Ukraine Army on Full Alert as Russia Backs Sending Troops.

All of Ukraine was mildly revolting against the government as far as I know, not just Crimea. A large part of Crimea is Russian speaking. One could argue Russia is bringing stability to the region, although the government people are rebelling against could be somewhat of a puppet regime of Russia, hence people rebelling.

I am not very knowledgeable of Eastern Europe, but the above is what CNN has been reporting as best as I know.

Its refreshing to see someone, especially a westerner, thinking rather rationally and objectively. Its not that I support Russia's actions, there's absolutely no reason for me to do so and there's nothing in it for me or my interests, whether national or ideological. Rather, it has to do with the fact that we live in an extremely unjust, prejudiced and discriminatory world that is being fallaciously and deceptively promoted through inane and delusive propaganda as the complete opposite. The stance a lot of people are taking against Russia right now only serves to reinforce such a world.

^ Yes thanks for the compliment. I am all for respecting human life, I believe people have property rights, and I believe a nations' borders should be respected. It is what I would want for myself, so I believe other people should be treated the same way. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

The Russian, Ukrainian thing should be closely examined, and not just say Obama is crap send troops etc. I am playing Hearts of Iron 3 and Ukraine isn't even on the map it is part of the USSR, so like I said the history of the place should be closely examined. Maybe the Ukrainian people are just a sub-group of Russians who declared their independence, who knows, etc.

I feel this thread needed some more peace advocacy, although, judging by what happened in Iraq and how I was against that from the start, being outspoken against war doesn't always create the outcome you'd like.

I am not against the USA sending tanks to protect the rest of Ukraine if it proves to be the fair thought out solution (considering history of place, etc). I just don't think my country, Germany, should be involved in anyway, risking its troops or paying for a vast majority of it. Two world wars on opposite sides, I feel the last thing Germany owes is the USA anything.

Thanks again, GazaAli I have seen you be the voice of reason before too and taken unjust flak for it.

Good to know.

^ You don't believe me? I'd try to learn Russian and more likely than not welcome the change. Every world leader I know is corrupt, including western, so it would just be a new form of corruption.

How would the USA bombing the shit outta Germany, trying to liberate me, help me in any way? I have had enough ancestors nailed by allied bombs.

How can you even compare Iraq to Ukraine? Even forgetting about the WMD thing, Iraq was still committing crimes against humanity by gassing their own citizens (kurds). Ukraine has committed no such crimes and just overthrew their government. How are the situations even remotely similar?

"in reality they are probably made up mostly of piss poor farmers,"

This pretty much killed any credibility you had in your post. Ukrainians are most likely piss poor farmers? Are you joking? What kind of ignorant bullshit is that? Ukraine is as much of a first world country as Russia is. They play video games, watch TV and sports like the rest of Europe. Hell, the universally acclaimed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were developed in Ukraine.

Now I am against war in this situation like you, but your post is laughable at best.

Really first of all, CNN showed some piss poor farmer Crimean lady and she welcomed the Russians. No you are right Eastern Europe is the richest land in the world. They all live in the best houses and the roads are paved with gold. Yeah, yeah I get it, people on the internet like to argue.

I am sorry but both of us know too little of Ukrainian history to actually comment on this subject matter, infact, I would guess everyone in this thread.

I am well aware their are some rich people in Eastern Europe, but I would guess the majority are not. Hell, there are run down cities in the USA, or broke houses in Canada.

I lost all credibility. By all means shout it to the skies, it will still just be your opinion--a reminder.

Bush lied about WMDs, it is my opinion you lost all credibility. Besides the USA has WMDs why shouldn't Iraq? The USA used the A-bomb, no A-bomb for the USA then.

An opinion? I called you out on your completely ignorant post. There was no opinion. I never said they were all rich. I just pointed out that they're not all poor like you claimed. You're making ridiculous generalizations about a population you don't even know. I at least presented evidence of why I think they're not all poor (dirt poor farmers don't typically produce AAA video games). You did nothing but spew bullshit. You never even defended your claims, because you can't.

Yes, I can defend my claims. You are just taking me to literally. I assume if you drive through Eastern Europe, you will see a lot of broke houses. I am sure I could have said, struggling students trying to make something of themselves speaking of the Ukranians, but I am not in it to appease you, alright. And your comments are your opinion, maybe if you're lucky you'll have someone agree with you.

Oh, and I didn't say they were all poor.

Because, someone makes a video game series, the majority of a country is loaded? I am sure if we went to Eastern Europe, we would see quite some poverty. Although thinking about it Germany has poor areas too, same with the USA.

