2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

Status
Not open for further replies.

chuck731

Banned Idiot
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

I think it is a brave man that writes Vladimar Putin's obituary ahead of time!

I suspect that very little has caught the Kremlin by surprise. The fact that they released the transcript of one embarrassing conversation between Nuland and Pyatt, does ask the question as to what other conversations were they party too?

The fact remains that the events of today are contrary to an agreement signed by all the parties yesterday and endorsed by the outside powers. Yanukovych has denounced the moves today as a coup and seems to have known in advance that it was coming and so moved himself and his administration to the East of the Country.

I suspect that the plan was to impeach and arrest a la Morsi and to make the coup and fait accompli. Clearly this is not how it has turned out and now the Eastern Regions, although stressing their commitment to national integrity, are not going to listen to the dictates from the opposition in Kiev.

Finally as Sochi comes to a close, Mr Putin will back to business as usual. The Strongest part of the nation is still Pro Russian, the legitimate President of the Ukraine is still at large and the backers of the Opposition are going to have to do a lot of explaining as to why they have torn up their own agreement.

I think this is far from over and the next phase is going to be very interesting indeed!



I don't think it take courage to say even Putin can't escape the consequences of losing the most important part of the former Soviet Union outside of Russia herself, and the oldest and most long standing part of the Russian empire.

If Russia loses Ukraine, Russia would effectively return to the same status she had after the crushing peace of Breast-Litovsk in 1918, except now there is no prospect of her main tormentor also going down in defeat within 8 month, nor strong pant up political pressure at home to instill a fundamentally new regime with popular and ideological appeal.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

I don't think it take courage to say even Putin can't escape the consequences of losing the most important part of the former Soviet Union outside of Russia herself, and the oldest and most long standing part of the Russian empire.

If Russia loses Ukraine, Russia would effectively return to the same status she had after the crushing peace of Breast-Litovsk in 1918, except now there is no prospect of her main tormentor also going down in defeat within 8 month, nor strong pant up political pressure at home to instill a fundamentally new regime with popular and ideological appeal.

Well...maybe not ALL of the Ukraine, the eastern half of it are still loyal to Russia.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

Putin is a Survivor. He will find a way to use the situation, even if Eastern Ukraine becomes a Russian Protectorate and he engineers a conflict demanding Russian intervention. Remember the Russian Fleet has a Naval base in Sevastopol. The home of the Black Sea Fleet. That's Something Putin And Russia are not likely to surrender.
 

delft

Brigadier
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

The vote in the Ukrainian parliament reminds me of an episode in the history of Serbia when a new government was formed that extradited ex-president Milosevich to The Hague. That government only lived about a week but no doubt the members of parliament were well paid.
 

chuck731

Banned Idiot
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

Putin is a Survivor. He will find a way to use the situation, even if Eastern Ukraine becomes a Russian Protectorate and he engineers a conflict demanding Russian intervention. Remember the Russian Fleet has a Naval base in Sevastopol. The home of the Black Sea Fleet. That's Something Putin And Russia are not likely to surrender.

Russian armed intervention would be an extremely dicy proposition. It would certainly be bloody, and it's economic and diplomatic repercussions for Russia would be terrible even if Russia wins.

The actual combat efficiency of Russian forces is an unknown, and I strongly suspect it not high. Russia would face a motivated and reasonably well equipped Ukrainian defense. So most importantly there is absolutely no garranty Russia would win. If Russia intervene and fail to win decisively, it would lead to the end of Russian presence on the Black Sea and foreclose any future Russian potential to have any role in the Balkans or the Mediterranean. It would give the United States an unsurpassable opportunity to permanently lodge substantial American and NATO ground and air forces, to say nothing of ballistic missile defense, in Ukraine.

