TipTow posted:

I think that's a naieve view of (at least) the U.S.' intentions. Security umbrellas aren't free, and I very seriously doubt that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would be significant contributors to the alliance should the time come.

TipTow posted:

Would you like to actually discuss this and not post like a petty dick? Gripweed made a good point about there being a lot of nuance to what's going on right now and people misinterpreting positions and thoughts, intentionally or no.

And if you don't think there's a lot of nuance, then fine, nothing to discuss, go back to the EE chat thread. Y'all got what you wanted anyway, don't know why you're trying to start poo poo in the containment thread.

TipTow posted:

And how big are their government budgets? Even if they're fulfilling their treaty obligations (and I have no doubt they are), that still leaves me wondering: what could these countries meaningfully contribute to a hot war involving NATO? Each of the Baltic nations are smaller than the one (1) state I live in, which is ranked 28th out of the 50 in population. These countries are tiny and are not, nor ever will be, big contributors to NATO's military capabilities.

TipTow posted:

Here, let me dig up all the classified docs from the State Department and DoD I have access to discussing this

TipTow posted:

You are getting very, very weirdly personal about this. And besides, as I've stated multiple times, it's not about the Baltics' military capabilities. They don't exist. My government (not me, just lmao) is not concerned at all at what the Baltics bring to the table other than Russian containment.

But hey, I'll be sure to write my Members of Congress demanding the expulsion of Latvia from NATO. I have total agency over my government, they'll listen to me.

Flavahbeast posted:

This guy's the one who dragged Russia into the Donbass war, if you believe him: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/11/21/russias-igor-strelkov-i-am-responsible-for-war-in-eastern-ukraine-a41598

He's also been responsible for taking a lot of russian+belarusian citizens videos of armour movements from tiktok and posting them on twitter

https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1491120509299347461

I really dont know what his deal is

TipTow posted:

Where are the demands to see proof that adding the Baltics was all about peace, freedom, and democracy? I'd like to see that evidence.

TipTow posted:

And don't give me any bullshit about a "royal" you. Unless you believe all us Americans are a monolith or operate with some kind of hive mind.

Flavahbeast posted:

Well gently caress, that makes a lot more sense then. Some of the older text posts on that account read as explicitly pro-invasion so I assumed it was him

TipTow posted:

So you believe I have the unilateral ability to kick out the Baltics?

Private Speech posted:

What's more they've been oppressing ethnic Russians far more heinously than Ukraine, what with denying them citizenship and forcibly assimilating them. Such a shame that the vile NATO allowed them to join, they could be part of the glorious mother Russia again by now.

This post is sarcasm (but the underlying facts mostly are not).

Private Speech posted:

Yes, also there's no "autonomous republics" in the areas with Russian majority like in Ukraine, much less the those areas having a significant political say independent of the normal electoral process.

TipTow posted:

By the way, get absolutely hosed at the insinuation that anybody died in Iraq for my sake.

TipTow posted:

I do believe NATO to be an arm of U.S. (and by extension French and British at least) hegemony.

Private Speech posted:

My point is more that Ukraine didn't do any of those things and on the contrary made significant accommodations, so if the treatment of Russian minority is a valid pretext to invade, then, well, clearly the Baltics deserve it far more.

Private Speech posted:

Isn't a solid chunk of the Russian army deployed on the Belarus border just ~100 miles north of Kiev?

Gripweed posted:

Every country that agreed to send assistance is complicit in the atrocity that was the Iraq War, no one gets to act the victim there except Iraq

Sinteres posted:

Latvia lost three lives in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, and that's a shame, but I don't think the US guarantees your country's security because of that tremendous contribution. It sucks that you got dragged into Iraq in particular, but probably the most valuable contribution in the eyes of the Bush Admin was getting to add 1 to the number of supporting countries.

Sinteres posted:

How is this not a parting shot?

Sinteres posted:

And yet you chose to get the last word in right there before deciding the topic doesn't belong.

Sinteres posted:

That gets to my other concern. If the threads are going to be functionally identical, it would be nice if that would be made clear from the top so some of us know not to bother posting in it after the skew of the last one. Like I genuinely thought part of the point of this thread was to have somewhere people could be more free to express opinions that might offend the sensibilities of regular EE posters without tracking mud on their carpet.

CommieGIR posted:

This thread is for Discussion of the ongoing Ukraine crisis and Russian intervention to help take the weight off the Eastern Europe thread.

This includes discussion of Ukrainian Nazis and justification of Russian intervention/invasion of Ukraine.

Gripweed posted:

No, we shouldn't be giving weapons to anyone. American military aid does not have a good track record, we should stop doing it.

