Ukraine Crisis

[Beet]

Why can't NATO ever verify this stuff itself? You would think with its satellite surveillance capabilities they would be able to either confirm or deny the Ukrainian government claims that they're being invaded. If the NATO position is, "gee, we can't tell whether Ukraine is being invaded or not" that's pretty pathetic, IMO.

[Beet]

Per the NYT, Nato has verified it.

[Beet]

It looks like they're attacking Mariupol now.

Meanwhile, apparently the sanctions passed by the E.U. last year are not dependent on the situation on the ground but automatically expire after 1 year? No wonder Putin is so confident... he just has to get Hungary with him, and all this with no real costs.

[Beet]

Looks like they're still fighting out there.

[Beet]

Putin has been on the offensive since the Second Chechen War (1999-2002). If the West was really as anti-Russian as the paranoid Putin fanatics claim, the human rights abuses committed there would have been a much bigger problem for Putin. The next stage was Georgia (2008), a small state outside of Europe with existing de facto independent puppet states within it. Ukraine (2014-15) is the latest stage, a large state within Europe, with no previous conflict before this. It is a pattern of steady escalation in his 15 year career, with marked acceleration recently. But I don't think the pattern has ever changed.

[Beet]

Putin has been on the offensive since the Second Chechen War (1999-2002). If the West was really as anti-Russian as the paranoid Putin fanatics claim, the human rights abuses committed there would have been a much bigger problem for Putin. The next stage was Georgia (2008), a small state outside of Europe with existing de facto independent puppet states within it. Ukraine (2014-15) is the latest stage, a large state within Europe, with no previous conflict before this. It is a pattern of steady escalation in his 15 year career, with marked acceleration recently. But I don't think the pattern has ever changed.

Yes that's sounds impressive, if you completely ignore the history behind the two earlier war. Let's remember that Chechnya beside being a earlier version of IS was negotiate for independence from Russia and was close to get it, before the geniuses decided to invade Dagestan and of course at the same there was a terror campaign in Russia which the Chechen was blamed for (it's believed it wasn't a false flag operation, but honestly we don't know for sure).

As for South Ossetian it was a Russian puppet set up under Jeltsin, whose autonomy Georgia decided to end. Which was a major reason we decided to ignore that war.

The Russian conflicts while not acceptable have been purely reactive to outside pressure, not expansionistic.

Chechen independence movement was hardly IS. It started as a rebel movement of an ethnic minority seeking political independence... precisely what Putin claims the Ukrainian rebels currently are. It didn't become radicalized until later. South Ossetia has never been recognized as an independent state, and Russia ended the war with military bases where it previously did not have them, so the result was expansionist, not purely defensive.

[Beet]

That's fair enough, I'll admit that all of these wars have had some reactive element to them from Russia's part. You were not defending the wars, you just pointed out that they didn't come out of nowhere. You're right in that.

The Chechen nationalists were undoubtedly horrible, but they were not IS. The government & most people who supported it were secular, but the government was too weak to control the Islamists. It was the latter that attacked Dagestan. The Chechen "government" offered Russia to crack down on the Islamists, but it was refused and a full scale invasion launched instead. In any case, I never said I supported the "brave Chechen Muhadjins". It is well known that both sides committed the worst atrocities in that war.

Putin's real problem is that he's too old. He still sees things from the Cold War KGB mentality which he never left behind. Otherwise, why would he even care that Ukraine is pro-Western? In his mind, pro-Western = anti-Russian (to be fair many others have this mentality too, but Putin only reinforces it).