War in Ukraine/Med Cruising

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

I edited and added some more info in that big post of mine with the map of Donbas.

indeed, thank you , most useful. the next week or so will no doubt provide some clarity as we see what the Ukrainians do , but I suspect they are extremely reluctant to be drawn into a serious shooting war with Russia

[goboatingnow]

It's pretty difficult NOT to signal these movements in advance now, with all the satellite imagery.

Recognising the occupied territories is a way to move Russia's military deeper and closer towards Ukrainian territory somehow 'legimately and officially' - see, we are not invading, we are sending 'peacekeepers'...

what I meant was that Putin has signed an order allowing troops to enter the area, but as yet it seems nothing is actually happening, I suspect he is in effect throwing the ball back to the Ukrainians in a quite public manner. A kind off, " Ok bud, Im going to do this now what are you going to do "

I tend to ignore all this " peacekeeping rhetoric", the number of countries subdued or destroyed under the guise of saving them from themselves is quite long

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

what I meant was that Putin has signed an order allowing troops to enter the area, but as yet it seems nothing is actually happening, I suspect he is in effect throwing the ball back to the Ukrainians in a quite public manner. A kind off, " Ok bud, Im going to do this now what are you going to do "

As far as I am aware additional Russian troops and equipment is already advancing in the occupied territories. I'll try to link to something later, it's 0500 in the morning in Ukraine so there will be more local news stories as they awake up on Tuesday morning.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I tend to ignore all this " peacekeeping rhetoric", the number of countries subdued or destroyed under the guise of saving them from themselves is quite long

Yes, sure, 'peacekeepers' in name only but it gives Russia another excuse.

Remember, in these areas 'oppression and genocide' is supposedly taking place against Russian speakers - at least according to Moscow. And it was the same in Crimea too, before it was 'saved'. And the same in Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgia) and Transnistria (Moldova), and the same... well, you get the idea.

If anyone actually goes to eastern Ukraine (I don't mean to the war zone, it's a big country) then you will find millions of Ukrainian citizens living there, and happily speaking Russian during their everyday life and not oppressed for it in any way at all.

Any suggestions of 'oppression and genocide' in the Russian speaking regions eastern Ukrainian are absolutely FALSE.

Not to mention that most of the citizens are bilingual and freely switch between Russian and Ukrainian and vice versa, as well as use words and phrases from one language when speaking in the other.

It was all never any problem, until Moscow made it into one.

[goboatingnow]

Any suggestions of 'oppression and genocide' in the eastern Ukrainian Russian speaking regions are absolutely FALSE.

Oh I think no more then " weapons of mass destruction" was exposed as a complete ruse for an invasion , we can equally put " oppressed Russian speakers " in the same camp.

In any conflict each side hypes up grievances, demonises the other side and calls God to their side etc . Nothing new here unfortunately . Lets leave such rhetoric , bombast and jingoism to our " leaders " and those on all sides who no doubt will be spouting such guff over the airwaves not to mention acting as a useful distraction to their domestic failings.

we can instead focus on the abstract tactics, and where all this might end up

[goboatingnow]

As far as I am aware additional Russian troops and equipment is already advancing in the occupied territories. I'll try to link to something later, it's 0500 in the morning in Ukraine so there will be more local news stories as they awake up on Tuesday morning.

Thanks, unbiased news outlets, if there is such a thing ,have not claimed troops are actually deploying

[goboatingnow]

Zelensky .....


To Ukrainian citizens, he said Ukraine would deal with the crisis calmly and confidently, and he thanked the entire nation for their cool-headed reaction to the latest developments. He assured citizens there was no reason for a “sleepless night.”

"In a six-minute address to his nation, which began just after 2 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Zelenskiy stood in front of a map of Ukraine, showing the entire country, including Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014. He urged citizens to remain calm, saying there was “no reason for a sleepless night” and signaled that Kyiv had no intention of responding militarily, which could give Putin pretext for a devastating attack."

Zelensky doesn't sound like a man getting ready for a fight !, Putin has called this I think. All those Javelin fans here may be disappointed

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Lets leave such rhetoric , bombast and jingoism to our " leaders " and those on all sides who no doubt will be spouting such guff over the airwaves not to mention acting as a useful distraction to their domestic failings.

Agreed. It's terrible that this is being used to divide people.

One only needs to take english as an example - freely spoken in such diverse places as the USA (well, kind of ), New Zealand, or Malta - but does it make any of those people English, or Pro England, or at risk of Genocide or Oppression?

It's all quite ridiculous when thinking about it like that.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Agreed. It's terrible that this is being used to divide people.

