Posted on 03/02/2014 12:27:48 PM PST by Rusty0604
Crimea is the frontline of this silent war, writes Roland Oliphant. But in Moscow, the propaganda battle is being played out at full volume
The Russian occupation of central Simferopol and the local airport terminal two days ago was as much for the benefit of the world's media as anything else.
Claims of mass defections in the Russian press, including that of the Ukrainian fleet's flagship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, were impossible to confirm on Sunday evening. Ministers in Ukraine have denied the claims.
Russia's state owned media has broadcast several questionable reports about that Ukraine crisis since it began.
In possibly the most outrageous stretching of the truth so far Vesti, a Russian rolling news channel, on Sunday used old footage from protests in Kiev to claim fighting had broken out between police and revolutionary militants in Crimea.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Remember who was in charge of the US back then.
Dayton Accords, anyone?
Why did the Ukraine give up there massive nuclear weapons which was the third largest in the world for a unsigned treaty !
That makes no sense.
How much pressure did the Clinton Administration put on them to sign the deal?
Beyond weird .
Its was really stupid to give up all your cards with the KGB still operating in the open.
Wow,
its so sad.
The Russians murdered 5 to 7 million Ukrainians on purpose and then shipped in Russians into their land and they gave up these weapons !
Probably half the military is Russian.
The other thing is this: I remember during the invasion of Iraq that one important thing we did was to have relatives of various Iraqi generals contact them and make offers of cash (a million or two each as I recall) and green cards and residency in the US for them and their whole family if they would defect or at least stand down during the invasion. Lower ranking officers received similar offers of less money and residency in other Gulf states. Don't know how many took the offer.
The other thing was making it public that we were doing it, so that the Iraqis would suspect one another of taking the offer.
So I can't help but wonder if in Ukraine these kinds of offers are made under the table, or if this kind of thing is spread just so the Ukrainian officer corps would not know who they can trust. Cheaper to pass bags of money under the table than to have to fight. And in this case they are cousins and formerly citizens of the same country.
Actually, Crimea has been under Russia -rightly or wrongly - since 1774. The Turks controlled it for about 200 years before that, even though most of its population were ethnic Europeans and mostly Orthodox Christians. Even after the Russians got control, the Tatars, who were Muslims allied with the Ottoman Empire, continued to raid it for slaves.
In the final slave raid of 1796, the Tatars took some 20,000 European slaves for sale on the ME slave markets. Nonetheless, the current Crimean government has guaranteed that the existing Tatar minority in Crimea will be given rights like all other citizens.
So the Crimea has a much more complicated history than we appreciate, and we shouldn’t be too hasty to support the Ukrainians (who have a very limited goal in the Western Ukraine, but because by an historical accident, these other places belonged to them, are setting off a conflagration).
Your guess is as good as mine for why they gave up their nukes. Probably the money, financial help and such. Looking back, seems short-sighted but screaming hungry masses were thinking they couldn’t eat nukes to feed themselves. Just guessing.
Actually, Crimea’s Russian population lived in the Crimea since the 18th Century when Catherine overthrew the Crimean Tatar Khanate and made it part of Russia, not the Ukraine. Furthermore, Eastern Ukraine is still mostly ethnic Ukrainian in population, albet Russified.
If you’re talking about the famine, modern estimates give the likely number of famine and related deaths to be about 3-3.5 million, more specifically about 3.2 million.
Its was German and Ukrainian too until the Soviets deported them hundreds of thousands of people.
try 5 to 7 million was the last count .
The Russians were keeping great records.
agreed its a huge crossroads for a thousand years .
hardly russian.
My Aunt was Ukrainian and fled with her father as a child.
She was furious over the 1994 treaty .
She got a chance to see her childhood home in the Crimea before she died.
Her stories were hair raising.
Some reports say that Ukraine hasn’t had money to pay their soldiers, so probably just getting paid would be motive enough for some of them.
I read one report that supposedly Khrushchev was drunk when he decided to give Crimea to Ukraine.
Crimea was given to the Ukraine by Russia in 1954. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea and Ukraine have had several “issues”.
Must have been interesting to hear her stories.
Just the famine or including gulags and all the rest?
good point
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