Ukrainian War Developments

sndef888 said:

It still baffles me how badly Yanukovych screwed up the protests. Running away to Russia was just a completely idiotic move.

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He mishandled the whole thing. If he merely just done nothing, the protests would have ended. Kiev through March is quite cold and sitting in tents, beating their drums with nothing happening would have driven them home. Other Ukrainians would have rolled their eyes and pointed out it was pointless to try to change things. Orange Revolution? Failure. Go home and take care of your family.

sndef888 said:

It also showed me why it's important for every country to control foreign interference. The Americans won't bat an eye destroying your country as long as it brings them a little political benefit. Ukrainians got brainwashed to overthrow the government in the name of so called freedom and democracy and look where it left them.

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There is a very important distinction here. The Maidan protestors were demanding was to sign the treaty to place Ukraine on the course to join the EU. The EU is completely outside and separate from NATO. Finland and Sweden are completely outside of NATO but are in the EU. The EU is a different beast entirely from a defense pact. Many english speaking Ukrainians call the Maidan protests the Euromaidan and the name they give it really ought to give a hint as to what they wanted.

At the time of the Maidan protests, a very large majority of Ukrainians did not want to join NATO. The Ukrainians equated NATO with being an American colony! I was told that to my face multiple times. I wonder how the French like being an American colony. (note: tongue firmly in cheek). It was not until the seizure of Crimea and the Donbas War Ukrainians changed their minds.

I don't think the Maidan protest was due to American influence, but this is my opinion based on talking to local people, not data driven. I think the Maidain protest was Ukrainians sick of how things were and tired of being treated like the outcast of Europe. It was fueled by all the stories from the expatriot Ukrainians who were living far better lives, especially in Europe, including in Poland! Right! On! The! Border!

Back to Yanukovich, spraying the protestors with water in freezing temperatures is not crowd control. It is attempting to kill. Ukrainians knew that. They had dealt with the cold and barely stayed warm at all during multiple nasty winters before then: the 90s were really, really bad for Ukraine. So many people struggled for basic necessities then, including staying warm. Even pro Russian Ukrainians I knew poured out hatred at Yanukovich at that time. Those Ukrainians still thought the Maidan protestors were idiots for wasting their time and making a mess in the Maidan; however, it was considered wildly uncalled for and fundamentally wrong.

sndef888 said:

Theoretically speaking, is it possible for Russia to annex ukraine up till the Dnieper River through military force? That seems like a very nice natural boundary but would involve crossing over 250~ km of enemy territory. Does russia have the military strength to accomplish that?

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Since the West, and the U.S. in particular, has ruled out military involvement in Ukraine, the Russians can take the entire Ukraine militarily if they wanted to. Going up to the Dnieper River will invite NATO to come to the other side since the natural barrier allow for a potential cessation of military action between Ukraine and Russia. This is not what the Russians want to see. The real cost has to do with ruling this section with a large Ukrainian population and the West helping to fund an endless insurgency here. It is much better for the Russians to keep Ukraine intact. NATO will never allow a Ukraine always ready to explode to join it. All the Russians want is to keep NATO out of Ukraine.

Actually, in my opinion, Yanukovich's mistake was not cracking down on the protesters hard enough. The whole incident was staged.
He was never all that interested in holding on to power however. And you can see this by what happened both in the Orange Revolution times and this time when he caved in and accepted early elections. You see, the thing is democratic results don't matter to these US puppets. Just like in Venezuela. You outlaw the majority ruler and party and the minority they support all of the sudden becomes an unelected government. The other party is banned from elections. This is US style "democracy".

You had US and EU embassy staff involved in the protests in Ukraine (unlawful under diplomatic corps rules). You had US politicians fly into Ukraine and publicly display their support. In Belarus we had the same "spontaneous" neo-Nazi movements show up. Later on when this stooge who got captured from his plane in Belarus squealed we found out the US had a camp for these people and they even flew them in to Washington DC and he had pictures of it online. These are the same tactics the US used in Ukraine. The US funds several of these stooges. They also fund Navalny and his people, Guaido, among others. They have political schools to train these people under the NED.

