Posted on 03/26/2014 6:35:52 PM PDT by PaulCruz2016
Moscow’s actions in the Crimea are comprehensible, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt said, criticizing the Western reaction to the peninsula’s reunification with Russia.
President Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Crimean issue is “completely understandable,” Schmidt wrote in Die Zeit newspaper where he’s employed as an editor.
While the sanctions, which target individual Russian politicians and businessmen, employed by the EU and the US against Russia are “a stupid idea,” he added.
The current restrictive measures are of symbolic nature, but if more serious economic sanctions are introduced “they’ll hit the West as hard as Russia,” Schmidt warned.
He also believes that the refusal of the Western countries to cooperate with Russia in the framework of the G8 is a wrong decision.
(Excerpt) Read more at rt.com ...
Good Lord, even Merkel has more stones than Schmidt. Which isn’t saying much. Maybe his are lost in his Helmut.
Hitler’s move into Czechoslovakia was completely understandable as well. That doesn’t mean it was “right”. There are lots of moves made and contemplated by ultra nationalists that can be understood by following the nationalist dogma of the aggressor. Blood will out.
Russia can always point to our Kosovo intervention as inspiration for their re-uniting Crimean Russians with their motherland. We forcibly removed a section of Serbia using the Albanian ethnicity of the inhabitants as justification; Russia probably asked for our help in Crimea but we refused because we didn’t have a prez that needed to keep his “indiscretions” out of the news...
Rossiya Segodnya (official name: Federal State Unitary Enterprise International Information Agency Rossiya Segodnya; from Russian: Россия Сегодня, Russia Today) is the official Russian government owned international news agency founded by presidential decree on 9 December 2013. Rossiya Segodnya incorporates the former RIA Novosti news service and the Voice of Russia international radio service (formerly Radio Moscow).
NATO lured Moscow into withdrawing its troops from former Soviet bloc countries with the promise that we would not expand NATO into Eastern Europe. Then, in two batches in 1999 and 2004, NATO took in 12 new members in Eastern Europe - additional nations that we are now treaty-bound to defend against Russia. That was pretty slick, but Russia woke up drew the line on further NATO expansion after Poland joined the Western bloc.
Since then, Russia has acted twice to deny NATO footholds on the Black Sea - Russia's strategic underbelly and its sole year-round access to warm water. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia to prevent Tbilisi from joining NATO. Now in 2014, the West has aided the overthrow of Ukraine's elected government, replacing Moscow's ally with an enemy and threatening the loss of Russia's strategic Crimean naval and air bases to NATO. We should have known that was too far to push, and now we should expect Russia to split Ukraine in two in order to preserve its broad access to Crimea and the north shore of the Black Sea (through eastern Ukraine).
The equation is clear. The Black Sea is vital to Russia's defense and therefore is worth Russia's going to war to keep. On the other hand, the Black Sea is not necessary for America's defense and is therefore not worth our going to war to wrestle away from Russia. We might not like it, but it's not our fight.
This is pretty much the way I see it, as well.
Now I wonder about the “massed troops” along the Russian border with Ukraine. I’m hoping that this is just to discourage anybody from getting any ideas, and make them feel happy with the staus quo when they don’t invade.
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