"Which country is the largest threat to world peace?"

[ApatheticAustrian]

there is a looooooot of US-scepticism over here ...especially after snowden....but putin has easily reached the same amount of hate and fear with his crimea-annexion....until trump came along.

[ApatheticAustrian]

I mean he was provoked to do that by things happening in Ukraine

he was not - clearly and without any question.

don't want to derail this thread too much but.....the NATO defense is imho utter nonsense. the NATO would never ever invade russia and even if it wanted to (ridiculous), the question of nuclear weaponry prevents this anyway.

if russia would try to cooperate with democratic states, independent from moscow, on a friendly level and wouldn't treat EX-Sovjet-states like slaves who should be happy about hand-outs, it wouldn't need to be scared all the time about losing control.

otherwise....your numbers are bogus, no offense.

only a minority of eastern "left-wing" ukrainians want to secede, even if they detest the western/central government and if anybody crushed any hopes for a pro-eastern political revival, it's russia itself.

the crimea doesn't hurt very much in terms of elections...the people's republics of donetsk and Luhansk do.

if those 2 areas would vote......it's possible to create an anti-kiev alliance. without them....there are not enough votes left, especially votes which would prefer russian dominance.

the majority of eastern ukrainians think about secession as treason..plain and simple.

[ApatheticAustrian]

it is far from clear. you saying it is clear doesn't mean it's true. was there a legitimate govt in ukraine? was there a coup? legitimate govt wanted to stop euro-integration process, you may not like it, others may not like it but it's a simple fact. if majority of ukrainians wanted euro path they could have opted for one astonishing path. it's called ELECTIONS. so they overthrow legitimate govt with western help ofcourse, screw the laws there nevermind and they install prowestern government. that's what happened. imagine now this happening in mexico.

you're talking about hand outs is really funny cause that is how us foreign policy works. and essentialy every foreign policy works that way. europe may not want to be russian slave but surely many countries are nato or us slaves. they don't have their foreign policy, it's what comes from Washington.

if my numbers are off i would like to see your numbers. also i didn't talk about independence, i was talking about a number of russian native speakers who are living in ukraine.  

3 points.

1) i am ofc talking about my own opinion.... and how i see the facts...since this is an US-style-board i am more outspoken than on a german one....but in the end, i am only defending my own case.

the current government of ukraine is democratically elected and the last one has been too....until it decided to use violence against protestern. without the violence, the students would have been finished after a few weeks, after the violence, their parents joined the fight too.

the last government became the enemy of the people. so it has had to got.....if earlier elections would have been negotiated earlier, all of this would have ended without additional bloodshed.

2) you are misrepresenting the positions of the former ukrainian president...he came as a a pro-western east-ukrainian, promised to sign the pro-eu-treaty and chickened out in the last moment after getting threatened by moscow. if the people would have had the choice at that moment, they would have preferred western inclusion on a narrow majority...but the next election was too late, since the last president tried to rush everything through. plain and simple. i won't dignify your conspiracy theories with an answer...the pro-western government isn't installed, it's ELECTED with russia's help.

3) you are proposing, ethnical russians are automatically enemies of the west or automatically wishing for russia as a savior...which is not correct. there are muuuuuuch more ethnical russians in ukraine than those who wish for russian dominance or would prefer russia to the EU......


let's look at recent polls..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Ukrainian_parliamentary_election,_2019

ukraine is crawling through chaos since years, and the pro-russian parties get COMBNED less than 20% of the vote....moscow has killed any chance for an old-school "party of regions" alliance with his east-ukranian war.

[ApatheticAustrian]

, peaceful protesters and with no reason somebody shoots at them?

you are mixing the timeline.

at first, there was no shooting, just police brutality.

i don't pretend to know who exactly the snipers, weeks later, have been.....i am pretty sure, we are never going to find out.

there are a lot of open questions.

but no one really argues, that i wasn't a top-down-decisions to clear the maidan, at the end of november, as the protests died down...and the police, coming from other regions of the ukraine, acted quite violent...a typical political mistake.

the former president just wasn't skilled enough...a few more days and nothing would have been left......rushing things is stupid.

you can think whatever you want about the end of this chapter but in my opinion, the government made one mistake after another - there haven't been one million soros-CIA-agents in kiev but 1 million people mad as hell about the economy and sovjet-like government actions. i won't pretend, they protested for the EU...but the protested against the government.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i really find that hard to beleive, no outside help, no nothing just people rose up? not buying that. sure, govt made mistakes, but at the end of the day it was a coup in which legitimate govt was overthrown and new one was installed. in democracies that is done on election day.

my last post right now, since i have discussed that stuff 29473973 times and at some point, both of us are just rinning in circles:

sure there has been outside help...for both sides. some billionaires and states helped the government, some billionaires and states helped the protesters, but they only jumped on running machines.....without "outside help", the former government wouldn't have changed their position from pro-EU to pro-russia, against the will of the people and the pro-maidan billionaires didn't creat the protest,.....first they ignored it but after the big government failure end of november, they invested into organization and stuff. and to be sure, the former president has alienated MANY former allies, but this would go too far into ukrainian inside baseball again.

if your point would be the truth, there could never ever be some kind of "early election".

there wasn't a coup, there was a big protest, which the government mishandled and the army wasn't ready to kill the protesters (other than in say egypt or libyia), so the government needed some way out......

as i said..you can cry about the results, but early elections aren't something special and since the maidan, both president and parliament got elected again.....fair and square....the only difference is the russian meddling, which killed any chance of east-ukrainian revival.

the current president is not only elected, he got a FAAAR bigger mandate than the last one...plain and simple.

have a nice day.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i have to respond sorry

i mean early election is when there is a fall of govt support in the parliament, or when president calls for them, or pm resigns, you are confusing the terms. change of govt was here prior to any election and when new elections were scheduled country was already in war. elections were not held legaly at all here, there was a protest followed by clashes followed by ousting of the govt in undemocratic way. sure million people were on the protest, so that leaves how many million that were not.

only responding to the election-thingie:

look for example at thailand and/or romania....

both countries have a strong  political "separation", like ukraine, but between cities and rural areas....

both countries are (or have been in the case of thailand) always in danger of early elections, cause of mass protests and gridlock.

and both countries.....again and again...voted the same party into power, cause even if government agrees to resign, a majority is the majority.

if the ukrainian majority would really have stood behind the old government, it would have been re-elected.....even without the party of regions, there were major east-ukrainian parties participating.

[ApatheticAustrian]

in the past, it was just left-sided "love instead of war"-thinking, now it's funded by russian influence.