I can compare the two because both are a violation of a nation's sovereign borders.

Wow, you seem like quite the typical capitalist if you think getting called broke is the ultimate insult. In fact I am quite broke myself.

I concur the issue is not as onesided and straightforward as most would make you believe. Personally I think people are taking such a simplistic and hypocritical stance here simply because its Russia, a powerful country that could disturb the advantageous status quo to the western bloc, more specifically the U.S.

In any case, the EU's decision to offer the Ukraine a deal to join it was both idiotic and political. I highly doubt the EU gives two fucks about the Ukrainian people, states have such a tendency towards others. In addition the Ukraine as it stands has NOTHING socio-economical to offer the EU. This inclines me to believe it was political right from the start and the concurrent and extremely inappropriate visits of European officials, not to mention the subsequent financial aid that is meant to replace that of Russia, to independence square during the protests only serve to reinforce this. Also, it was incredibly stupid to offer such a deal to a state that is a longtime ally of a country with the scale and history of Russia. What did the EU expect? That Russia would set by and watch? If the EU had the interest of the Ukrainian people in its mind when it offered them the deal it should have at the very least contemplated the possibility of such a Russian reaction and a national divide among Ukrainians themselves. The Ukraine now has one of two fates waiting for it: either Russia fully invades and restore the original status quo or Russia takes back the strategic parts of the country and the country will be left divided and in constant conflict for God knows how long. In both scenario Russia wouldn't lose much if it loses anything at all to begin with, but the Ukrainian people will definitely lose, and they will lose so much. They will be the ones to pay for the western political stunt.

With that said, I'm not an expert on the current socio, economic and political order of eastern Europe, but my personal guess is that it never really made the social and ideological transition from the soviet era, meaning that the social order and the ideological component of eastern European societies still lean to that of Russia or at least greatly influenced by it. It could be argued that eastern European states are still in the process of fully integrating into the western bloc, but my personal speculation is that they will never do. Today's western civilization is extremely complacent and hubris, thinking that it acquired the infallible political, economic, social and cultural wisdom, that its the final stage of the evolution of human civilizations. By virtue of this, it will perceive itself as the supreme and superior culture against which all other cultures will be rendered inferior and must be done away with in comparison. Every state must eventually coalesce with the western civilization one way or another. My prediction is that this form of ideological despotism will both take away the glow of western civilization in the eyes of both its own citizens and the rest of the world, and will lead to the demise of the civilization itself by rendering it uncritical and abolish concepts of self-reflection, keeping oneself in constant revision and human fallibility. The final stage of this process will be the fall of western civilization.The political stunt with the Ukraine is only one political expression of what I said. Any average intellectual would have been able to anticipate this outcome. Eastern Europe could possibly prove to be another expression of that in the future.

I think its an interesting observation to notice how the demise of historical empires coincided with excessive social liberties and senseless extravagances.

Lastly, the western world replaced religious despotism with secular one.

I hope you'd be posting more, even if we would agree to disagree most of the time.

So despite the fact that you believe all nations should have their own sovereign borders and you believe in human rights, you would allow another country, a country with proven human rights violations and an authoritarian government, to control you? That doesn't make any sense.

It seems to me that you're just a coward. Which is fine. But don't expect the rest of us to hold that view.

It's like in civ when your cultural influence is very strong and you can take over territory and cities from a neighboring nation. russia has a strong influence over crimea, many of the people associate themselves w/ russia more than w/ ukraine. maybe in the long run it makes more sense for that to be part of russia. who knows. it's certainly not up to the US to decide.

This whole media fiasco appears to be nothing more than a meager attempt by the US and their apologists (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) to posture and pontificate on Russia's alleged crimes of aggression against Ukraine; which so far, is nonexistent. Up until this point, it was the US that got the bad rep as the violator and invader of the sovereign and now they want to redirect it back to their old enemy in an attempt to look righteous. It's pathetic.

And what's with this neo-nazi group that has taken over? I wonder who's funding them?

EU ready to provide 11 billion euros of financial aid to Ukraine

Damn, that's a lot of money.

"The EU also plans to bring forward trade benefits that Ukraine would have received had it signed an association agreement with the EU last year, and will work on providing energy to Ukraine via "reverse flows" of gas from the EU."

This part will probably severely piss of the Russians though.

So invading another country isn't an act of aggression? What are you smoking?

This reminds me of Hitler pushing the envelope with the Rhineland to see if anyone would call them on their bull.