I've enjoyed our discourses before, so, please, take the below as polite disagreement and discussion rather than an opinion about you.

gelgoog said:

Actually, in my opinion, Yanukovich's mistake was not cracking down on the protesters hard enough.

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Hitting very hard early was an option. It probably would have worked. He was attempting to negotiate the treaty for whatever reason and get his piece out of it. That made a hard crackdown rather difficult.

Had Yanukovich simply used police without the water cannons to clear the Maidan, he'd have suceeded and no one would have really cared. Like the moron he is, he picked the absolutely wrong way to do it.

gelgoog said:

The whole incident was staged.

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Agree to disagree?

gelgoog said:

He was never all that interested in holding on to power however.

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I think he didn't want power per se. He wanted the money and graft for himself and his cronies that come from being in power. The contents of his 'dacha' definitely provide support. Everyone declared I knew - Ukrainian, European, American and Russian - declared his request for $14B to go ahead with the treaty as Yanukovich asking for an over the top bribe.

gelgoog said:

And you can see this by what happened both in the Orange Revolution times and this time when he caved in and accepted early elections.

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I watched the Orange Revolution live. He did not at first. He was caught with his hands in the cookie jar: multiple news stations were claiming Yanukovich won. Often to the side, newscasters were signalling he had not on live TV. It was wild to watch. After a few cases of ballot stuffing were confirmed, he stepped out of the way.

gelgoog said:

In Belarus we had the same "spontaneous" neo-Nazi movements show up. Later on when this stooge who got captured from his plane in Belarus squealed we found out the US had a camp for these people and they even flew them in to Washington DC and he had pictures of it online.

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I cannot speak to Belarus. There were Neonazis in the militias fighting on the Ukrainian side. I would not be surprised if there were some in the Maidan. When following and talking to folks into Mariupol, when I found out the neonazi militia unit (battalion? regiment?) was down there, I was sick to my stomach. So many people died due to that sick ideology.

Plot twist: are you aware the American ambassador attempted to negotiate having Yatsenyuk installed as Prime Minister during the protests? The intent was to preserve Yanukovich and placate the protestors.

The American diplomatic corps in Kiev (and probably Moscow) were gross screw-ups. They read the situation wrong over and over and over.

The $14B was because Ukraine was basically bankrupt. We can argue about how it happened but that was why he was asking for money back then. After he was kicked out Ukraine got a (much smaller) IMF loan. Russia was willing to provide him the loan he wanted.

Plus I don't need to tell you the typical conditions of IMF loans i.e. dismantling of the economy and allowing foreign enterprises in.

I’m intrigued as to whether Putin has boxed himself in with his demands and military deployments. At this point, if he doesn’t get what he wants, from one or both parties, will he have to engage in some military action in order to not be perceived as having ‘lost’? I suppose that, technically, providing drastically increased close air-support, rocket and missile strikes, and increased and more advanced weaponry to the “rebels” would not constitute a “further invasion”.

gelgoog said:

The $14B was because Ukraine was basically bankrupt. We can argue about how it happened but that was why he was asking for money back then. After he was kicked out Ukraine got a (much smaller) IMF loan. Russia was willing to provide him the loan he wanted.

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I do recall, but it was also wildly clear how little was going to go into the economy proper.

gelgoog said:

Plus I don't need to tell you the typical conditions of IMF loans i.e. dismantling of the economy and allowing foreign enterprises in.

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There are always strings. Russian strings. IMF strings. American strings. Chinese strings. Nothing comes free. These things happen even when Russia or America floats debt unless it's all domestic, just not officially spelled out.

Ukraine breaks my heart. it should be a wildly productive breadbasket. A source of innovation and a major destination for tourism. Instead. Well. The Bite has sucked the place dry.

