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Russia’s brutality with Ukraine is nothing new
The Washington Post ^ | March 17, 2014 | George F. Will

Posted on 05/10/2014 7:38:40 AM PDT by WhiskeyX

While Vladimir Putin, Stalin’s spawn, ponders what to do with what remains of Ukraine, remember: Nine years before the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the Nazis embarked on industrialized genocide, Stalin deliberately inflicted genocidal starvation on Ukraine.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Russia
KEYWORDS: holodomor; russia; ukraine
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Apologists for Putin and his Russian regime have asked what is so wrong about the alleged Russian Government proposal to ration the food supply in occupied Crimea. Will's editorial addresses the very problem with subjecting the Ukrainians to the tender mercies of the Russians and Russian control of Ukrainian food supplies in the not so distant past.
1 posted on 05/10/2014 7:38:40 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: WhiskeyX

No reporting in the MSM on this historical fact.


2 posted on 05/10/2014 7:41:44 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET (urope. Why do they put up with this.)
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To: WhiskeyX

There is a coordinated PR campaign by Putin to bully Ukraine politically. Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine has failed. So he is now terrorizing them and trying to blame the violence on Ukraine govt.


3 posted on 05/10/2014 7:43:35 AM PDT by lodi90
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To: WhiskeyX

But...but...they voted to be Russian!

Guess starvation and depopulation wasn’t mentioned on the ballot.


4 posted on 05/10/2014 7:43:59 AM PDT by Regulator
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To: Regulator
“But...but...they voted to be Russian!”

Actually, they did not vote to be Russian, even according to a Russian Human Rights group who traveled to the Crimea and conducted a survey of the voters and non-voters. Even the ethnic Russians who voted were little more than a majority in the vote. Given the large number of ethnic Russians who did not vote, the actual number of ethnic Russians who voted in favor of Russian annexation represented far less than the majority of eligible ethnic Russian voters.

5 posted on 05/10/2014 7:51:39 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: Regulator

No, Russia’s relationship with Ukraine is nothing like that of the US and Canada. The former is predatory and violent, the latter cooperative and peaceful, the very model of state-to-state relationships. You hear that cited often in the lamestream media.


6 posted on 05/10/2014 7:58:52 AM PDT by huckfillary
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To: WhiskeyX

Yeah. I know.

It was sarcasm.


7 posted on 05/10/2014 7:59:19 AM PDT by Regulator
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To: WhiskeyX

oh, but Putin said it was 95% in favor! Or some such...the devil in disguise, of a human.


8 posted on 05/10/2014 8:01:02 AM PDT by fabian (" And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo in laughter")
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To: WhiskeyX
Everyone I've discussed Ukraine with, maybe a dozen folks, know about the Stalin's starvation of Ukraine in the 30's.

That's not to say we shouldn't keep talking about it...but I'm not sure it applies to the events of today.

There's rationing in Crimea because Russia has some real logistical problems without a land bridge.

That is the sole cause.

Putin's obvious strategy is to win the hearts and minds...to the extent possible...of new and prospective territory. A deliberate program of starvation would be counter to those goals.

And to compare Putin to Stalin is ludicrous. Putin is much smarter and far more sophisticated than Stalin.

And, depending on his end objectives, potentially more dangerous.

Because it's not like anyone in the West is going to oppose him.

9 posted on 05/10/2014 8:03:25 AM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Mariner

The shortages of food and water are being used by Russia to justify the further takeover of Southern and Eastern Ukraine. In addition to the ethnic claims, that drive the increasing violence the shortages, while real, will increase the Ukrainians are nazis meme.


10 posted on 05/10/2014 8:18:49 AM PDT by JimSEA
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To: Mariner

“There’s rationing in Crimea because Russia has some real logistical problems without a land bridge.”

Rationing was proposed and not yet implemented. Virtually every Ukrainian family lost family members in the Russian starvation of the Ukrainians known as the Holomodor. Try telling the Ukrainians and Tatars the Russian rationing of food supplies in the Holomodor doesn’t apply to the rationing of food supplies in today’s Crimea.


11 posted on 05/10/2014 8:19:30 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: WhiskeyX

It appears some armchair analysts here don’t realize that these current events are part of a living tapestry over there.

Most everybody in Russia’s neighboring states has someone in their family who was killed, exiled or otherwise abused by Kremlin stooges. So when you talk about food rationing by Russia it is a VERY serious matter to them because they’ve seen this movie before. And it doesn’t have a good ending.