Losing Ukraine would mean Russia stops being a major power. Intervening in Ukraine and losing means Russian would not be a power of any kind, but just a defeated nation.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

22 February 2014 Last updated at 16:18 ET
Crowds hail Ukraine ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been hailed by thousands of opposition supporters in Independence Square in the heart of Kiev after being freed from detention.
She has suffered from a back injury and addressed them from her wheelchair.
"You are heroes, you are the best of Ukraine," she told the vast crowd before breaking down in tears.
She was speaking after President Viktor Yanukovych had left the capital Kiev and MPs voted to remove him.
But she warned that the protesters should not think their job was done.
"Until you finish this job and until we travel all the way, nobody has the right to leave," she said. "Because nobody could do it - not other countries, nobody - could do what you have done. We've eliminated this cancer, this tumour."
But while she received large cheers from many in the audience, she does not enjoy universal support among the opposition, says the BBC's David Stern in Kiev.
Before she went into prison, her popularity ratings were dropping and many Ukrainians blame her in part for the chaos of the post-Orange Revolution years, or see her as a member of Ukraine's corrupt elite.
Dozens of people walked away in disgust when she appeared on the stage, shouting that she did not represent them, the BBC's Tim Wilcox in Independence Square reports.
Tymoshenko was freed following a vote by parliament on Friday paving the way for her release.
She was sentenced to seven years in jail in 2011 after a controversial verdict on her actions as prime minister.
Earlier on Saturday, she left the hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where she had been held under prison guard, and flew to Kiev.
She told journalists at Kiev airport that those behind violence "must be punished", the Interfax agency reports.
On Thursday, the bloodiest day of recent unrest, at least 21 protesters and one policeman died.
Ukraine's parliament voted on Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovych and hold a presidential election on 25 May, completing a radical transformation in the former Soviet republic.
The parliamentary vote came after police stopped guarding presidential buildings, allowing protesters in, and parliament made new high-level appointments.
Mr Yanukovych said events in Kiev were a "coup" and vowed not to stand down.
He compared the actions of the opposition to the rise to power of the Nazis in 1930s Germany and claimed MPs from his party had been "beaten, pelted with stones and intimidated".
The opposition is now in effective control of the capital Kiev, with Mr Yanukovych in Kharkiv, near the Russian border, after travelling there late on Friday night.
The Interfax news agency reported parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov as saying Mr Yanukovych had been stopped by border police in an attempt to flee to Russia and was now somewhere in the Donetsk region.
Fiery orator
Tymoshenko's release has been a key demand of the protest movement.
The glamorous, fiery orator who helped lead the Orange Revolution - Ukraine's revolt against a controversial election in 2004 - was convicted of criminally exceeding her powers when she agreed a gas deal with Russia which was seen to have disadvantaged Ukraine.
She has always insisted the charges were untrue, inspired by Mr Yanukovych, the man she helped oust in 2004 who returned to defeat her in the 2010 presidential election.
The European Union had demanded her release as one of the conditions of the EU-Ukraine trade pact that President Yanukovych rejected last year - triggering the protests that led to the current crisis.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso welcomed Tymoshenko's release.
In April 2013 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that her pre-trial detention had been "arbitrary and unlawful", though the judges did not rule on the legality of her actual conviction for the 2009 gas deal.
They did not explicitly support her claim that her detention was politically motivated, nor did they accept her allegations of physical maltreatment and medical neglect in prison.
A pact signed on Friday by Mr Yanukovych and opposition leaders now seems to have been overtaken by events.
The deal followed several days of violence in which dozens of people died in a police crackdown on months of protest. It called for the restoration of the 2004 constitution and the formation of a national unity government.
The agreement failed to end the protests overnight with huge crowds remaining in the Maidan on Saturday calling for Mr Yanukovych's resignation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the deal had been "sharply degraded by opposition forces' inability or lack of desire" to respect it and accused "illegal extremist groups" of taking control of Kiev, Reuters reports.
The protests first erupted in late November when President Yanukovych rejected a landmark association and trade deal with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia.
and so the drama continues
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

Russian armed intervention would be an extremely dicy proposition. It would certainly be bloody, and it's economic and diplomatic repercussions for Russia would be terrible even if Russia wins.