Here's another way to look at it; What if Russia doesnt invade? We've given the Ukranian military a lot of new weapons. While I am relieved to hear that we made Ukraine promise those weapons wouldn't go to the explicitly nazi parts of their military, the fact that we had to apply that restriction should give you pause. What will the Ukrainian army do with all their new American weapons, if they don't have to fight Russia? I don't know. Do you? Are you confident that it will only be good stuff? Because if you aren't, that's a good reason to oppose giving them those weapons.

Josef bugman posted:

Start killing minorities and/or selling the armaments on to the black market to various other groups to commit terror offenses?

Say the military aid ends up in the right hands all the time, even then there will be leakage into criminal areas and so on. It doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility that contributing more armaments into an area may lead to more people using said armaments, even when adequate precautions have been taken.

Majorian posted:

If that was the case, then why did it take until 2017 to change the policy? Russia wasn't any more aggressive in 2017 than it was in 2014-15. It seems more likely to me that Trump changed that policy because he wanted the U.S. MIC to make a lot of money by selling arms to Ukraine.

Gripweed posted:

Do we really have to circle back to what caused this thread spit in the first place? The literal neo-nazi accused war criminal battalion in the Ukrainian military? That causes you zero concern?

Majorian posted:

True, but wouldn't those factors suggest that if Russia wanted to actually annex more Ukrainian territory (instead of just continuing to isolate and destabilize the country), it should have done so between 2015-2017? It seems to me that what has deterred further Russian invasions hasn't been the lethal aid provided by the U.S., but rather the fact that the rest of Ukraine is a very different kettle of fish from Crimea. In the years leading up to the 2014 invasion, the people of the region overwhelmingly supported leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. One doesn't have to sacrifice too much blood and treasure on occupying a region that is already, for all intents and purposes, occupied. The rest of the country isn't quite so keen on the idea, though - even in places like Donbas, the population is much more divided over whether or not they want to join Russia. So it seems to me that what deters Russia from further invasions is less that the U.S. is arming Ukraine, and more that trying to conquer some or all of Ukraine, even under ideal circumstances, would be too much of a shitshow for it to be worthwhile.

Zedhe Khoja posted:

The ban on arming them ended half a decade ago unless there was a second go of it. Seems weird of someone who posts about this nonstop every day not to know that.

Majorian posted:

I'll take your word for it - I definitely believe that the polling is not clear-cut anywhere in a country as big as Ukraine (although I'll read what you had to say if you'd like to dig it up - I'm always interested in learning something new). But my point is less that polling affects present-day defenses and more that broad popular resistance to being occupied by Russia would probably lead to (well-funded, well-armed) uprisings, necessitating a costly, bloody counterinsurgency campaign by Russia. As the U.S. learned the hard way in Iraq, insurgencies can make rebuilding the economies and infrastructures of recently-conquered regions all the more difficult. My overarching thesis here is that Russia's already going to take a big economic hit if it invades, to the point where it would probably impact how well they can conduct a campaign of conquest and occupation. It's high risk, with no guaranteed reward.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

An occupation force in the bits already controlled by pro-Russian militias would, presumably, face MUCH fewer insurgency issues.

Majorian posted:

although I'll read what you had to say if you'd like to dig it up

cinci zoo sniper posted:

I don't dispute that report, but please don't link 100-page PDFs with no further specifiers and expect people to talk to you about it.

For context for everyone else, page 18. A 2011 poll, in Russian

"Optimal status for Crimea?" 41% autonomous part of Russia
"Hypothetical joining Russia referendum?" 65.6% Yes

2008 poll in English (hot on heels of Russia-Georgia war)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140317075919/http://www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/files/category_journal/NSD104_eng_2.pdf

Opinions of Crimeans regarding the desired future for their
region are rather controversial and unsteady, which makes them
vulnerable to internal and external influences. For instance, the
majority of Crimeans would like Crimea to secede from Ukraine and
join Russia (63.8%), and at the same time – to preserve its current
status, but with expanded powers and rights (53.8%). More than a
third (35.1%) would like it to become a Russian national autonomy
as a part of Ukraine; also more than a third (34.5%) – to secede from
Ukraine and become an independent state

2011 poll in Ukrainian, page 27
https://razumkov.org.ua/upload/Prz_Krym_2011_Yakymenko.pdf
Crimean polling for "join Russia" option is shown to drop fro 32.3% in 2009 to 24.4% in 2011.
This poll is run by the same people as the one above with 63.8% in 2008.

