25 Friday Apr 2014
Ukraine Is Finally Ramping up Its “Anti-Terrorist” Mission in the East
Speaking before his cabinet on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said, “The world has not yet forgotten World War Two, but Russia already wants to start World War Three.”
07 Monday Apr 2014
Bloomberg: “Ukraine Accuses Russia as Protests Seize Offices in East.” 4/7/2014.
Bloomberg: “Putin Stirs Azeri Angst That Russia Is Set to Extend Sway.” 4/6/2014.
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President Vladimir Putin, condemned by NATO for annexing Crimea, is now defying the U.S. in Syria by sending more and deadlier arms to help Bashar al-Assad score a string of advances against insurgents, military experts say.
Bloomberg. “Putin Defies Obama in Syria as Arms Fuel Assad Resurgence.” 4/3/2014.
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In the middle east, I have for a while characterized the western opposition as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”; for eastern Europe, I now may blurt “Putin-Napoleon” (in lieu of “Putin-Yanukovych”), for the “vertical of power” appears to be spreading horizontally and quickly using predictably feudal (one almost hears, “Deploy the thugs”) methods.
Putin behind the curtain in Syria has reportedly improved the qualities of arms reaching the Assad regime with the intention of discouraging continued resistance in a convincing way. In Ukraine, The Bear has squatted on Crimea and made camp sufficient to throw around some weight:
A new, leaner and meaner Russian Army has been on display in Crimea and war-gaming on the Ukrainian border over the past month or so. Its vanguard is now made up of just a few elite divisions of highly-motivated, well trained, and fully equipped volunteer soldiers, capable of deploying swiftly anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the Kremlin’s command.
Christian Science Monitor. “Russia debuts new, sleek force in Crimea, rattling NATO.” 4/3/2014.
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02 Wednesday Apr 2014
NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation. The present Act reaffirms the determination of NATO and Russia to give concrete substance to their shared commitment to build a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe, whole and free, to the benefit of all its peoples.
27 May. 1997 – Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, France
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Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said earlier he would be satisfied if NATO located two heavy brigades in Poland, said on arrival at the NATO meeting that he would welcome any NATO forces being stationed there.
Germany’s Steinmeier said the basing of a significant NATO force in Poland would not be completely in line with a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation.
“NATO suspends cooperation with Russia over Ukraine crisis” BY ADRIAN CROFT AND SABINE SIEBOLD, BRUSSELS, Reuters, Tue Apr 1, 2014 7:32pm EDT
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. . . Vladimir Putin has been grasping for a narrative that could legitimize a second decade of his rule.
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Yet, as the portrait of Peter the Great hanging in his office testifies, Putin views himself as a modern day czar, finding threats to his empire intolerable. Seeing himself and Russia as one and the same, Putin is a consummate narcissist whose every move is calculated to protect his image and goals, which are severely threatened by the current crisis.
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In 2011, $84 billion of capital fled Russia, and another $33 billion was taken out of the country in the first quarter of 2012, even though the Russian economy is growing and the rest of the world is in a downturn. This money mainly belongs to bureaucrats, siloviki and other mafiosi. These beneficiaries of the mafia state don’t trust their own system, nor do most of them want to live in Russia.
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Putin’s Russia: where is it going to go?
Most unfortunately, Putin’s Russia has already gone to Syria where it will be associated with Bashar al-Assad’s brutal repression of what began as a children’s protest representing a true people’s revolution. True to form in that theater, political ingenuity and a sociopath’s sadism have managed to cast as the main players Assad’s secular-leaning kleptocracy against a motley cloud of al-Qaeda associates with, this from a refugee of the war, the complicity of the regime.
Leave The People of Syria out of it: Putin-Assad-Khamenei have rigged the war that makes them before their own eyes glorious.
Next smart move: responding to another people’s revolution against authoritarian kleptocracy, Putin’s Russia, hiding in insignia-stripped uniforms behind a mighty fortress of unfounded assertions about Ukraine, has planted its field boots in Crimea.
No news there.
However, the swipe of the Bear’s paws in the middle east and in eastern Europe, the essential anomic character of Putin’s calculations on top of ambition, and whatever personal demons might have assailed him on the way to becoming the Godfather of Post-Soviet Russia, have ensured the Russian president’s enmity with the world itself — and the world would seem to be waking to the necessity of defending its interests.
BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology”.
Gregory, Paul Roderick. “Want Putin’s Attention on Ukraine? Follow His Money.” Forbes, March 3, 2014.
Kasparov, Gary. “On Ukraine, Obama’s Munich Moment.” Time Magazine, April 1, 2014.
Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the NPT.
Pro-west propaganda on LiveLeak: “Vladimir Putin: The Last Emperor” – 8/25/2013.
Remnick, David. “Putin’s Nightingales.” The New Yorker, April 2, 2014.
Reporters Without Borders. “Russia”.
RT. “Russian Duma denounces Black Sea Fleet deal with Ukraine.” March 31, 2014.
