Posted on 04/26/2014 11:24:22 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
South Africa.
"Putin's Endgame: Russian PrideThat says Putin is a dangerous madman, to be leading Russia in this way.
Now, now . . . under the new FR standard, presented by our Russian friends, we must be calm and reasonable and respect everything NPR has to say.
No they didn’t. Apartheid was going to fall one way or the other.
You can spew any stupid babbling you want all day long.
What matters here is what the Russians believe.
What the Russians believe is not a secret. Many of the books in the professional reading course for the Marine Corps taught their belief in some detail. At least the books that were on the list in the seventies, eighties, and nineties taught them.
Your theory, or anyone in the west’s theory is entirely irrelevant to what the Russians will do.
The Russians do not care what some western academic thinks.
The Russians do not care what I think.
The Russians do not care what you think.
Not even a tiny bit.
They are going to act in accordance with their established doctrine.
Tell me this, did you personally predict that the Russians were going to send a military force into Ukraine?
I work with a guy from Eastern Ukraine and what he tells me pretty much coincides with what you heard and posted.
Meanwhile, Barak Obama is still looking for his
ass with both hands and a flashlight.
Dude, I am far from being a military expert, but some of us were laughing about how Putin was waiting to do it after his Olympics.
Blue Light Special on a warm water sea port and arable farm land!
You don’t have to be rolling in dough to know ... now’s the time to fill your shopping cart!
Putin wants to be flattered. He wants to be told that he is smarter, stronger, and more important than he really is.
He can't give up Crimea because it would be too much of an insult to him personally and to his genocidal regime's imaginary greatness.
In the end, Putin is a little man with a serious inferiority complex. His people will pay the price for his hubris and stupidity.
Putin is playing Obama like a Pedophile with a little boy in the back of a van. However, the author has a point. Historically, Russians are not very good soldiers outside their own borders (they’re savage when you invade them). They believe the Ukraine belongs to Greater Russia, but Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland are foreign countries to them. Also, if we get a pro-American, pro-business, pro-freedom President in 2016, this could open up the American oil and gas fields and providing energy to Europe, breaking Russia’s economy.
We have a large community of Russian expatriates, Romanians, and Moldovans.
I work with two ethnic Russians from Ukraine.
They believe the central problem is one of economic opportunity.
Ukraine has never had an especially strong economy, and there has been very little recovery since the Great Recession in 2008-2009.
According to them, the Russians in Crimea and east Ukraine believe their standard of living will go up much more with Russia than with Ukraine.
Putin is a fish. Obama is a potzer.
Answer my question.
Did you predict months ago when the European Union & Ukraine trade agreement was announced that Russia would invade Ukraine?
You're right that seizing Crimea without firing a shot is of great symbolic importance in that it had the effect of galvanizing Russians behind him. The Russian people smell blood and they want more. But it was also a major first stage in Russia becoming a Mediterranean power by destroying Turkish power.
In addition to seizing Crimea, maybe Odessa and eastern Ukraine (that seems likely in the near future), Putin will probably take all of Georgia (he's already taken Abkhazia and Ossetia) and sever the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline, which will really screw Europe. He'll have Europe by the shorts. Then, he'll take Armenia (cutting a territorial deal with the Armenians and the Iranians at the expense of the Turks and the Azeris) and have the Turks surrounded from two sides, three if you count Syria.
The reduction of Turkey to a toothless rump state is the strategic prize. Crimea (and maybe Odessa), the Eastern Ukraine, and Georgia-Armenia are the strategic pivots.
And if there's one theme that's remained constant throughout Russian history the past 1,000 years it's the Slavs' struggle against the Mongol-Tatar (Turkic) steppe peoples who terrorized, raped and looted their lands.
Heck, this is more than strategic. This sh*t is personal for them. And Putin is doing an excellent job in whipping up Russian jingoism.
And the truth is that Obama won't do a damned thing about it. And neither will Europe once he seizes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. They'll tow the line like the good little quislings they have always been, the contemptible wussies.
If I was Turkey I'd be afraid. Very afraid.
Do you mean to say when it was announced by Yanukovich that Ukraine would NOT be making a trade agreement with the EU?
You are aware that Ukraine and the EU did not make an agreement, right?
Actually Putin has emboldened the Turks and played into their hands by supporting ethnic separatists in the Caucasus. Turkey has made moves to establish relations with the Abkhazians because a large diaspora of Abkhazians live in Turkey. The Turks are who paid for the largest mosque in Europe to be built in Chechnya, Russia. Putin turned over Chechnya to the jihadist son of the Chechen mufti who is now establishing sharia law in Russia with Putin’s blessing.
Many ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian.
Good point — I over-simplified.
By the same token, anecdotal evidence is often unreliable; and data is not the plural of anecdote.
Canada has the world’s third largest population of ethnic Ukrainians (after Ukraine and Russia); and, they are amongst our best citizens. I wish Ukraine well.
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