Says the guy who would be bitching moaning and crying his eyes out if the U.S. were doing this right now. We get it dude, invading Iraq was wrong........in the most simple terms I can possibly explain it to you....did your mother never teach you two wrongs don't make a right? Stop making this about the U.S., either you support what Russia is doing or you don't, stop hiding behind America's actions and tell us what it is.

That's not really how shit works, all you're gonna do with that logic is have the Balkan Wars brew up in Crimea. A little ethnic cleansing to get the percentages better in your favor. They can call a referendum and go through it that way, but you don't just send troops into a neutral nation.

Also anyone saying that Ukraine doesn't really want the west to help - they are abandoning a country that repeatedly abused them in the past. There's also the significant effort of Russification of Ukraine, and a few planned famines thrown into the mix by Stalin for good measure. Most are pretty happy to get into the Eurosphere. The problems are the eastern provinces which have significant Russian minorities.

After what Nato did to Iraq/Afghanistan and what the US tried to do in Syria I really don't think we have the right to say anything, at least Russia has real reasons to be in the Ukraine IE protecting ethnic Russians and a strategically important base and not Invading on flimsy and probably fabricated evidence.

And the the US and EU can't do anything more than throw hot air at the Russians, take any action they'll dump there US treasuries and cause a run on the dollar and shut down oil and gas exports to the EU effectively crippling both.

So we can see how a solution would look like:

1. Russia withdraws from Crimea.
2. Under UN watch Crimea votes on a referendum.
3. Let the chips fall where they may.

I'm a huge supporter of the Miami Heat, to be honest. I think they'll do it to em again this year.

Fixed.

That isn't a good enough justification. If we're going to use that then we're basically saying Russia can invade any country as long as the area they're going to has a lot of Russians there. That's bullshit.

I see. Enjoy being a spiteful, ignorant, America hating tool that will support anything that America disagrees with.

What's this "we" shit? Clearly you are not with "we" here. So the U.S. had no "real reason" to go into Afghanistan? And what, exactly, did we "try" to do in Syria again? Iraq is the only llifejacket you got here dude.

People who criticize the U.S. but openly buy this Russian propaganda bullshit is hilarious! As long as it is not the U.S. lying you are all good with it right?

Yea, don't say "we" ever again when talking about the U.S. and NATO.

I don't know why you'd expect anything less from him. He is out of his mind, after all. Everything America does is evil, everything the rest of the world does is okay. Terrorists are really just freedom fighters, etc etc.

What do you think the US has been doing for the last 20 odd years invading countries to protect the petro Dollar and the Dollar reserve status, we should sanction them while we're at it.

When did this become about what you perceive the US has done? This is about Russia. So stay focused.

It is patently absurd to say that Russia should have the right to invade a country, especially when that country hasn't shown any type of threat towards a specific ethnic group, solely because a large group of Russian-speakers live there.

If the government of the Ukraine had decided to go on an genocidal spree, sure, I could understand such intervention. Nothing of the kind has happened. This is simply an excuse for Russia to expand it's territory. Nothing more.

Mexico should invade the United States. Heard some businesses are paying some Mexican immigrants below the minimum wage.

One of those eh. Terrorist freedom fighters lol, eating hearts in the name of freedom eh? Thanks for the head's up.

It is amazing this conversation even has to take place. Hatred for everything U.S. is so prevalent in these people (even the self-haters like this guy) anything anyone else does is excused as long as it rubs the U.S. the wrong way. I bet Iran could nuke Israel and these people would be happy because it would outrage the U.S., then we would ultimately be the bad guys for wiping Iran off the map lol.

Yea...we invaded Afghanistan for oil.....where the fk do you people come from?

We especially the EU(US isn't really big trade wise) are far more dependent on Russia than they are on us, about 35-40% of all energy production in the EU is based off oil/gas imported from Russia they shut that supply down within months the EU economy will simply shut down due to energy shortages, a knock on effect would be massive increase in world oil prices. Russia on the other hand is a net exporter mostly of raw materials and mostly import services they'd take a hit at the start but by in large they can be pretty self-sufficient if they need to be.

don't forget Libya.

So your solution is appeasement? Yeah, that's worked great in the past.

Some of these people would probably even be okay if we were nuked.

I'm not unreasonable. I know the US has done some pretty stupid things. We're not perfect. But we didn't invade a country for the sole purpose of taking it over. Afghanistan was invaded because of the Taliban which are clear supporters of Al-Qaeda.

