Yes Why Do The West Treat Russia As The Bogeyman?

[anotheoldgit]

One may not always agree with Peter Hitchens, but is he speaking some sense here?

/// It never occurs to them that Russia has good historical reasons to fear its neighbours. It never crosses their mind that the borders drawn by the victorious West in 1992, like those drawn at Versailles in 1919, are an unsustainable, unjust mistake. ///

/// They never ask why Britain (or the USA) should be hostile to Russia, or what the quarrel between us actually is. What is it to us whose flag flies over Sevastopol? Yet it matters greatly to those who live there. ///

/// They cast every Russian action as evil, and every Ukrainian action as saintly. The world is not like that. ///

[Peter Pedant]

AOG you are old enough to recollect we went to war in 1855 to stop Russian expansion south

because the Crimea wasnt Russian......

and now they are back

[ichkeria]

AOG any chance you could post a link so we can read this supreme piece of nonsense in its entirety? It's a dark, grey spring morning here in ichkerialand and I could do with a laugh :-)

[jno]

ichkeria: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2587118/PETER-HITCHENS-Were-dragged-new-Cold-War-puffed-bullfrog-I-don-t-mean-President-Putin.html

[sandyRoe]

Which of Russia's neighbours in the west could be seen as posing a threat to them?

[ichkeria]

Thanks jno.
Pretty desperate stuff. I'm not sure if Hitchens's grasp of what is going on is as paper-thin as it appears or whether his hatred for people like Hilary Clinton is colouring his judgment, or perhaps he just gets paid by the Mail as a journalistic "shock jock" - "crack hack" perhaps.

If I was to start picking holes in that morass of self-righteous cod analysis I'd be here all day and bore everyone to death. The crux of his argument seems to be: "I don't like Putin but hey, I once had a great night out in Moscow with some of my wealthy Russian chums and what does the west know anyway. "
Embarrassing

[anotheoldgit]

Peter Pedant

/// AOG you are old enough to recollect we went to war in 1855 to stop Russian expansion south ///

Bl**dy hell Peter I am old but not that old. :0)

But what I fail to understand is the fact that the vast majority of the people of Crimea no longer want to be ruled by the Ukraine, so what is the problem, unless it is the West who take offence at Russia becoming larger.

Did Russia intervene when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya?

[ichkeria]

AOG do you understand the nature of Russia's intervention in Crimea?

[Graham-W]

You perhaps forget the Afghanistan invasion of 1979.
It now appears that Russia is again showing an interest in Afghanistan by more peaceful means.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/as-us-war-ends-russia-returns-to-afghanistan-with-series-of-investment-projects/2014/03/21/1

[jno]

if I remember rightly, when Serbia refused to let Kosovo go, we bombed Serbia. When Ukraine refuses to let the Crimea go, we pat Ukraine's back. So there is a little inconsistency of approach here.

[jim360]

The manner in which the sides refused to let go was, if I remember correctly, somewhat different. Serbia's government refused to let Kosovo go by attempting genocide. Ukraine's has tried to keep hold of Crimea by raising their voice slightly. Apples and oranges.

[anotheoldgit]

Graham-W

/// You perhaps forget the Afghanistan invasion of 1979. ///

No I did not, and since you brought the matter up, didn't the West then supply the Taliban with weapons?

[Graham-W]

Isn't that what happens in a cold war?
I think Rambo was involved too.

[jno]

jim, the question is still: why do we think Kosovans should be allowed to decide where they want to go, and Crimeans not?

I actually find myself wondering if Scotland has anything to do with this, deep in politicians' psyches.

[jim360]

I think it's the manner in which the decision is made. Russian troops arrive, Crimea's parliament unilaterally declares independence, based on a referendum that had barely a week between being announced and being voted on, where one of the legitimate options wasn't even available(!), more troops arrive, Ukrainian miltary bases attacked by Russians and Russian-aligned troops.... all within three weeks.

Regardless of any similar incidents in the past, this is a process that we cannot regard as legitimate in any way. It's a military takeover of another country's territory with only the thinnest veil of democracy pretending to cover up that fact.

[ichkeria]

Apologies if I've said this before but it's worth repeating exactly what happened in Crimea:

The parliament building was occupied by armed men, who stood guard menacingly while a selected group of deputies was admitted, to vote for and to swear in a new government and PM - the new PM incidentally, Sergey Aksonov, being a member of a minority party in Crimea and a former mobster (although admittedly he's not the only mobster-politician in that part of Ukraine, a fact that is very important in understanding that country and also Russia).
Aksonov then, almost certainly as planned by his "mafia bosses" in the Kremlin, asked Russia for help "protecting" the ethnic Russians there, despite not even the heavily propagandistic Russian media being able to dredge up a single, solitary instance of any threat to them. A "referendum" was called and twice brought forward. Cameron says this was done at the barrel of a kalashnikov, and he is right: it was, effectively. Ukrainian TV channels were taken off air, Russian naval forces not only from Sevastopol but bases from the Russian mainland, then moved in and started systematically taking over or surrounding key installations. People were intimidated, some Tatars had white crosses painted on their doors in acts reminiscent of the Stalin years.

In fact, about 60% of Crimea roughly is ethnic Russian, and by no means all of them historically supported a reunion with Moscow, so in normal conditions a referendum, even were it legal and constitutional, would have been much closer.
No proper voting figures for the referendum have beeen released. In so far as one can talk about an "electoral register" then some indications suggest as many as 123% of the entire population of Sevastopol may have voted(!)
In short, not democracy in action at all, but flagrant international piracy. Comparions with Kosovo, unsatisfactory as that may have been, are ludicrous.

[anotheoldgit]

jim360

/// It's a military takeover of another country's territory with only the thinnest veil of democracy pretending to cover up that fact. ///

Judging by the majority of Crimea citizens taking to the streets in sheer jubilation is a prime example of democracy.

The people have spoken, what have you against that?

[boxtops]

"the vast majority of the people of Crimea no longer want to be ruled by the Ukraine"
"The people have spoken"


Apparently so, but we have no idea under what coercion, it all sounds like a intimidated fix to me.

[anotheoldgit]

/// a former mobster ///

/// "mafia bosses" in the Kremlin, ///

/// this was done at the barrel of a kalashnikov, ///

And then some criticise the Daily Mail for over sensationalism.

[anotheoldgit]

Do they look intimidated?

https://i0.wp.com/cdn.rt.com/files/opinionpost/23/b3/a0/00/crimea-referendum-professional-observers.si.jpg

http://static.rappler.com/images/crimea-postrefeerendum-russiaflags-epa-h_51286820-20140317.jpg

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/a4859826-8c05-4473-8b00-49ffee6e27f5.img

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/03/18/article-2583225-1C64616D00000578-70_634x414.jpg

[jim360]

Were the Tatars intimidated into not voting? At any rate they didn't, and nor did a large number of other people, wither because they were intimidated or not.

I'm amazed that you can think of this as democratic, AOG. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, the closest historical parallel is probably the annexing of the Sudetenland. I very much hope that I'm wrong to draw such a parallel, but the similarities are surely striking.

You cannot possibly paint a rushed vote, with one option removed, when a large number of people didn't turn up, and the answer was already determined by the presence of Russian Military, as democratic. And propagandist photos of the sort in your previous page prove little. Some people welcomed the Russians. Others did not. And even if they did, it remains the invasion of a sovereign state and that in itself is illegal. The is a procedure to follow for secession of Crimea laid out in Ukrainian law and it was not followed in this case.