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24 Monday Mar 2014
I’ve been trying to locate a really good article I read about the subject without much luck… Putin is done with the Ukraine. I do not think Russia is going to do anything beyond annexation of the Crimea. The reason: Because the Crimea is a special case legally. (1) The Crimea was given illegally by Nakita Khruschev to the Ukraine in 1954, without any authorization by the Russians in Crimea or from the Duma. It’s worth noting that only 13 members of the Secretariat voted to this, the other 14 were simply absent. (2) As a compromise, the Crimea became an autonomous Russian Region within Ukraine and its constitution stated as such. The means the Crimea could, at any time, vote and rejoin Russia, which is what happened. (3) The propaganda from the EU and the USA and NATO trying to characterize Russian behavior as illegal is a lie. There are treaties between Russia and Ukraine in 1991, 1994, 2004, and 2007 which make everything that has happened perfectly legal within the law – and in 1999 the World Court in the Hague, responding to a question, stated that any people, exercizing self-determination, can quit one state and join another legally.
“FTAC” — “From the Awesome Conversation” (on Facebook).
“Elena Elena” — A Facebook friend and writer of the above quoted passage.
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With the arrival of common broadband, access to the English-language editions for foreign newspapers, blogging software, and social networks — basic ingredients — any English reading and writing Everyman lucky enough to have the lifestyle, technology, and time could travel by armchair around the world and through its war zones with unprecedented freedom.
So I, you, and we have done as much.
We have seen it all!
But, perhaps, we haven’t seen it at all at all.
As elsewhere, the devils in history are in the details of events, and while hopscotching from revolution to terror, from the diplomacy of the hour to the heart wrenching atrocity of the day, one may discover missing the clear, accurate, and complete intimacy with story that comes with specialization.
How difficult might such specialization be here in mid-flight?
Here’s the step-off for recent events by way of the Modern Broadbanded Everyman’s Wikipedia entry:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine. Independence was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea.[17] 54% of the Crimean voters supported independence with a 60% turnout (in Sevastopol 57% supported independence).[18] The percentage of the total Crimean electorate that had voted for Ukrainian independence in the referendum was 37%.[19] In 1994, the legal status of Crimea as part of Ukraine was backed up by Russia, who pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a memorandum signed in 1994, also signed by the US and UK.[20][21]
This new situation led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised. In August 1991, Yuriy Meshkov established the Republican Movement of Crimea which was registered on 19 November.[20]
On 2 September 1991, the National Movement of Crimean Tatars appealed to the V Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies in Russia demanding the program how to return the deported Tatar population back to Crimea. Based on the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (the Crimean parliament) on 26 February 1992, the Crimean ASSR was renamed the Republic of Crimea.[22] The Crimean parliament proclaimed self-government on 5 May 1992.[23][22] (which was yet to be approved by a referendum to be held 2 August 1992[clarification needed Did the referendum happen, or was it cancelled?][24]) and passed the first Crimean constitution the same day.[24] On 6 May 1992 the same parliament inserted a new sentence into this constitution that declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine.[24]
Huh?
As a Wikipedia section note tells, the above passage might be too detailed.
Be that as it may, what it also tells is how time may be needed to read, sift, and reflect on descriptions of events, of the evidence of events, until they make sense, the rhetoric and actions of so many conflicted parties tumbling finally into place in an historian’s mind in a way less ambiguous than may be perceived in a hurry.
Add this commonplace too: nothing beats being there.
The armchair bobbing on the foam of the information deluge and short form Wikitype “learnin'” might not suffice for accurate and reliable comprehension.
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24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Crimea – Reminder – “In Ukraine Crisis, a Broader Struggle for Influence”
“For 23 years after 1991, Russia has been treated consciously or subconsciously as defeated in the Cold War,” said Dmitry Kosyrev, a writer and political commentator with the RIA Novosti news agency in Moscow. “Russia has not accepted this mentality. We have something to say. We have not only interest, but experience. We are not a defeated country in the Cold War; we are something separate like India, like China.”
Mr. Kosyrev added, “Not talking to us, not accepting our point of view, that’s exactly what brought Europe and the United States to the crisis in Ukraine.”
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Land Grabs in Retrospect – “Think Russia’s land grab is unique? Think again. “
As Turkey was grabbing Cyprus, Morocco snatched the massive and resource-rich Western Sahara — like Russia’s Crimea move, in a swift action that did not result in the firing of a shot.
3/24/2014
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
From Russia with Smarts (3-14-2014) — “Why America doesn’t understand Putin”
Sovietology may be as defunct as the Soviet Union itself. But the need for a dedicated and deep understanding of Russia — especially the motives and machinations emanating from the Kremlin — is as critical as ever.
23 Sunday Mar 2014
The officially controlled phase of glasnost began the examination of “blank pages” in Soviet history. Literary journals filled up with long-suppressed works by writers such as Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, and Andrey Platonov. Newspapers and magazines carried stories of Stalin-era acts of repression, concentration camps, and mass graves. The works of Marxist theoretician Nikolay Bukharin, shot in 1938 for alleged rightist deviation, appeared. By revealing communist party crimes against the Soviet peoples, and the peasants in particular, glasnost further undermined Soviet federalism and contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Data as of July 1996
Russia-Glasnost – Mongabay.com.