One thing I hate about these threads is there's an assumption the locales have no agency. It's always Russia or America or China or whatever country pulling the strings rather than what people do or want. Foreign manipulation does happen, and wildly so, foreign invasions, but not ever event is orchestrated by dark masters pulling puppet strings. Sometimes...people are chaotic and do things one would not expect.

Spontaneous revolutions do happen. But those color revolutions were not spontaneous and neither was Euromaidan or the Belarus revolution. When loads of people show up in the street in Belarus using a flag from the post WWI period which was later reused by the Nazi controlled puppet government in Belarus you can definitively see it isn't spontaneous at all. The testimony of the captured guy in Belarus and his published photos tell all really. Belarus was one of the countries which suffered the most from WWII with massive population losses in Nazi bombardment campaign of its major population centers. These guys are a foreign funded operation aimed at mostly kids with no sense of Belarussian history.

You see the same in Ukraine and in fact that guy went into Ukraine and fought with their own local group of Nazis in East Ukraine as preparation for seditious activities in Belarus.

anzha said:

Back to Yanukovich, spraying the protestors with water in freezing temperatures is not crowd control. It is attempting to kill. Ukrainians knew that. They had dealt with the cold and barely stayed warm at all during multiple nasty winters before then: the 90s were really, really bad for Ukraine. So many people struggled for basic necessities then, including staying warm. Even pro Russian Ukrainians I knew poured out hatred at Yanukovich at that time. Those Ukrainians still thought the Maidan protestors were idiots for wasting their time and making a mess in the Maidan; however, it was considered wildly uncalled for and fundamentally wrong.

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If he didn't use water canons, the west would have made up some story about him anyway. He was in a no win situation. I remember reading hat some of the first protestors shot were found to have shot by fellow protestors.

Once you become an enemy of the west everything you do is evil.

sndef888 said:

It still baffles me how badly Yanukovych screwed up the protests. Running away to Russia was just a completely idiotic move.

It also showed me why it's important for every country to control foreign interference. The Americans won't bat an eye destroying your country as long as it brings them a little political benefit. Ukrainians got brainwashed to overthrow the government in the name of so called freedom and democracy and look where it left them.

That's why I fully support the NSL in Hong Kong and think it should in fact have been implemented years ago.

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The story was way deeper and grim about the Maidan.

After the shooting of the protesters in the meantime, until the new regime managed to take control of the institutions there was an investigation about non police snipers whom shoot into the protesters, to move them into the goverment buildings.#

There was sound records as the police snipers / officers talked and tried to identify the shooters on the roofs whom started to kill the protesters.

Yanukovych didn't fleed to Russia because he had any other choice, there was a hunt for him from the organisers of Maidan.
There was a map that showed he tried to cross the border 4-5 different places to Russia , and had to go back because "they" waited for him.

He managed to escape after 5th-6th trial on different border crossings.


Original plan was most likelly to kill him, and another person took over immedietly the presidental power - the biggest failure of the CIA was the inability to murder him on time.

Due to the living but exiled Yanukovych the military lost the high commander, and the whole chain of command of the military get froozen.

It took a good 3-6 month for the CIA to get control above the military, and in meantime they had to organise palamilitary units to kill the prorussian maidans everywhere in east. Videos of west ukrainans slicing the throat of eastern police officers in they home.


In Crimea example whats happened is the Russian commanders went to the Ukrainan ones, asked them to move over the Russian command or leave.

There was no central command, means it was the decision of the individual COs .

Part of them just left Crimea, others joined the Russian army.

What is important, the Ukrainan military lost the command of chain due to coup, the country lost the elected leadership, all branch of goverment become illegitimate. The military simply fallen into pieces.


The same happened in donetsk / luthan, the fall of the central goverment and the coup generated local institutions to control they life.

When the new CIA aproved regime took control the first thing was to drone in blood the ruskies in east .They lost best part of the controled areas, and when Russian Federation recognised that it become a genocide by apramilitary groups they started to push back with support to the locals.