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[Owlbread]

Do you consider "first world" citizens to be inherently more valuable than the "third world", or "undeveloped" ones?

No, I don't. But geopolitical behemoths do. Invading a "developed" country like Ukraine or to a certain extent Georgia is an outdated thing, that was the point I was making.

Owlbeard, I believe that Russia can't be cured of it's current ideology in any other way but how Germany was cured from Nazism: Lost war, ruined country, huge territorial loses. I only hope that this will happen in an economical war without large-scale warfare , or worse, nuclear WW3

I am deadly sure that talking with a Soviet-Russian explaining him that his current system is wrong, just as effective as discussing with 1930s Nazi-German explaining him how bad Hitler is. Useless.
Don't expect from me anything but sarcasm and gloating over all failures of Russian Federation

But surely there has to be another way, Ranger? How can this current approach help?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Putin isn't Hitler. He's a right eejit, but not Hitler.

Of cause Putin is not Hitler. Only Hitler was Hitler
But only a blind man can't see similarities between modern Russia and 1930s Germany

More Russian aggression.

Stuff like that is mundane in modern Ukraine More Russian soldiers arrived
And not say me that this guys are local miners who took arms against the junta and bought all that in a local shop. It's Russian crews in Russian armored vehicles

But surely there has to be another way, Ranger? How can this current approach help?

It can help me reduce stress. I have more than enough of it. Laughing after reading Guardian's or Segarr's posts help. Plus highlighting Russian beliefs for bystanders is a nice thing to do

[Reelya]

Man, if you told that (bolded part) to the USA earlier, we could have prevented the war in Iraq! And in Afghanistan. And in Yugoslavia. And... you get my point, right? When USA does it, it gets no sanctions. Russia? Instant sanctions. Hell even Europe was allowed to bomb Libya into the living hell it is right now and suffer no consequences. And that's unfair.

Of course it is, I agree with you on all counts 100%. It is terribly unfair and both Russia and the USA and a number of European countries, particularly the UK, should be penalised fairly for their actions. You may notice though that now we've had our hands burned so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan we've taken to the role of arming rebels and bombing the hell out of people, like in Libya. We've moved on while Russia is still trying to pull South-Ossetia like maneuvers in Ukraine.

However, perhaps I should have placed "developed" in italics for emphasis - invading Ukraine is an altogether different experience to invading Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.

"We've moved on" from stuff we did 2 years ago under the ongoing Administration isn't really much of a claim. If you were talking policies from 50 years ago "moved on" that would carry some weight.

also, right now you have US Congress approving weapons flow to rebels in Syria, so it's a load of rubbish that anyone has "moved on". Everyone's busy arming up rebels of their choice, it's only blind luck that the Russian-backed rebels shot down the wrong plane, rather than rebels armed by some other intervening government.

Note, Obama isn't supplying anti-air to Syria, but his critics are in fact calling for anti-air missiles to be provided to the Syrian rebels. So, it's hardly a given that America couldn't have easily caused that same cock-up.

John McCain is one of the leading proponents of handing anti-air to the Syrian rebels, so it's not hard to conceive that if he was president now this could have been an American debacle.

[Owlbread]

There appears to have been some misunderstanding here, Reelya.

"We've moved on" from stuff we did 2 years ago under the ongoing Administration isn't really much of a claim. If you were talking policies from 50 years ago "moved on" that would carry some weight.

No, I didn't say we've moved on from stuff we did in Libya. I said we moved "on to" (not on from) the kind of stuff we did in Libya. We moved from boots on the ground, full scale Iraq/Gulf War style invasions of the Blair/Bush era to air attacks where possible and arming rebels. That's NATO foreign policy for the modern era; the Cameron/Obama era.

also, right now you have US Congress approving weapons flow to rebels in Syria, so it's a load of rubbish that anyone has "moved on". Everyone's busy arming up rebels of their choice, it's only blind luck that the Russian-backed rebels shot down the wrong plane, rather than rebels armed by some other intervening government.

You misunderstood me again. I said that we moved "on to" arming rebels.

Note, Obama isn't supplying anti-air to Syria, but his critics are in fact calling for anti-air missiles to be provided to the Syrian rebels. So, it's hardly a given that America couldn't have easily caused that same cock-up.

American backed rebels have done far worse things.

John McCain is one of the leading proponents of handing anti-air to the Syrian rebels, so it's not hard to conceive that if he was president now this could have been an American debacle.

I don't think McCain has fully moved on from the "boots on the ground invasion" type of thinking. Biden is actually one of the main forces pulling Obama into the puppet master style role, pulling strings, funding people and only occasionally using military might.

[Darvi]

Of cause Putin is not Hitler. Only Hitler was Hitler

Adwarf is Hitler too, but that's a different matter entirely.

[Reelya]

We moved from boots on the ground, full scale Iraq/Gulf War style invasions of the Blair/Bush era to air attacks where possible and arming rebels. That's NATO foreign policy for the modern era; the Cameron/Obama era.

