Posted on 08/30/2014 2:54:55 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Leaders of countries sharing borders with Russia led the way in demanding tougher action against what they see as blatant aggression on their doorstep.
Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite bluntly called for the West to wake up, and appeared to urge Nato to give significant military aid to Kiev.
Russia is at war against Ukraine and that is a country which wants to be part of Europe. Russia is practically at war against Europe, she said.
She lambasted previous sanctions as a big mistake because they were too general.
Lithuania is one of at least six states believed to have signed up to a new British-led Nato rapid-reaction force, the formation of which is expected to be announced this week by David Cameron as Wales hosts the most important Alliance gathering since the end of the Cold War.
Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Norway and the Netherlands will also join the 10,000-troop bid to deter Putin from what the West sees as an attempt to redraw the frontiers of Europe.
A key concern is that he intends to use his military might to impose a new statelet within Ukraine called Novorossiya or New Russia. What remains of Ukraine could be left with no coastline if the plan goes through.
A diplomat said: Putin is obsessed with Novorossiya, territory won for the Romanovs by Catherine the Great. He wants it back.
'But the so-called rebels in this region of eastern Ukraine, who he praised for keeping Kievs army at bay, are his own soldiers, using his latest military equipment. Lets not fool ourselves about the acute dangers.
Putins use of the Tsarist name of Novorossiya is sending shudders through Europe. While it includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions ....it also includes such major cities as Kharkiv, Kherson and Odessa.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Actually Putin and the 766,00o man Russian military is no match for NATO, and Putin’s difficulty is in trying to conquer what little he can, before the big dogs slaps him down.
What is our Dear Leader and his European counterparts doing to stop that, beyond this silly fig-leaf of a QRF?
I’m not a chairborne commando, so you can lay that tiring refrain of yours to rest.
We hear surrender from you and weakness, because you keep preaching it.
Yeah, otay.
The Chinese navy might be able influence events up to maybe 1000km from China but in the Med or North Atlantic? Not a chance. No replenishment or maintenance facilities and no air support. NATO would put them on the sea bed within a week or sooner.
More fantasies, all with the same goal, surrender to Putin, let him take and rebuild as much as he wants, until eventually, he is too big to stop and our very survival is at threat again.
We've got a lot of faggots and bull dykes serving in command positions now, silly ROE, and a foreigner as CIC.
Ivan doesn't have that problem.
>>Its somebody elses backyard, and we may or may not like what is going on there, but nothing we can do will affect the outcome.<<
Agree and disagree.
It is indeed someone else’s backyard. The Europeans need to muster up the forces necessary to counter a Ruskie advance.
Where I disagree is that there is nothing we could do that will affect the outcome.
Even though this dumb@$$ in the white house has cut our forces, we are a superior fighting force to Russia. If Obozo had the go-nads, we could stop the advance.
Actually we NATO nations are the ones with all the recent war experience, and the continuous decades and generations of NATO coordination and cooperation, including recent combat operations.
Putin is finding it hard to ‘conquer’ a small part of a neighboring, weaker country whose population is ethnically and culturally Russian and yet we’ve got the panty wetting chorus screaming that we’re doomed and that in no time he’ll be knocking on Berlin’s door. Get a grip, man.
The combined defense expenditures of all NATO nations in 2013 amounted to $1.02 trillion. This figure includes research and development expenditures related to purchase of major equipment and pensions.
By comparison, the total of military budgets for all countries in the world was $1.745 trillion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden.
In 2012, Chinas expenditures amounted to $166 billion and Russias were $90 billion. Iran trailed with just under $7 billion, according to SIPRI.
By troop numbers, NATO also held a lopsided advantage over any other nation, with a total of 3,370,000 servicemembers in 2013, according to NATOs statistics. This contrasts with Russias 766,000 troops and Chinas estimated 2.3 million active-duty personnel, according to Sam Perlo-Freeman, director of SIPRIs program on military expenditures.
NATO still accounts for a clear majority of world military spending, over 60 percent, and a substantial number of other top spenders are American allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, Perlo-Freeman said. In terms of military capabilities, the U.S. and NATO will remain absolutely unmatched for the foreseeable future.
But Perlo-Freeman warned that although Chinas military capabilities are far, far shorter than Americas, it doesnt mean that Washington can impose its will in Chinas near-environment.
As for Russia, Perlo-Freeman said it could compare with the West only in its nuclear capabilities.
But its conventional forces have a lot of serious deficiencies in terms of command and control and mobility, (and) in terms of actually being able to fight modern warfare, they are far behind Western countries, he said.
The European “manliness” was slaughtered on the battle fields of WWI and WWII. What was left were the progenitors of what passes for “men” in Europe nowadays. Sad, very sad.
I guess you don’t understand my comments in any way, shape or form. Go back and read them again.
Great post. That needs to be appended to every Russia post on FR. Might help to calm down some of the more nervous and hysterical posters.
The war hawks here are counting on those beta males, gays and womyn to keep Russia from moving on Europe. Maybe they will, but I wouldn’t bet on it, especially with the limp-wrist we have leading us here.
So what? So do we, as do Britain and France, which why they will not be used.
The only wars there are Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, and we learned that we win, we just don’t want the surrender monkeys to come in afterward and give it back.
We won the Cold War, and now the surrender monkeys are trying to give it back.
I just did. I reckon I understood you just fine.
Has there ever been a weapon in human history that wasn’t used at some point?
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