My heart aches for the Ukrainians as much as it aches for us in Texas, under Battleground TX assault.
I simply don’t have enough vacation stored up to go help them fight. There was a common door note posted in the war between the states..’Gone to Texas’. I wish i could give it all up and put a note on the door ‘Gone to the Ukraine, back later’.
My great grandfather was a Jew from eastern Europe and appears to have lived in several countries before he came here at 12 years old.
Between shifting borders and ethnic violence that whole region has had few extended periods of real peace.
When Quebec becomes part of France, maybe I can listen to this idiotic argument.
Russian troops are on the ground in the Ukraine. They took two airports and have been flying in transports of more troops. They are there and Putin has outmaneuvered the weak Obama and the EU. Even as Obama and Kerry continue to drone on about, “You better not do this,” Putin has already done it. So what do we do to keep all of Ukraine from falling in a a domino effect and eastern Europe being dominated by Russia?
1) Immediately have the US and the EU confer with Ukraine and tell them to NOT attack the Russian troops in the Crimea. Have them immediately mobilize their forces to their borders and take up positions and prepare and make any further Russian aggression have to come through their prepared positions. Right now the Crimea is lost, and attacking them there will only invite a much larger invasion and the potential loss of all of the Ukraine.
2) The US should immediately start flying C-17s into Kiev (the Ukraine Capitol) loaded with advisors, provisions, trainers, and a a security force for those people. We cannot get enough people there to stop Putin at this point, but we can show him that the price for taking the Ukraine has now gone up and would be too steep for him.
3) Have the NATO and Euopean countries (Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain) do the same thing (Number 2) at other critical points throughout the Ukraine.
4) Immediately move to make the rest of the Ukraine a part of NATO.
5) Hasten the Ukraine’s entry into the EU.
These measures will block Putin now, and hold him where he is with the gains he has made. It is not likely that the Ukraine will get the Crimea back, no more than Georgia will got its two lost provinces back. But we can limit the damage and build a strong coalition of the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary , Slovakia, the Czech Republic and western Europe to stop Russia where it is.
Otherwise we may see the whole of the Ukraine go over...and that would bne the first step in a process for Russia to once again establish a buffer between itself and western Europe.
Folks, when you elect a man who sat with the Russian Prime Minister Medvedev, just before the 2012 Elections, and told him...when he thought he was off microphone...that after the elections, he, Obama, “would be a lot more flexible,” with Putin...this is what you get.
We need to neuter this guy politically in 2014, and then run he and his ilk out of the White House for good in 2016. If we do not, things will get worse...much worse.
When Russia had Ukraine, they forced Russians to move there and Ukrainians were forced to move. Russia did that to other countries they took over, especially Estonia and Latvia. Most of the countries they took over (with the help of FDR and Truman) Russia made the national nationalities (like Estonians) into minorities.
BLOODLANDS
“If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today.”
No sale! Uninformed article presenting the Russian point of view. Yes, Bandera’s organization participated in the murder of Jews. And not only of Jews. 160,000 Poles, Armenians, Hungarians and Romanians as well. They are now a minority on Maidan, and the revolution has support in Poland and Hungary despite the Bandera crimes. These propagandists think that it’s enough to mention “Jews” to turn the supporters of whatever, Ukrainian uprising or New Coke, into enemies!
Sooner or later this was bound to happen. World history shows us that no country with a diverse population of different races, languages, and religion has long survived.
Countries don’t naturally form with a diverse population, and when in the past they’ve occurred it’s usually been as a result of armed conquest. These unnaturally formed countries have either melded together into a single population made up of one mixed race with one language and one religion or they’ve come apart, and they’ve usually come apart with extreme violence. The longer these diverse populations are forced to coexist with one another without mixing and becoming one, the more the hatred grows among them and the more violently they break apart, but break apart they will, or genocide will settle the issue once and for all.
So, Russia is grabbing up it’s versions of “Sudetenland”?
those Ukrainians LOVED being Nazi prison guards
they are not nice people and are cruel