12 posted on 05/10/2014 8:30:56 AM PDT by lodi90
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To: WhiskeyX

This was a continuation of what had been happening under the Czar when the Jewish people of Ukraine was subject to pogroms. I just finished a terrific historical novel entitled, “The Little Russian” which is set in Ukraine at the beginning of 20th Century. The writer, Susan Sherman, did an unbelievable level of research and presents the book in wonderful prose.


13 posted on 05/10/2014 8:36:53 AM PDT by Portcall24 (aer)
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To: lodi90
Most everybody in Russia’s neighboring states has someone in their family who was killed, exiled or otherwise abused by Kremlin stooges. So when you talk about food rationing by Russia it is a VERY serious matter to them because they’ve seen this movie before. And it doesn’t have a good ending.

No it doesn't: Harvest of Despair (hour long movie).

14 posted on 05/10/2014 8:44:11 AM PDT by Stepan12
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To: lodi90

Yes, Ivan the Terrible earned his reputation.


15 posted on 05/10/2014 8:59:50 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: JimSEA; All

“will increase the Ukrainians are nazis meme.”

It isn’t hard to push that meme, when you have hard-right Ukrainian idiots running things, like this fool from the “Fatherland Party”, who is the Governor of Kherson.

Kherson governor calls Hitler ‘liberator’ addressing veterans on Victory Day
http://rt.com/news/158032-kherson-governor-hitler-liberator/

“Governor of Kherson region Yuri Odarchenko was booed by thousands including WWII veterans when he told the previously cheering crowd that the Soviet Union tried to enslave Ukraine, while Hitler on the other hand tried to bring freedom to their land.

“Those [Soviet] aggressors justified their capture not only by their desire to seize others’ territory and enslave the people, but they also put forward slogans about liberating nations and people that inhabit the lands which Hitler hoped to capture,” Odarchenko told the crowd.”

Video of the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A05s6GrztbQ#t=136

Note what happens about two minutes in, when the mother and small child knock the mic out of his hands.


16 posted on 05/10/2014 9:00:01 AM PDT by tcrlaf (Q)
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To: Mariner

Not to mention Ukraine is blocading and cut off water supply.
Nice way to win hearts and minds, on par with tanks and choppers in E Ukraine.


17 posted on 05/10/2014 9:02:16 AM PDT by wetphoenix
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To: Mariner

“There’s rationing in Crimea because Russia has some real logistical problems without a land bridge.”

That is where the report last weekend about moving heavy pontoon bridging equipment from all over Russia comes in to play. Everything is bottle-necking at the crossing.

They plan to open a pontoon bridge across the Kerch Straights for light vehicles, while reserving the ferry space for heavy trucks, buses, and pedestrians.

There was also an article about the Ferry company trying to lease another ferry from Greece a few days ago.


18 posted on 05/10/2014 9:06:09 AM PDT by tcrlaf (Q)
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To: Mariner
That's not to say we shouldn't keep talking about it...but I'm not sure it applies to the events of today.

I think the point of the argument is that Putin himself was educated by and dedicated to, the same regime that perpetrated the unthinkable barbarities and genocide on Ukraine. Therefore his mind and sensibilities we cannot expect to be what we consider sane and normal.... Putin was raised as, and still is, a barbarian.

It would be as if the Prime Minister of modern Germany was raised a Nazi, and had been a Gestapo officer, and had stated that the fall of the 3rd Reich was the worst catastrophe in the 20th Century.... (this never happened and is unthinkable in post-war Germany). Still, if we imagine that, there's no doubt we would be thinking that such a leader would still be a dangerous heartless Nazi in his heart.

Similarly, Putin--ex-high-ranking KGB officer--is still a Russian Nationalist (if not necessarily a Communist), raised with barbarous and brutal totalitarian assumptions on the role of government--who would no-doubt defend Stalin's genocide in Ukraine. In comparison, he's being mild there....

Putin-as-unreformed-barbarian is the real problem.

19 posted on 05/10/2014 9:13:03 AM PDT by AnalogReigns (Real life is ANALOG!)
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To: AnalogReigns
U.S. policymakers, having allowed their wishes to father their thoughts, find Putin incomprehensible. He is a barbarian but not a monster, and hence no Stalin. But he has been coarsened, in ways difficult for civilized people to understand, by certain continuities, institutional and emotional, with an almost unimaginably vicious past. And as Ukraine, a bubbling stew of tensions and hatreds, struggles with its identity and aspirations, Americans should warily remember William Faulkner’s aphorism: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

20 posted on 05/10/2014 9:31:14 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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