One only needs to take english as an example - freely spoken in such diverse places as the USA (well, kind of ), New Zealand, or Malta - but does it make any of those people English, or Pro England, or at risk of Genocide or Oppression?

It's all quite ridiculous when thinking about it like that.

no but the issue of separatists and separatism will always be a part of Ukraine, There is and has always been a Russian leaning element , I mean I live on a geographical entity equally divided by such separatism, even though historically no such separate entity ever existed .

Often its the only way to resolve these conflicts , the creation of a separate state , unpalatable as it may be.

I don't really see any option for Ukraine anyway. The terrority is lost as they have no real effective way to recover it. Sanctions may hurt Russia , but not enough to effect change in this area . ( I met Iraqi families in Turkey , who simply said that sanctions don't effect governments but can have devastating effects on ordinary families , in this case they couldn't get the necessary medicines )

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

...the issue of separatists and separatism will always be a part of Ukraine, There is and has always been a Russian leaning element...

Apart from a small group of hard line Ukrainian nationalists (which tend to exist in every country - France has it's National Front, rebranded now to be more friendly... most of Europe has such groups) here is the funny thing - in general ALL of Ukraine was Russian leaning in the past.

I'm simplifying a bit, but this only started changing on a large scale when Russia took actions against Ukraine, when Russia tried to stop Ukraine following it's independant path, and when Russia annexed territory and killed Ukrainians - so in the last 10 years in general.

And even now, most people in Ukrainian will reply that they do not especially dislike Russia, or Russian people - they dislike the politics and actions of the Russian government and of President Putin.

[atoll]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

At this time there is nothing really to react to, except for moral outrage, since nothing has materially changed on the ground, except more occupying russian soldiers (sorry! 'peacekeepers'), in already occuppied territories.

Nothing has (yet) changed in Ukrainian controlled territories.



Correct, I think in general this is actually a help to Ukraine rather than a hinderance. And this actually gives Ukraine an excuse to walk away, even if there will remain a technical demand for these territories to be returned.

Not much changes, those territories have already been lost both physically and ideologically for years already, because most of the pro ukrainian citizens that lived there previously were either killed, are still held captive and being tortured and raped (yes it's still happening, women too) - or they moved to Ukrainian controlled territory years ago for their safety.

The more important question is what will come next? Here's some thoughts:

Madness Or Method? Why Putin Recognized The Russia-Backed Separatists In Ukraine
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukrai.../31715074.html

The most interesting of these to me is that 'the separatists claim the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in their entirety, not just the smaller chunks of territory that they hold, so recognition carries the implicit threat of a push to take over the rest of the two provinces.'

The separatists only hold about 30% of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (states) - collectively known as 'Donbas' for the purpose of this discussion - and Russia may well decided that as part of recognising them they also recognise that those lands are actually 'occupied' by Ukraine (ridiculous I know) and that they have the right to 'liberate' them.

That sounds to me more like President Putin's style and would be a more substantial strategic gain, not to mention would also include the important south eastern export seaport town of Mariupol (on the Azov sea) over which there has been heavy fighting in the past.

There is also significant business infrastructure in this area, steel mills, etc, which would be both a strategic as well as an export loss for Ukraine. Russia has already constrained Ukrainian exports from this port after the new Crimea bridge was built (purposely too low for big ships) and after further constraints on sea traffic in general.

And this then leads into a more easily established land bridge to Crimea too.

Here's a map of the situation I'm describing. It's a few years old but is sufficient for general understanding:

I would predict that the incursion into the Dombass is just a diversion,the main force will come from the Belgorod,Valyuki area in the north and push south and meet with an amphibious force landing near Berdyans'k, Zaporizhia maripol area in the south from the azov sea who will push north in the lightly defended areas to the west of donesk and luhansk in a classic pincer movement,encircling the defending Ukranian forces along the Dombass border.

Along with paratroops the mobile russian forces only have to travel 200km to meet up in the middle,thereby capturing a large part of the Ukranian army who can be used as hostages if there are attacks from the west.

mopping up inbetween done by ground troops landing furthr to the east in the south and from the north east of dombass were there are already reserve divisions on the russian side of the border.

could be over in days and fairly bloodless

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by atoll

I would predict that the incursion into the Dombass is just a diversion,the main force will come from the Belgorod,Valyuki area in the north and push south and meet with an amphibious force landing near Berdyans'k, Zaporizhia maripol area in the south from the azov sea who will push north in the lightly defended areas to the west of donesk and luhansk in a classic pincer movement,encircling the defending Ukranian forces along the Dombass border.

That's certaintly an possibility.

