Posted on 03/22/2014 9:51:21 PM PDT by george76
Ukrainian military base that was scene of opening stand-off in Crimea two weeks ago is attacked again by Russian forces, shots fired.
Troops at one of the last major Ukrainian bases in Crimea defiantly sang their national anthem on Saturday as Russian forces stormed their compound and demanded their surrender.
Russian soldiers and armed pro-Kremlin toughs assaulted the base just after lunchtime, backed by armoured vehicles that smashed through the compound’s gates.
The raid came after the Ukrainians had pointedly ignored a deadline from the Russians to surrender, even holding a wedding celebration at the base for a newly-married serviceman and his bride.
As the Russian force, bristling with heavy machine guns, over-ran the base, the Ukrainians realised it was pointless to try to fight back. Instead, they lined up on the parade ground and burst into song as the intruders held them at gunpoint.
...
the Ukrainians, who had had their weapons confiscated from them during a previous Russian incursion onto the base, attempted to carry on with life as normal.
...
Colonel Mamchur, whose men are mainly air technicians and pilots rather than frontline combat troops, realised straightaway the futility of fighting against what he suspected were Russian special forces.
...
Russian forces also seized control of Ukraine’s only submarine, the Zaporozhe, the Zaporizhya, and took it to a base at a bay in Sevastopol
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Yeah, like I believe all that borscht coming from EU propagandists.
No, you’re too full of Putins propaganda spew to swallow any more.
Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool... as if the way one fell down mattered.
Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.
and how exactly would you have had it? should we have sent in American marines, sailors, airmen, and soldiers to do what they themselves were unwilling to do? Should we have started WW3 over something that is in no way a threat to the US constitution?
Logical fallacy of the false dichotomy. There are actions we could take short of war. Sanctions, aid, increasing our energy supply and moving to help replace Russian gas and oil. No sane person is advocating for war. We managed to deal with a far stronger Soviet Union. But doing nothing just whets the Bear’s and the Dragons appetite. And the message we send to Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and other allies is keep your nukes, or get some. Not a message likely to lead to a more stable situation.
It looks like a worst kind of travesty to me.
If they were a true patriots and loyal servicemen they should have flown their fighters into mainland Ukraine or Turkey across the pond instead of performing these stupid PR stunts.
We are not the worlds police. It is not 1939. Europe is fully capable of handling this with minimal help from us and I'm happy to let them do that if that is what they wish to do.
It's an open and free market supposedly. If they want to buy oil and gas from us instead of Putin, that's fine I guess. If they want to buy our weapons, I would be fine with that as well. I could care less either way and am primarily interested in dealing with threats to our constitution here at home rather than non-threats abroad.
They held out for 3 weeks, with no rescue in sight.
So much for disarmament and nonproliferation. So much for American credibility. So much for any kind of effective foreign policy, projection of power, and protection of national interests.
The epigram that is current now is that our allies do not trust us and our opponents do not fear us. This, together with our supine response to Benghazi, incoherent policy in Egypt and Libya, retreat from Afghanistan, failure in Iraq, impotence in Syria, any number of others, will be noted with intense interest in capitols around the world.
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