Crisis in the Ukraine

What if Putin had troops invade New York under the pretense of protecting ethnic Russians --- all six of them --- living there?

 

He's already sent comrade Deblasio to do some advance work.

 

There are a hell of a lot more than six ethnic Russians in the Ukraine.

I have traveled extensively to Russia. What learned was that Russians think of themselves as a race. They tend to have mixed emotions about the fall of the Soviet Union. They feel badly about the following:

1. The decline of Russia as a world power. Putin, with all his visible faults, has given Russians renewed nationalistic pride.

2. The treatment of ethnic Russians in the countries that have left the ex-Soviet Union. If you talk to a Russian they make it sound like the Russians living in these countries live in a concentration camp. That is not true is but it is that in the old Soviet Union everyone worked for the government. As soon as the Soviet Union collapsed the republics generally reverted to their old languages and the ethnic Russians who did not speak the local language lost jobs and fell down the economic ladder.

3. In most of the ex-Soviet countries the local population is of a sufficient population they overwhelm the ethnic Russians.

4. Two exceptions are in Belorussia, which is ethnically almost all Russian and is a vassal of Moscow and the Ukraine. The Ukraine is about half Russian and half Ukrainian. The Russians basically support an alliance with what they consider the motherland of Russia. The Ukrainians want to become part of Western Europe.

5. And yes, the place is screwed up because Stalin annexed the Austro-Hungarian state of Galica and part of Romania into the Ukraine and he moved out the Tartars, et. al.. It is not my purpose to praise Stalin, or Putin, but to explain the situation. However, this appears the conflicts in the Ukraine appear to go back almost a century to the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1919-1921.

In conclusion, in my humble opinion, the Ukraine is basically a European, Catholic, Ukrainian speaking country the west and a Russian Orthodox, pro-Russian, Russian speaking country in the East. Like the ex-Yugoslavia it was cobbled together by a strongman and has never functioned well as an independent country because of the internal differences.

 

Whenever I read about Eastern Europe it's hard not to think of
The Festrunk brothers.

 

That's very true. If I happen to mention to my wife, "We had a Russian show up at our tennis meetup today," her first question will be "Russian speaking? Or Russian?"

Because there is a difference.

 

A closer look at the famous "Reset" photo op shows The Russian Foreign Minister giving Hillary "The Bronx Salute "

 

Northern California and a Berlin wall would be welcome. lol

 

I think a lot of people have gotten exactly what they wanted in Obama.
I'd almost venture to say everyone in the Yahoo newsroom has.
Their mainpage makes the Huffington Post look like the Weekly Standard.

 

Really? Almost no one I know is happy with him. Neither conservatives nor liberals. I'm somewhere in the middle. He's been OK given the circumstances, but he hasn't fixed all of the world's problems like some naively expected.

Back to Ukraine....

Lancey, I do understand what you were saying. My previous post was sarcastic. However, I do wonder if Putin wishes or will attempt to reunite the former Soviet states, either formally or at least in a much closer alliance.

 

I said this before...announcing drastic cuts to the US military projects weakness. Obama's world view is just naive. He actually thought these evil leaders (yes, Putin is evil) would behave themselves because he was elected president. He thought they would respect his wishes and fall in line. He was very, very wrong.

 

Unless a POTUS was prepared to put troops in Ukraine, run air support over the nation and risk WWIII, I don't see how even ramping up military spending would have prevented it.

 

I think there is a difference between a willingness and it being clear it is impossible. Pulling the missile shield from Poland did not help as well. There have been quite a few missteps that haven't helped.