Posted on 03/17/2014 6:01:06 PM PDT by lodi90
My assumption has been that Vladimir Putin’s threatening moves against eastern Ukraine are merely a bluff; that Crimea is what he wants, and that he plans to draw back from an invasion of eastern Ukraine while retaining control over Crimea, thereby allowing President Obama’s Team of Nitwits to pat themselves on the back and claim a draw in their confrontation with Russia.
But the text that follows, written by a professor at a Ukrainian university and forwarded to us by a reader, paints a more dire picture. If this sophisticated Ukrainian observer is correct, Russia likely will be able to persuade a Ukrainian court to declare the current government of Ukraine illegal, paving the way for a Russian occupation of the eastern portion of the country. Further, these events may unfold quickly, beginning day after tomorrow.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Ukraine had a memorandum signed by the Sink Emperor that was never submitted to the Senate for ratification.
That is not a treaty.
If Chuck Norris was a Russian Commie, he’d be Putin....
There is not and never was any such treaty. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was never submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification and is therefore not a binding international treaty. As a mere "political agreement" it is not worth the paper it was printed on.
Remember when Putin laid claim to the Arctic Ocean floor under the polar ice cap as sovereign Russian territory? Said the geological slope from Russia proper to the submerged North Pole was so gradual as to make it part of Russia.
They even laid a Russian flag monument on the North Pole ocean bottom to ‘annex’ it as part of Mother Russia.
“Truth is always stranger than fiction”
If Ukraine were absorbed, it would put millions of people with no loyalty and even hatred of Russia inside Russia’s borders and give them citizenship.
The KGB plan seems to be a dismemberment of Ukraine. Putin would take everything east of the Dnieper and all of the southern coast to connect up with the Russians in Moldova. That leaves Kiev, Lviv and not much else as the new “Ukraine”.
After today I don’t see anybody stopping Putin. Why wait if that is the case?
Those areas are majority Russian speaking, but not exclusively Russian. That would still put 30-40% of the population of those areas as having non-russian loyalties.
I think it extends to the Russians a wizardry that’s beyond implausible. Russia is going to do all it can to undermine and disrupt Kiev.... but its not going to directly flaunt it in the West’s face.
Moscow prefers to create fait accomplis first and dare the West to reverse them - all without leaving its fingerprints at the scene of the crime. What the Kremlin pulled off in Crimea is likely to become its template for dealing with Ukraine.
In return for giving up its nuclear weapons, Ukraine, the United States of America, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, pledging to respect Ukraine territorial integrity, a pledge that was arguably broken by Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
I think they should have kept the nuclear weapons rather than holding a worthless piece of paper. How could they do that in light of what happened back in the 1930’s?
Interesting article. I dug into it a bit and found the Professors had posted this to his facebook. The English Maiden site picked it up as well. There are some slight variations in his original, but the same outcome exists.
http://euromaidanpr.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/thoughts-from-kyiv-on-imminent-invasion-16-march-2014/ and his facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mychailo.wynnyckyj?fref=ts
Russia wouldn’t annex them but create a loyal pro-Moscow Ukrainian state that would be a more natural fit for Putin’s Eurasian Union. He’ll offer to guarantee the independence of the West’s rump Ukrainian state - for a price, of course.
We may not like what is happening, but we can't support a coup one month and then pretend the following month's counter-coup is somehow illegitimate. The strongest side will prevail and there's not a thing we can do about it. Except talk. And words that cannot be supported with action are better left unsaid, lest their speaker lose all credibility.
Even if the Ukraine government is found illegitimate, russia has no right to invade a sovereign country. Putin is acting as if he is a party to this, but he no legal standing himself.
He claims he is not a party and technically Russia has not used armed force in Ukraine.
None of what happened in the last two weeks fits normal rules of warfare. We’re punishing the Russians because we’re too proud to admit they outsmarted us.
The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was a political agreement and means zilch. Under the Constitution, a signed treaty must be submitted to the Senate and then ratified by a 2/3 vote in order to have any force in law. That was never done, nor did Clinton ever intend to do so.
The President of the united States cannot “pledge” anything of this nature without the concurrence of 2/3 of the Senate.
This did not happen with the so-called “Budapest Memorandum”, therefore, the united States central government not only is not pledged to anything, but has no right to carry out any military or other steps in furtherance of same.
Anything signed by Bill Clinton isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Do we have good reason to believe that Russian intellectual elites are somehow more connected to reality than the domestic ones that currently infest our government?
I have no more or better window into what will or will not happen in Ukraine than anyone else, that is not my claim. The “Euro-leaning” part of Ukraine probably has tremendous resentment for the horrible mistreatment of the various ethnicities that occurred under Stalin, and remains a semi-backwards agricultural/industrial area today.
Probably the Euros want to embrace Ukraine for its many resources and industrial areas, but to do that they will have to engage in another costly bailout of Ukraines’ existing debts and in effect, place those funds right into Putin’s pocket. And they’re not in the best shape to do that, nor would there be any sort of unanimity to do so. (Big surprise, the Euros are always great on agreeing on stuff, right?)
I don’t believe outsiders are in much of a position to predict how this will play out.
I would take the same view if it were signed by any other President.
It is for good reason that 2/3 of the representatives of the States must agree to a foreign treaty. If they don’t, the States are not bound thereby.
Maybe American kids have been getting toys from Grandpa Frost the last few years and didn't realize it. (I think Grandpa Frost looks pretty similar to Santa Claus.)
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