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RIA Novosti is part of a massive effort by Russia to build and project to the world an image of a country where the economy is booming and democracy is developing. The campaign is designed to counter what the government and many people here see as unrelenting and unfair Western criticism of declining political freedoms under President Vladimir Putin, who is preparing to hand over his post, but perhaps little of his power, after the election last Sunday of his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
Russia Pumps Tens of Millions Into Burnishing Image Abroad – 3/6/2008.
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Anyone who has watched Russia’s English-language propaganda channel RT over the past 10 months would have learned that in Syria, foreign-funded terrorists, Israeli operatives, and American intelligence agents are attempting to destabilize a benevolent, popular autocrat.
Russia’s International News Channel RT Warps the Truth About the Syrian Uprising – Tablet Magazine – 2/13/2012.
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1. So on Saturday, RT used all kinds of chyrons to explain the situation in Crimea. For example: The Russian military is a “stabilizing force for Ukraine.”
14 Insane Moments From RT’s Coverage Of The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine – 3/3/2014.
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The job quickly began to seem strange. The editing process was multilayered: “First you have somebody who’s a native English speaker, usually British,” Bivens said. This person edits the script for clarity and tightness. “Then you have a Russian and they make sure that it fits whatever narrative they want it to fit.”
How The Truth Is Made At Russia Today – 3/13/2014.
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It’s been a busy few weeks for Vladimir Putin. In the last month, the Russian president has hosted the Olympic Games, invaded a neighboring country and massed troops along its border. Back in Moscow, the Kremlin has cranked up the volume of hysterical anti-Western propaganda to a roar while cracking down on the last vestiges of the free media.
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While filming in Ukraine over the past several weeks, I was struck by how the revolution that began in February has become a full-scale propaganda war, a surreal throwback to Soviet times, with both sides digging in and stoking old, bitter biases and grievances.
In the battle for the future of Ukraine, control of the media could be just as important as the military bases and government buildings.
Inside Ukraine’s Propaganda War | Foreign Affairs / Defense | FRONTLINE | PBS – 3/14/2014.
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Vladimir Putin and the Lessons of 1938 – Garry Kasparov – POLITICO Magazine – Gary Kasparov – 3/16/2014.
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The news director, who was Russian, pitched the network as an alternative news source that dared to challenge conventions. “Question More” was the network’s slogan.
I Was Putin’s Pawn – Elizabeth Wahl – POLITICO Magazine – 3/21/2014.
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Language as a culturally-invented survival technology would seem to separate cultures into one of two channels: Channel One: Lies, Loyalty, Power, Subjugation; Channel Two: Truth Telling, Uncertainty, Independence, Dignity.
Which have you chosen?
The language behavior of Putin-Assad-Khamenei would seem to be that of the autocrat / malignant narcissist whose every effort seeks the manipulation of his targets, and what works, works: the censoring and intimating of other and critical and inquiring voices; the dissemination of lies, patronage, and propaganda. Masked by passionate nationalism, these have embarked on criminal adventures from their first words.
What it means to be Crimean Russian in Russia (Today) is to be subjugated to the story whipped up by Colonel President Emperor Putin because in the colonel president emperor’s world, that is the only story that matters.
What it would mean to be Crimean Russian in Crimea would be to live in the other world, distinctly Russian, independent of mind, and free of dictatorship.
Other Ukrainians, some with Ukrainian nationalism in mind, know that Ukraine is not Russia and they are not Russian, and they will not stand the impositions of Russian state-sponsored mafia (how else to describe the deposed president Viktor Yanukovych?) on their newly liberated and western-aligning state, but Ukrainian Russians may feel the tug of divided loyalties, and at that fork might ask a question:
Is Putin Russia?
Is Russia Putin?
Are autocracy and subjugation inherently Russian?
In particular, in Crimea, for the Russians of the peninsula, are autocracy and subjugation (their own to Putin’s manner of doing business as illustrated by what has happened to RT since Glasnost) inherently irresistible?
If Crimea’s Russians have been thinking about their wallets more than their freedoms, including the freedom to discern from an open and free media a true state of affairs in foreign policy an trade, they may be surprised to find themselves Ukrainian after all.
If not, they will live in the bubble atop the vertical of power, i.e., the world according to Russia Today – RT, Kremlin invented: Kremlin approved.
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Eastern Ukrainian city divided over Russia ties – YouTube – AFP – 3/19/2014.
Additional Reference
McFaul to quit as U.S. Russia ambassador after conclusion of Sochi Olympic Games – The Washington Post – 2/4/2014.
Putin on the Couch – Susan B. Glasser – POLITICO Magazine – 3/13/2014.
Crimean War redux, with Putin as czar – The Globe and Mail – 3/18/2014.
Who Is Putin? | Return Of The Czar | FRONTLINE | PBS
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BackChannels 