Russian Troops Unload In Crimea As Russian Minister Rules Out Dialogue

Toronto Star ^ | March 8, 2014

[Fennie]

SEVASTOPOL, UKRAINE - Dozens of military trucks transporting heavily armed soldiers rumbled over Crimea's rutted roads Saturday as Russia reinforced its armed presence on the disputed peninsula in the Black Sea. Moscow's foreign minister ruled out any dialogue with Ukraine's new authorities, whom he dismissed as the puppets of extremists.

The Russians have denied their armed forces are active in Crimea, but an Associated Press reporter trailed one military convoy Saturday afternoon from 40 kilometres west of Feodosia to a military airfield at Gvardeiskoe north of Simferopol, over which a Russian flag flew.

Some of the army green vehicles had Russian license plates and numbers indicating that they were from the Moscow region. Some towed mobile kitchens and what appeared to be mobile medical equipment.

[Marguerite]

“I’m not in favour of getting involved with anything”

Neither am I.
That’s been my point in all my posts.

[Bulwyf]

Obviously, you know little of the Canadian military.

Canada lacks in numbers, often due to the negligence of a liberal government, but to write them off as a non starter would be a fatal mistake for many enemies.

History speaks for itself.

[Marguerite]

I haven't talked about Canada, but about NATO in Europe: Here's the quote from my post: "Except the UK and France military, the other members of NATO in Europe count for peanuts, their “importance” lies only in the fact that the US army may use their territories for their own goals."

[HiTech RedNeck]

Again, a coarse bear version of what it thinks it saw.

[hinckley buzzard]

Amazing how many people never stop to figure the consequences of their impulses.

[Monterrosa-24]

Your post is idiotic. How can I be advocating treason when I am not a Russian. I did not advocate anything. I simply reflected upon the unhappiness in sectors of the Russian military with Putin. Maybe you need to look up the word “treason” to see what it means.

[kearnyirish2]

“Why that? Which Western countries has the Russian Federation ever attacked?”

They still hold land claimed by Western countries (Finland, Poland), and support regimes with which we are at odds; they are a “potential enemy”.

As far as the war with Georgia, wikipedia isn’t a reliable source. Georgia couldn’t have believed they would beat Russian forces.

[Marguerite]

“As far as the war with Georgia, wikipedia isn’t a reliable source.”

Try this: Five Day War, by Charles King, Chair of the Faculty and Professor at GeorgetownUniversity’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

ftp://217.147.227.220/Eurasian%20and%20Caucasus%20Studies%202013-2014%20exam%20reader/14%20King_Five_Day_War.pdf

[Marguerite]

“I did not advocate anything.”

Yeah, sure. You were only hoping someane kill the leader of a foreign country.
My comparision remains valid.
What if a Russian said on this forum, “But an American officer may blow Obama’s brains”?

[Marguerite]

"They still hold land claimed by Western countries (Finland, Poland)"

Be more explicit, please. Plenty of countries hold lands claimed by other countries. Poland holds swats of German land. Are Poland and Germany enemies over that? Nope.

"support regimes with which we are at odds"

And US support regimes with which they are at odds.

Are you really ready to start a nuclear war over that?

As long as Russia doesn't attack America (and it never has), it is not an enemy. It had even been an ally in two world wars. I read somewhere on the net a striking story on WWII ... Looking for it ... OK, found it. Here it is:

"On May 8, 1945, in Chicago, a young American sergeant Joseph Byerly, a veteran of two armies, the American and the Soviet, celebrated his miraculous survival in the brutal WWII.

Sixty-five years later, on May 6, 2010, in Moscow, his son, American Ambassador in Russia, John Byerly, opened an exhibition, devoted to his late father, – Joseph Byerly: Hero of Two Nations.

The Ambassador’s father had been a 21-year-old paratrooper, when his C-47 transport plane was shot down by Germans on June 6, 1944. He was captured and thrown into a concentration camp. Joseph tried to escape, and on a third attempt, in January 1945, he finally succeeded. Joseph heard the uninterrupted sound of the rapidly approaching Soviet artillery, and he decided to walk eastward, toward the Russians. When, several days later, Joseph saw the first Soviet soldiers, he shouted in broken Russian: “Ya vash Amerikanskyi tovarishch!” (“I am your American comrade!”)

Joseph Byerly refused to leave the 2nd Byelorussian Front, continued fighting as a soldier in a tank battalion, was severely wounded, and was successfully treated in a field hospital. The war for the brave American Comrade was finally over."

[Monterrosa-24]

“...hoping...”

Where did you get I was hoping anything. To make a realitic anology you should look to history. It seemed probable to many that Germans officers were involved in a myriad of plots against Adolph Hitler and eventually an attempt was belatedly made on July 20, 1944.

I’m saying the same is likely to happen in Russia via the Russian military. You heard it here first.

And from that you insanely say I was happy with the shooting of Reagan (I was on his campaign staff and later on his transition team in the Pentagon). You shold be banned from FR.