I'd say that's cyclic, as it was also the Clinton era policy.

But "boots on the ground" is hardly "ancient history" anyway, when people who aren't old enough to vote are old enough to remember it.

[Sergarr]

Arming rebels and long range attacks are a phase in history repeated many times.

Do I need to remind you that right before the first World War, everybody was sure that there won't be any more major direct conflicts between great powers, only indirect ones?

[Owlbread]

But "boots on the ground" is hardly "ancient history" anyway, when people who aren't old enough to vote are old enough to remember it.

It also seems to be a distinctly Republican phenomenon in the case of the USA. I suppose that's because Republicans don't have a strong anti-war contingent within their party unlike the Democrats.

[ivze]

Ukrainian Ranger, aren't you afraid, you are starting a WW3 now? Your country is smashed between two nuclear military superpowers. In these games your country is not a subject, it's an object. Ukraine is like a sword, that has been forged for 25 years to strike at Russia. But it's a tool, and none will care, if it shatters.

There is still time to stop.

[smjjames]

Ukrainian Ranger, aren't you afraid, you are starting a WW3 now? Your country is smashed between two nuclear military superpowers. In these games your country is not a subject, it's an object. Ukraine is like a sword, that has been forged for 25 years to strike at Russia. But it's a tool, and none will care, if it shatters.

There is still time to stop.

I seriously doubt that there will be a 'World War' in the sense of WWI and WWII because Russia is pratically alone here, other than Belarus and a few other sattelite states. The only other powerful country that would remotely join Russia in a war is China and they've been completely out of the picture of the whole thing.

Also, Ukraine isn't the one who started this whole crisis.

[WarRoot]

Arming rebels and long range attacks are a phase in history repeated many times.

Do I need to remind you that right before the first World War, everybody was sure that there won't be any more major direct conflicts between great powers, only indirect ones?

And in the Cold War era everybody thought the USA and the Soviet Union would go to town on each other but there were only indirect conflicts.
So if we can learn anything from history is that what everybody thinks is not going to happen.

I myself predict that Putin after getting annoyed by the incompetency of his lackeys will invade Kiev half-naked and riding a horse. Obama will not hear of such barbaric aggression and travel to Kiev (making sure he has his shirt on) with a helicopter to show his civilisedness. As Obama arrives Putin realises that someone replaced his hunting bow with the Quran while travelling through Chechnya and wink salaciously at Obama as a desperate act trying to soften the gay communist muslim's heart while reading out loudly parts of the Quran and Das Kapital. This turns out to be a double edged weapon as Obama bursts out in tears of joy because someone finally understands him which in return makes Putin realise his true feelings towards the black president. The two men fall into each other's arms and then they ride out into the sunset towards Crimea.

[MarcAFK]

Arming rebels and long range attacks are a phase in history repeated many times.

Do I need to remind you that right before the first World War, everybody was sure that there won't be any more major direct conflicts between great powers, only indirect ones?

And in the Cold War era everybody thought the USA and the Soviet Union would go to town on each other but there were only indirect conflicts.
So if we can learn anything from history is that what everybody thinks is not going to happen.

I myself predict that Putin after getting annoyed by the incompetency of his lackeys will invade Kiev half-naked and riding a horse. Obama will not hear of such barbaric aggression and travel to Kiev (making sure he has his shirt on) with a helicopter to show his civilisedness. As Obama arrives Putin realises that someone replaced his hunting bow with the Quran while travelling through Chechnya and wink salaciously at Obama as a desperate act trying to soften the gay communist muslim's heart while reading out loudly parts of the Quran and Das Kapital. This turns out to be a double edged weapon as Obama bursts out in tears of joy because someone finally understands him which in return makes Putin realise his true feelings towards the black president. The two men fall into each other's arms and then they ride out into the sunset towards Crimea.

Can we commission Darkerdark to illustrate this as an epic 4 part adult graphical novel?

[martinuzz]

Dutch government decided not to send armed forces to protect researchers. The main argument is that they fear that will escalate into a big international conflict with Russia

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Hague court to order Russia to pay $50 billion in Yukos case:

Will Russian federation exist in 202X to pay many $billions for economical damage caused by Russian aggression in 2014?

Ukrainian Ranger, aren't you afraid, you are starting a WW3 now? Your country is smashed between two nuclear military superpowers. In these games your country is not a subject, it's an object. Ukraine is like a sword, that has been forged for 25 years to strike at Russia. But it's a tool, and none will care, if it shatters.

There is still time to stop.

So, you mean we should let Russia to rule us,  to save the world from the WW3 oversized gas station named Russian Federation going mad, using few of still working nukes to kill something like a hundred millions of people before being annihilated by real countries with real armies
No, thanks


PS

Spoiler: Moscow today (click to show/hide)

[MarcAFK]

Kneeling on mats, obviously Muslims jews terrorists gays chechnians secret Ukrainian nazi faschist hindu matkneelers! Nobody the totally legitimate government Putin cares to pay attention to....