Originally Posted by atoll

could be over in days and fairly bloodless

That's probably unlikely.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Apart from a small group of hard line Ukrainian nationalists (which tend to exist in every country - France has it's National Front, rebranded now to be more friendly... most of Europe has such groups) here is the funny thing - in general ALL of Ukraine was Russian leaning in the past.

I'm simplifying a bit, but this only started changing on a large scale when Russia took actions against Ukraine, when Russia tried to stop Ukraine following it's independant path, and when Russia annexed territory and killed Ukrainians - so in the last 10 years in general.

And even now, most people in Ukrainian will reply that they do not especially dislike Russia, or Russian people - they dislike the politics and actions of the Russian government and of President Putin.

This all very true, and important.


My only quibble is that the ultrantionalist elements in Ukraine are far larger a more influential than the NF in France. You'd never see a photo of a Frenchpresident smiling and hugging people wearing swastikas ans SS deaths heads.


You are absolutely correct that thee has never been any genocide (give me a break) or oppression of "Russians" in Ukraine. In fact, in most parts of the country it's usually hard to even say who is Russian - there is not such a clear ethnic line, and most families are mixed anyway. However, at various times, ultranationalists from the west have managed to get through legislaton repressing the language, cancelling Russian language schools, forbidding local governments to conduct business in Russian (even in regions where no one speaks Ukrainian), crap like that. Really stupid and nasty policy which greatly undermines the creation of a unified and harmonious nation . A clear proof that we care much less about democracy than about tweaking the Russians is that we happily put such people into power. We give billions of dollars to the small element of society who actually wanted conflict wih Russia. The very definition of "stirring up trouble"

[Island Time O25]

I am really flabbergasted by how much Dockhead fell for Russian propaganda regarding Ukrainian far right. They have been effectively marginalized for the past 8-9 years and even before then were a tiny slice of politicql landscape. Except in Russian propaganda circles.

Also demonization of Bandera goes back to the Stalinist times when he was "Nazified" by the Soviet propaganda in retaliation for his unswerving fight for Ukrainian independence. Very few of those criticising him as being pro-Nazi today know that he spent most of WWII as a prisoner in a Nazi extermination camp. So much for being a "Nazi sympathizer".

Even his alleged anti-Semitism is now being revisited by neutral historians in view of his ideological 2nd in command being a Jew. He was certainly virulently against Bolshevik commissars (who were inflicting policies of genocide on Ukrainians at the time) whose ranks unfortunately at the time were comprised of many (majority?) Jews.

[billnz]

It was interesting seeing Klaus Shlob of the WEP say Putin was a member of the young leaders group WEP had groomed to ;Infiltrate' (His words) several Governments around the world , Also Trudeau, Jusinta(NZ) , Murtal (Germany) Etc. Could it be a disstraction to help Canadas Trucking protest move away from the worlds head lines ?? Just asking as there does seem to be a lot of conflicting harritives from both sides .

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

I am really flabbergasted by how much Dockhead fell for Russian propaganda regarding Ukrainian far right. They have been effectively marginalized for the past 8-9 years and even before then were a tiny slice of politicql landscape. Except in Russian propaganda circles.

Sorry, you are just truly deluded about this. One more time: the actual Nazi party, Svoboda, had THREE ministers in the first post-coup government, including the Deputy Prime Minister.

Svoboda's manifesto at one point contained this:

“To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South…we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalise the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia...completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties....”

Svoboda was at one time the leading political party in West Ukraine, and was at the center of the U.S.-appointed post-coup Yatsenyuk government.

The Azov Batallion militia group, skinheads and all, are still a major force in Ukraine. SS death heads and the Wolf Rune swastika are everwhere.

The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament for more than three years, Andry Paruby, feted by U.S. Senators, was one of the founders of the Social National Party, which later became Svoboda. He said at the founding cermony, that the Social National Party is "the last hope of the white race, of civilization as such." His Mein Kampf style memoir depicts him in Nazi uniform with pistol and wearing the SS style Wolfsangel swastika. The SPEAKER of the Ukrainian parliament.

You can't make this stuff up.

Then there's the C14 group, named after the white power "14 words", Right Sector -- I could go on and on.

I don't believe that the majority of Ukrainians are anti-Semites or support fascism. But with $5 billion of U.S. aid, neo-Nazis and other kinds of fascists and white supremecists ended up at the center of power in Ukraine after the coup we financed. And neo-Nazis have put themselves at the center of the process of the creation of a national identity for Ukrainians. This will not end well. And we Americans are, of course, criminals to finance and support this.