[Marguerite]

This is EXACTLY what you wrote:

Putin’s Army is not professional compared to ours. Ukraine’s problem is they have no money and thus their Army is too small and ill-prepared. But a Russian officer may blow Putin’s brains out within a year or two.

[Monterrosa-24]

And from that you insist must have been happy Reagan was shot.

I do not hope Putin gets shot. I would rather see him arrested and ousted. But from the perspective of Ukrainians either might be of a temporary benefit.

I initially liked some things about Putin. He continued progress on certain free market reforms and a flat tax. He attended the funerals of Yeltsin and Solzhenitsyn. He did not allow homosexual adoption. But when he racked the system to allow himself more years as the head of state...that’s a huge problem for Russia. His latest actions scream for comparisons to 1938.

[eleni121]

You scream suffering from illogical comparisons and post cold war syndrome.

[kearnyirish2]

From my limited understanding of this, much of the world recognizes this region as belonging to Georgia. As far as the reality or historical grievances, I complete ignorance - I have no horse in this race.

[kearnyirish2]

Living in an area historically settled by many Poles and Lithuanians (but few Russians), I guess I’m just more sympathetic to them. I see little praiseworthy about an American fighting for Stalin; our support of his regime was a low point in our history (on the international scene). To this day the people of Eastern Europe don’t understand how we could sell them out to Soviet enslavement for half a century; he butchered far more people than Hitler.

[Marguerite]

“I have no horse in this race”

Neither have I, but I cherish historical precision, whenever it is distorted.

When, back in 2008, I read in the Western media “Russia invaded Georgia!!!” (Many Americans didn’t even understand the title. What??? Russians in OUR Georgia??? LOL), I wanted to know what really happened there, because my trust in our own cooked facts is less than moderate.
A complex situation to be sure, for the territories and patchwork of peoples, which lived together for hundreds of years in the Russian Empire, since the 17-18th century... and got their independence only 22 years ago...

[Marguerite]

“I see little praiseworthy about an American fighting for Stalin; our support of his regime was a low point in our history (on the international scene). To this day the people of Eastern Europe don’t understand how we could sell them out to Soviet enslavement for half a century”

That’s weird. I had a conversation on this very subject earlier today on another forum. I’m copying here what I wrote:

1) You know, the peoples of Eastern Europe waited for the Allies armies to come liberate them at the end of WWII, but Roosevelt and Churchill sold them to Stalin at Yalta. So don’t tell me about the US “moral duty”. They didn’t give a flying f@@k about Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yougoslavia ... They condemned these countries to suffer 55 years of communism.

I think that the US despised true democracy as much as Stalin’s Soviet Union.

When Budapest revolted in 1956, what did the US do? When Prague revolted in 1968, what did the US do?

Nothing, zilch, nada.

2) Roosevelt and Churchill sold them to Stalin at Yalta.

“Roosevelt was oblivious to Stalin’s objectives because of Stalin’s excellent ‘poker face,’ and he readily met Stalin’s price, leaving the Yalta Conference exuberant because Stalin had agreed to enter the Pacific war against Japan. Moreover, the Soviets had agreed to join the United Nations given the secret understanding of a voting formula with a veto power for permanent members in the Security Council, there by providing the Soviets with more control in world affairs and greatly weakening the United Nations. Overall, Roosevelt felt confident that Yalta had been successful. The Big Three had ratified previous agreements about the postwar division of Germany: there were to be four zones of occupation, one zone for each of the three dominant nations plus one zone for France.

In the postwar setting, Russia would gain the southern half of the Sakhalin Islands and Kuriles, half of East Prussia, Konigsberg, Germany, and control of Finland. In addition, Roosevelt let it slip that the United States would not protest if the Soviet Union attempted to annex the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) or establish puppet governments, therefore leaving Stalin as pleased with the overall results as Roosevelt, and more rightly so. The Yalta Conference is often regarded by numerous Central European nations as the “Western betrayal.” This belief, held by countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic, is rooted in the belief that the Allied powers, despite venerating democratic policies and signing numerous pacts and military agreements, allowed smaller countries to be controlled by and/or made Communist states of the Soviet Union. At the Yalta conference, the Big Three “attempted to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability,”

www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/yalta.html

3) Q: And what should have the U.S. done? Go to nuclear war with the Soviets?

My answer: Then why doesn’t Obama shut up about Ukraine now? He won’t start a nuclear war with Russia. All those US saber rattling in Poland and Romania are simply grotesque.

That’s why I don’t believe a word when the US (a.k.a. NATO) rides its “high-ground principle” horse.

[Norski]

Well, what effect do you think that the largest refinery in Russia blowing up a few days ago will have on the situation?

(see at www.jumpingjackflashhypothesis.blogspot.com last week)

[PieterCasparzen]

Ford built a plant at Gorky (Gorkovsky) in 1932. Given that, and what you’re talking about, do you perhaps see where there might possibly be something fishy going on ?