Ukraine crisis: Russia vows troops will stay

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

Russia has vowed its troops will remain in Ukraine to protect Russian interests and citizens until the political situation has been "normalised".

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was defending human rights against "ultra-nationalist threats".
...
Mr Lavrov said in Geneva on Monday that Russian troops were needed in Ukraine "until the normalisation of the political situation".
...
He said the "violence of ultra-nationalists threatens the lives and the regional interests of Russians and the Russian speaking population".

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26414600

[nolkyz]

1. Have troops from Russia itself entered Crimea?

From what I've seen thus far, all the Russians have done is to use personnel from their local naval base.

[cosmicone]

2. They don't need to bring troops in

Ukrainian military is 50% ethnic Russian and they won't fight Russia. Ukrainian military will also not take orders from an illegitimate government. The police are pissed off that the neonazis used molotov cocktails at them killing their ranks.

Heck, even 5,000 troops could take over Ukraine right now. Russia already has 15,000 plus the threat of several hundred thousand coming in with rolling tanks is enough.

The CIA really miscalculated this.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

7. I've also read that according to treaty ...

... upwards of 20,000 Russian may be deployed within certain regions, but I'm not totally sure about the validity of this. I'm at work and don't have time to peruse all of the details of this.

If you have more information on this, I'd appreciate this.

The situation over there is definitely a lot more complicated than either side will have us believe, most definitely.

[levp]

9. @cosmicone: How much time have you spent

in Ukraine, or do you have any friends/relatives to supply you this information?
Because my wife's family lives in Kiev now, and I was born there and lived there for 22 years.

There are a lot of people in the Western Ukraine (and even some in the East) who will fight like their ancestors did after World War II. See, for instance, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army

[cosmicone]

11. Dyakyuyu n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Ukraine said Russia had brought in 6,000 extra troops

Ukraine's defence minister said on Saturday Russia had "recently" brought 6,000 additional personnel into Ukraine and that the Ukrainian military were on high alert in the Crimea region.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/01/idUSL6N0LY04E20140301

[blackspade]

4. So wait, is he talking about protecting Russian citizens.....

or Russian speakers? Because those re two totally different things.
There are no 'threats' to the majority ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
This is about Russian interests only, ie regaining complete control of the Black Sea fleet anchorage and exerting its economic domination over the will of the Urkrainian people.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. He specified both

He's claiming a link because of language. He's basically claiming the right to police parts of Ukraine for an indeterminate time with troops because of an as-yet-non-existent threat from 'ultranationalists'.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

8. It's a little more complicated than that.

He's speaking of ethnic Russians, and there have been reports that there were violent acts on ethnic Russians. Also, passing legislation outlawing Russian as a language doesn't do much to assuage any fears some may have.

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than the horrible media would have us believe. I'm not sure which side is "behaving" so to speak.

I do know that Svoboda is a neo-fascist/neo-Nazi party, and I'm definitely not comfortable with them having any sort of power.

[karynnj]

10. You state things as facts that some reporting denies

1) Where are the stories of the ethnic Russians and violent actions?

2) Where is some account that legislation was PASSED that outlaws Russian - by one account the

"The likely next president, Vitali Klitschko, is the son of a general in the Soviet armed forces, best known in the West as the heavyweight champion boxer. He is a chess player and a Russian speaker. He does his best to speak Ukrainian. It does not come terribly naturally. He is not a Ukrainian nationalist."

3) The same source, while mentioning an even worse far right party, speaks of the atrocious Svoboda - which is all you say - as a "house opposition" party of the deposed government - where some of the young rebelled against its leaders and joined the fight. ( The point - EITHER government should have avoided the far right - but neither did.)

( I don't know anything of the writer other than what can be seen when you click his name. He does make some interesting points that I have no way of verifying - one of the most interesting is that:

"In all of these ways, the “decadent” West, as Russia’s foreign minister put it, was present. Yes, there were some Jews, and there were some gays, in this revolution. And this was exploited by both the Russian and Ukrainian regimes in their internal propaganda. The Russian press presented the protest as part of a larger gay conspiracy. The Ukrainian regime instructed its riot police that the opposition was led by a larger Jewish conspiracy. Meanwhile, both regimes informed the outside world that the protestors were Nazis. Almost nobody in the West seemed to notice this contradiction."

Link - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/

Note - I am not saying that this article is the 100% truth - I have no way of knowing that. It does suggest that - like governments we are personally more used to - Russia may be propagating propaganda. (One reason to think it - is that like the RW - every Russian source is speaking of the threat of ultra nationalists when that might not even be happening -- but their own actions might create that.)

[Renew Deal]

5. The only "violence" I have seen in Crimea comes from Russian loyalists