I think with the election of Zelensky, Ukrainians took at least a small step back from. It would be really good if they would go further and take a BIG step back from that.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1GV2TY

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

. . . Also demonization of Bandera goes back to the Stalinist times when he was "Nazified" by the Soviet propaganda in retaliation for his unswerving fight for Ukrainian independence. Very few of those criticising him as being pro-Nazi today know that he spent most of WWII as a prisoner in a Nazi extermination camp. So much for being a "Nazi sympathizer".

Even his alleged anti-Semitism is now being revisited by neutral historians in view of his ideological 2nd in command being a Jew. He was certainly virulently against Bolshevik commissars (who were inflicting policies of genocide on Ukrainians at the time) whose ranks unfortunately at the time were comprised of many (majority?) Jews.

Bandera doesn't need to be demonized -- he is objectively one of the most odious figures of the 20th century, right up there with Goebbels, Dr. Mengele, and Lenin. He was an outspoken fascist, anti-Semite, ardent admirer of Hitler, and Nazi collaborator, and created and led the organization which massacred hundreds of thousands of women and children in Poland, one of the most brutal partisan/terrorist groups in history. These are historical facts, confirmation of which you can find in Bandera's own writings. Bandera and his henchmen were so brutal that even the Nazis had misgivings about him.

The idea that "[Bandera's] alleged anti-Semitism is now revisited by [revisionist] historians" is also pure mythological whitewashing. There are no "neutral historians"; there are frank propagandists like Viatrovich and Volodymyr Serhiichuk who under the aegis of the Institute of National Memory, have systematically rewritten and whitewashed the history of OUN and Bandera, so elaborately as to include even the writing of entire fake memoirs (e.g. the infamous Krensbakh/Kreutzbach forgery), and then there are the actual historians of various civilized nations who know without a doubt that Bandera's OUN massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles, mostly women and children, who have the written records of Bandera's frank statements about ethnic cleansing, racial purity, and the need for mass murder. The historical record is abundantly clear about this. This is what actual historians think: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122778. No one outside of Ukraine with even superficial knowledge of the history of that time takes seriously this almost child-like mythologizing of OUN and Bandera. The whitewashing of this is similar to Holocaust denial, and uses the same techniques and tropes. Ukrainians will never take there place among civilized countries as long as they keep this up.

A good academic paper on this subject can be found here: https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/...e/view/164/160
Published by the University of Pittsburg; written by Per Rudling, professor of Lund University in Sweden, and eminent specialist on nationalism.

The historical facts on Bandera are clear. The World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have harshly condemned and continue to condemn the attempts at whitewashing Bandera and disassociating him from the Holocaust. It really hurts the cause of Ukrainian nationhood and independence, to make a national hero out of such an odious figure -- it's a big mistake. The U.S. will not cover this up forever.

As Rudling wrote:

"Yet, simplistic heroic tales based upon myths, half-truths, and deliberate falsifications have not only resulted in a failure to examine the past. What is worse, distorted, even fictional, narratives are presented as “truth” and scholarly inquiry is derided as enemy propaganda, critical voices are labeled as communists, 'Ukrainophobes,' Putin supporters, or “useful idiots” in the service of Yanukovych and the Kremlin. This logic implies that Ukraine would benefit more from silence, state propaganda, and mythmaking than from critical inquiry. Furthermore, the philo-Semitic narrative of the OUN and UPA constitutes a form of Holocaust 'revisionism'—it denies the OUN-UPA’s involvement in the Holocaust and
divorces it from its fascist and anti-Semitic legacy by means of producing an unrepresentative and factually incorrect version of the organization’s past. It shares with other forms of Holocaust denial the gross exaggeration of relatively insignificant details while it ignores, overlooks, or presents well-documented facts as falsifications. By legitimizing the myths of the extreme right, this narrative has aided the mobilization of the Ukrainian extreme right.

"These myths failed to constitute a basis for national mobilization outside the diaspora and the Ukrainian west. On the contrary, the cult of the OUN-UPA has polarized Ukraine and antagonized its neighbors. The deliberate distortions have complicated the process of historical and political reconciliation among Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles. It has frustrated Poland and the EU and unneccesarily complicated Ukrainian integration into European institutions. Last, but not least, it made it easier for the Kremlin to portray the Ukrainian leadership as irresponsible and politically immature, and to exploit this for political purposes.

"Whereas children—and nationalist politicians—may need fairy tales, the task of the historian is to deconstruct and understand the past. Awareness of the Holocaust, attempts at understanding the mechanisms behind the OUN and UPA’s racist violence, and respect for their victims does not have to be an obstacle to nation-building. On the contrary, an open inquiry of the past is an important component of the building of a liberal democratic society with rule of law, pluralism, and respect for human rights."

Amen to that!