The actual combat efficiency of Russian forces is an unknown, and I strongly suspect it not high. Russia would face a motivated and reasonably well equipped Ukrainian defense. So most importantly there is absolutely no garranty Russia would win. If Russia intervene and fail to win decisively, it would lead to the end of Russian presence on the Black Sea and foreclose any future Russian potential to have any role in the Balkans or the Mediterranean. It would give the United States an unsurpassable opportunity to permanently lodge substantial American and NATO ground and air forces, to say nothing of ballistic missile defense, in Ukraine.

Losing Ukraine would mean Russia stops being a major power. Intervening in Ukraine and losing means Russian would not be a power of any kind, but just a defeated nation.
I think that would depend on what the current standing of the Ukrainian army units is, If Large portions side with the Pro European faction and secure the Military bases of the Ukraine then yes. but if the Pro Russian Faction can secure command, then the Russian forces could be welcomed. at least in the East and south. The Current American Administration is not likely to move against Russian forces. Obama wants to Earn his undeserved Nobel Prize that means he will Bark but he's afraid of doing anything that could place American blood on the Ground. The EU might make some moves but it's busy in Africa. Germany is the heart of the EU today, That mean Merkel And I don't see her calling for blood.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

My own documentation of the 2014 Maidan Revolt in the Ukraine. Pictorial intensive:


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


This situation is still very fluid. Although the Ukrainian Parliament has now impeached the President, the Russians are still very involved, are close at hand, have strong interests in the borders of the Black Sea there, and have a significant ethnic Russian population there. It would not be the first time (and will not be the last) where the presence of a large ethnic population of a large adjoining power becomes the pretext for more involvement. And we in the U.S. have (IMHO) a very weak international face on.

A few photos from the site (a lot more at that site, 75 all together):


2014-Unrkaine-004.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-007.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-015.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-018.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-019.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-028.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-030.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-032.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-034.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-035.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-036.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-038.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-041.jpg


2014-Unrkaine-071.jpg


That last pic is of a group of government police who went over whole sale to the protestor side yesterday.

It's been a pitched fight that went from shoving, batons, sticks, bricks, Molotov cocktails to shooting between protestors/citizens and the government riot police there in Kiev.
 
Last edited:

chuck731

Banned Idiot
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

I think that would depend on what the current standing of the Ukrainian army units is, If Large portions side with the Pro European faction and secure the Military bases of the Ukraine then yes. but if the Pro Russian Faction can secure command, then the Russian forces could be welcomed. at least in the East and south. The Current American Administration is not likely to move against Russian forces. Obama wants to Earn his undeserved Nobel Prize that means he will Bark but he's afraid of doing anything that could place American blood on the Ground. The EU might make some moves but it's busy in Africa. Germany is the heart of the EU today, That mean Merkel And I don't see her calling for blood.

My observation of what has transpired suggests to me pro-west Ukrainians hates Russia and Putin with an feverish intensity that greatly exceeds of the fear of ethnic Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians for being dragooned into the EU and thus lose the position they might have had under any pro-Russian administration in Minsk.

For ethnic Russians, fear of the unknown future in EU and Ukrainian history of pogroms against disfavored minorities are there, but not overwhelming. For pro-Western Ukrainians, the contempt for any future with Russia and the lust for the opportunity to end 300 years of Russian domination which at times have been as brutals as any foreign occupation in history of Europe is overwhelming.

So I think very few pro-Russian Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in Ukraine are really ready to shed their own blood on behalf of Russia. On the other hand, a great number of Ukrainians will be willing to shed their own blood to defeat Russia.

So I think any Russian military intervention will receive little substantive material backing from pro-Russian faction if it looks like pro-western faction will fight. I am willing to garranty the pro-western faction will be willing to fight if Russia intervenes.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!

Lets just hope that Ukraine doesn't turn into another Syria or Libya civil war.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top