If Russia can invade Crimea, can we then invade Canada because the majority of that country speaks English?

Some of you people are absolutely ridiculous.

That's right, we pwnd dem biatches like Russia is wtfpwning Ukraine. What country you from "thebest" (which is a laughable name btw)?

So ya

Roughly 4 billion barrels of untapped oil, 17 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 500m barrels of natural gas liquids and large deposits of minerals like gold,lithium iron and copper.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18882996

This proves absolutely nothing except the fact that Afghanistan is very rich in oil reserves.

Meanwhile you ignore all other points thrown your way...

What points the US and Nato won't do anything because frankly they can't, if they did they commit economic suicide.

Morally I see nothing massively wrong with what Russia is doing at this time, if and thats a big if they make this permanent or start fighting then do something about it.

Read the posts. Why should I retype everything if you can't be bothered to read them in the first place?

Then you are morally bankrupt. You, nor the Russians, have shown any proof of any specific violence committed against ethnic Russians in the region. Now even if you did show proof, that is a job for local police to handle. Not the military of a foreign power.

And about half of Russia's income comes from these exports, what do you think will happen to the Russian economy when Russia loses half it's income? It's economy would crumble in days, meanwhile the eu has oil and gas reserves for these situations. The eu is Russia's largest trading partner by far, while the same can't be said for Russia. Oil/gas isn't really the trump card that it's made out to be.

This is why I loved schooling ignorant people like you..... China and Afghanistan benefits from this more than anyone. This war had broke us economically yet people like you still lack the simple logic to clue you in that is was not about profits. Countless billions and thousands of American lives.....please explain to me where we win here other than taking away an al Qaeda stronghold?

An excerpt for you....

--------------------------------------------------

"But that's not how the Chinese see it. A few weeks ago, China's National PetroleumCorporation became the first foreign company to be allowed to explore Afghanistan's oil and gas reserves in the Amu Darya Basin. The deal is estimated to be worth more than $700 million. Some speculate it could ultimately be worth 10 times that amount to China.

Even before that deal, however, China was already the largest foreign investor in Afghanistan. In 2007 Beijing signed a $3 billion agreement to explore huge copper deposits in Mes Aynak, south of Kabul.

India is the only other country to go after Afghan minerals. Last November a deal was signed giving Indian firms the rights to 1.8 billion metric tons on iron-ore, one of the largest untapped deposits in Asia.

It's very unlikely that the Chinese [and Indians] would be making such risky bets without the security provided by the U.S. and its allies. After the copper deal was inked, 2,000 U.S. troops were deployed to provide general security in Logar Province where the Mes Aynak mine is located. They also protected the projected routes of the road and railway, which will service the huge development. Another 1,500 Afghan National Police, presumably paid and trained by the U.S. and its allies, were sent to guard the mine itself.

-----------------------------------------------

I even used one of your leftist news sites to shove this crow down your throat.

You do recall 9/11 right? That little attack on America that killed 3000 people? You do know where it was launch from right? The Taliban ruled Afghanistan. THAT is why we went into fking Afghanistan so take your walking cliche "war for oil" bullshit somewhere else. Simpleton stuff man, seriously.

To GazaAli. Actually Ukraine has vast wheat fields, and I believe some other resources. So nations may want them for that.

To, Airshocker. So what if I have a cowardice side, probably my smart side. Besides if someone were to put me up against a wall to execute maybe I would put up a fight if I felt like it that day, so that doesn't make me a complete coward. Besides I have stuck up for myself before and I don't care what your limited impression of me is. Yeah the USA government or other governments have never demonstrated any acts of cowardice, must be lonely on that brave man island you got there.

Whatever I just don't think the USA can make one set of rules for itself with Iraq and if Russia does the same thing (only more peaceful up till now) they are automatically the bad guy. How is that supposed to work?

Who is to say once the Ukraine unrests calm down, Russia won't leave--the media making a mountain out of a mole hill.

@GazaAli I will not be trolled by your anti-America ass, you are no longer worth an ounce of my time or energy.

awww you didn't like it did you :/

I said it's fine that you're a coward. Many people are. That doesn't make you correct. In fact, appeasement has been shown by history to be the worst thing you can do. And I was talking specifically about you. Not a government.

What does the US war in Iraq have to do with what Russia is doing? Just because the US made a mistake doesn't entitle Russia to make one. Are you a child?

It is unlawful to enter a country with a military force without that host nation's approval. What Russia is doing is illegal and wrong. And you people are seriously trying to justify it? That's shameful.