanian Americans lobbied the US Gov't.
4 : NATO led by the US told everyone ~ 100,000 Albanians were killed
5 : For 78 days the US\NATO bombed Serbia
6 : Afterwards, it was found less than 10,000 had been killed in this "ethnic cleansing"
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/kosovo-can-you-imagine/
After the war, this is what happened to Serbs living in Kosovo :
"Most of the Kosovo Serbs have been ethnically cleansed by the Albanians who make up the majority of Kosovo. Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days to halt a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatism in its province of Kosovo. In the years following the war, thousands of Serbs were expelled from their homes, kidnapped and killed. Their houses, cultural and religious sites were burned and destroyed."
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed if all records told the same tale then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.""
-1984
Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is same as WMDs of Iraq: facts simply don't support it. Percentage of Albanians in Kosovo:
1991 - 81%
1995 - 90%
2011 - 93%
It was excuse to start the war. I am not saying that nothing bad has happened, just that the claim of ethnic cleansing against Albanians is absurd. How do you remove them from 90% of land where they are not only the majority, but where nobody else lives?
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kosovo#1991_census
It's good to learn the facts of conflicts, though it's good to bring this discussion back to how it relates to Russian aggression. Does this give Russia any reason to believe NATO will start a war inside of Russia's borders? So much so Russia is willing and is starting a war inside of Ukraine as an objection to NATO... as some of our forum residents want us to believe?
The disintegration, or parcelling of the polity of Kievan Rus' in the 11th century resulted in considerable population shifts and a political, social, and economic regrouping. The resultant effect of these forces coalescing was the marked emergence of new peoples.[29] While these processes began long before the fall of Kiev, its fall expedited these gradual developments into a significant linguistic and ethnic differentiation among the Rus' people into Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians.[29][30] All of this was emphasized by the subsequent polities these groups migrated into: southwestern and western Rus', where the Ruthenian and later Ukrainian and Belarusian identities developed, was subject to Lithuanian and later Polish influence;[25] whereas the (Great) Russian ethnic identity that developed in the Muscovite northeast and the Novgorodian north remained distant, was defined by a more primitive style of life in a wilderness shared by Finnic-speaking tribes,[nb 1] and ultimately isolated from its Ruthene relatives.[29] 'The two states (Galicia-Volhynia and Vladimir-Suzdal) differed in their relationship with other powers, entered into alliances with different partners, belonged to different civilizational and commercial communities, and were in more intimate contact with their neighbouring states and societies than with each other.'[33]
Muscovite princes considered themselves to be rightful heirs of the "Kievan inheritance," and associated their survival with fulfilling the historical destiny of reunifying the lands of Rus'.[34] This ideology was ostensibly seen in their given titles (grand princes and tsars) which defined themselves as rulers of "all Rus'."[25] In 1328 Ivan I of Moscow persuaded Theognost, the Metropolitanate of Kiev, to settle in Moscow; from which point forward the title changed to "of Kiev and [all Rus']" – a title which was retained until the mid-fifteenth century.[35] Later, in 1341 Simeon of Moscow was appointed Grand Prince "of all Russia" by the Khan of the Mongol Golden Horde.[35] Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, considered himself heir to all former Kievan lands and in 1493 he assumed the title of gosudar, or "Sovereign of All Russia."[36] This trend continued to evolve and by mid 17th century transformed into "Tsar of All Great, Little, and White Rus," and with Peter I's creation of a Russian Empire, "Little Russian" came be a demonym for all inhabitants of Ukraine under imperial rule.[25]
While the political reintegration of the Rus' can be seen in the politics of Russia's tsardom, the Kievan Synopsis, written in the 16th century by the Prussian-born archimandrite of the Kiev Caves monastery Innocent Gizel, contains description of the ancient unity between the "Russian peoples". This is seen[by whom?] as the earliest historical record of a common Rus' ethnic identity.[37][source needs translation] Meanwhile, in the late 16th century, use of the word 'Ukraine' was used extensively to describe Poland's "borderland" region, local Ruthenian (Rus') inhabitants adopted the identity of Ukrainian to "distinguish their nationality from the Polish"[4]
Granted, we screwed the pooch in Serbia and Kosovo, but Russia absolutely knows it has nothing to fear from NATO unless it is in a defensive posture. True democratic republics seldom start wars, and Europe is especially hesitant to start a real, serious war. Intervene in small nations for human rights, yes. Engage a major first world power & heavily armed nuclear power like Russia, no.
Hasn't America started more wars in the last 50 years than China, Russia, S Korea and Cuba combined?
Did he say that with a straight face? Wow. Just wow.
On some forums I've read people say that "the truth is somewhere in between". Obviously anyone with half a brain cell realises the utter stupidity of this statement but the reality is that many people think this way. Russian propaganda works to exploit this.
Looks like Crimea avoided a war by joining Russia when it did.
The fighting that's going on in eastern Ukraine is about to turn into full scale war. The only thing that will stop it is a security agreement that keeps Ukraine out of NATO permanently. Russia will accept nothing less, but we are no where near that. Unfortunately it looks like we'll have to see the tragic alternative actually happen before getting to the obvious solution
If Crimea stayed in Ukraine, they would be the first battleground in this unnecessary war. Instead they will watch it from the sidelines.
Looks like Crimea avoided a war by joining Russia when it did.
The fighting that's going on in eastern Ukraine is about to turn into full scale war. The only thing that will stop it is a security agreement that keeps Ukraine out of NATO permanently. Russia will accept nothing less, but we are no where near that. Unfortunately it looks like we'll have to see the tragic alternative actually happen before getting to the obvious solution
If Crimea stayed in Ukraine, they would be the first battleground in this unnecessary war. Instead they will watch it from the sidelines.
Here's a thought: Why should Ukraine promising to stay out of NATO be any kind of option for any type of bargain? Why is this considered a legitimate demand by Russia?
There isn't an earth-bound shred of logic that makes these Russian demands and aggression against independent nations, defensible.
That is a fair position, but it's one that will inevitably lead to war, which makes it less good than an unfair position that avoids war.
Think back to the Cuban missile crisis.
Cuba had every right to allow Russian nukes to be placed on its sovereign territory. And it had every reason, after the Bay of Pigs invasion to want those nukes there for protection and deterrence against the US. Russia also had every right to place nukes there with Cuba's permission. It could have told the US that it's demand to remove the nukes was indefensible and illegitimate, and kept those nukes there, but it didn't. Why? Because they knew that the US would not back off and that could lead to a war that could turn nuclear very quickly.
This is where we are with Ukraine. Russia will not back off. NATO in Ukraine is at least as dangerous to Russia as nukes in Cuba were to the US. It will invade Ukraine if NATO in Ukraine is not taken off the table.
Then NATO will have to decide if it wants to start a war with Russia over Ukraine, or not.
In any case, this is not a choice between Ukraine staying out of NATO and Ukraine getting into NATO. It's a choice between Ukraine staying out of NATO and a regional war that could turn into WWIII, up to and including nuclear conflict.
In other words, Russia is being controlled by mad men.