2014 poll in English
http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=236&page=1
This one is noteworthy for polling in Crimea literally a few days before things escalated.
Crimean polling for "join Russia" option is shown to increase from 35.9% in 2013 to 41% in 2014

Obviously, this was domestically loaded question and polls are absolutely not prescriptive, and it's likewise easy to find stuff that will show lower and higher numbers than those (some Russian-organised polls trend higher, some Western-organised polls trend lower). Anecdotally, I don't recall any polls that would show >50% Crimean support for joining Russia between the 2012 parliament elections and the 2014 annexation of Crimea. After the annexation sure, there's dozens of polls with North Korea elections-tier 103.75% support for Russia.

Chaser link:
May 7, 2014 (freshly post-annexation) report from Putin administration's human rights council, in Russian (a cool read in general, if you read Russian or can stomach Google Translate)
http://web.archive.org/web/20140427...teley_kryma.php

My translation of the relevant bit:
According to the opinion of almost all polled experts and citizens:
- Majority of Sevastopol residents voted to join Russia (50-80% turnout), and in Crimea varying sources indicated 50-60% vote in support of joing Russia, with total turnout of 30-50%;
- Inhabitants of Crimea were voting not quite for joining Russia, but for a ceasement of, in their own words, "oppressive corruption and thievery freely carried out by lawless Donetsk henchmen". Sevastopol's inhabitants, on the other hand, were voting specifically to join Russia. Fear of illegal armed groups was greater in Sevastopol than elsewhere in Ukraine.

mmkay posted:

It was known for a couple of days that there'd be a vote this week (don't remember if it was supposed to be today specifically).

fatherboxx posted:

Yes, it was set to voting few days ago

In a funny turn of events this one was proposed by non-dominant party - CPRF; it is extremely inflammatory worded BUT obviously United Russia cant allow to vote against recognizing DNR (dont want to be seen as traitors or weaklings)... so they proposed another appeal, that sends the final decision to be DISCUSSED with Foreign Ministry (and, presumably, to be set on hold eternally).
So there are going to be two unanimously approved conflicting Appeals.

Clown show

Paladinus posted:

gently caress you, Rupert Murdoch!

GABA ghoul posted:

Lmao, German chancellor is in Moscow talking to Putin right now and he's also seated at the long table cause he refused to take the Russian PCR test.

I have very little doubt that they would do a genome sequencing and file that poo poo somewhere just to have it

CommieGIR posted:

Wonder what the play is here.

Paladinus posted:

paul_soccer12 posted:

Did Russia spend a ton of money on beefing up the military during this whole ordeal or just rearranged existing assets?

HonorableTB posted:

Thanks for this, I'm going to go look into these modernizations because I wasn't aware the Georgia invasion went badly from a military standpoint. I'll have to look more into that, I was under the impression it went well for RF

Majorian posted:

I think that stretches the definition of "active invasion" beyond recognition. It was an active invasion and illegal occupation eight years ago. Now it's a dead issue; Crimea is part of Russia, rightly or wrongly. There is currently no active invasion of Ukraine by Russia. There may be one in the near future, but I strongly doubt it.

Majorian posted:

Moscow has shown that it can cause an absurd level of panic just by moving troops around within its own borders.

Paladinus posted:

It's not Russia's interpretation, this is just what was agreed on and there's no other way to interpret them. It's understandable that Ukraine now is in a different situation than when Minsk II was signed, and would want to revise some of its provisions, but it's clear that neither Russia or LDNR are willing to budge on elections.

Paladinus posted:

There is no ambiguity in the agreement on the order of events.

Ukraine is trying to reneg on this.

quote:

Withdrawal of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from
the territory of Ukraine under monitoring of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups

quote:

Based on the Law of Ukraine “On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the
Donetsk and Lugansk regions”, questions related to local elections will be discussed and
agreed upon with representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the
framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in accordance with relevant
OSCE standards and monitored by OSCE/ODIHR.

Paladinus posted:

The special rights of the regions are outlined in the law On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, which Rada passed in 2014 and renews every year. This law is explicitly mentioned in the agreement, and there is no ambiguity there either.

Paladinus posted:

It's pretty obvious in context that if control of the border is supposed to be transferred back to Ukraine after the election, someone else will be controlling it in the meantime. And the precondition to border control is elections.

OSCE should in theory be able to highlight any breaches of their standards when elections are actually planned. Russia would presumably call back all Russian 'consultants' and regular units by that point.

Alchenar posted:

In any case I think the whole border >< elections issue over Minsk is shadowboxing. Putin's real endgame objective is obviously an autonomous region that will reliably return a Moscow client and which constitutionally holds a veto over Ukrainian membership of NATO. That's probably the legal guarantee he keeps asking someone to offer him.