Ukraine

[JohnnySavage]

Russian Spring?

Putin says the US is behind the protests. I reckon we probably are, but what does the Ukraine have that we want? We always want something.


And Chicken Kiev is delicious.

 

[JohnnySavage]

They also have some of the best cam girls on the planet.

 

[bill-pix-trade]

Russian Spring?

Putin says the US is behind the protests. I reckon we probably are, but what does the Ukraine have that we want? We always want something.


And Chicken Kiev is delicious.

I could get behind this:
http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/s_f16_65431715-e1365141751687.jpg

http://www.thechinawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/248.jpg

http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/306094/femen.jpg

 

[KingOrfeo]

Salon has a good summary:

Monday, Feb 17, 2014 11:00 AM EST

The world is right to hate us: Arrogance, ignorance and obscene foreign policy

This White House was supposed to be different. But our arrogant foreign policy has been the same since the 1950s

Patrick L. Smith

Every time we overhear American diplomats talking when we are not supposed to, the conduct of American foreign policy sounds stupider and less imaginative. You step back and say, No wonder America’s relations in the Middle East and across both oceans have deteriorated since the Berlin Wall crumbled to the point they are now a probably irretrievable muddle.

The latest lifting of the lid occurred just the other week. And this one is a doozy — better than some of the tidal wave of stuff Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks for release in the summer and autumn of 2010.

This time we are in Kiev, and we get to hear two American diplomats talking about Washington’s plan, already in motion, to install a client regime in the Ukraine. The operational detail is astonishing.

The two State Department hacks are Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary for European affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the Obama administration’s ambassador in Kiev. Both are foreign service careerists, and it shows: They are ready to disrupt the Ukrainian political process with subterfuge and manipulation that are of a fine Cold War vintage.

Readers may be familiar with the four-minute audio clip, which YouTube disseminated last Friday. The thing went fairly viral, mostly because of Nuland’s X-rated recommendation for the European Union, which also takes a lively interest in Ukraine these days. The Europeans, she told Pyatt, should be shoved aside with what in another context would be called the act of love.

“No, exactly,” the sycophantic Pyatt replies without missing a syllable.

Well, yes, exactly. The sailor’s language is surprising, and maybe a little fun to find in an exchange of supposedly sophisticated diplomats. But anyone titillated by Nuland’s vulgar tongue more than very briefly misses the point entirely.

Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, quickly tweeted as the recording spread around the world, “Critics of @VictoriaNuland worldwide: let him who has never used strong language in private cast the first stone.” This is the point. Forget that stone. There are others to cast.

A little background. As a republic in the old Soviet Union, Ukraine has been restless within its economic and geopolitical political confines since it declared independence in 1991. There is a desire to shake free of the ancien regime in favor of freer markets, a more liberal society, and so on.

Last year President Viktor Yanukovich was in negotiations with the European Union for an extensive trade agreement, to be signed in tandem with an International Monetary Fund bailout. It would have been the key moment of departure for Ukrainians: They would walk away from their post–Soviet inheritance and enter — tentatively at first, maybe more later — the West European orbit.

Then Yanukovich pulled an abrupt volte-face, turning back to Moscow and a $15 billion bailout package President Putin dangled. And this is when protesters against the Yanukovich government, as seen and described in the world’s media daily, began to fill Kiev’s streets.

It is plain what happened. And demonizing Yanukovich is a distraction. Numerous of his opposition are oligarchs of the new Russian model, in it for the opportunity. Yanukovich was all for the break with Moscow, but Ukraine could not afford it. The EU’s offers came with too many conditions and amounted to small fractions of Putin’s; they did not address an economy in critical trouble.

A Reuters correspondent, Elizabeth Piper, produced a superb blow-by-blow account of Ukraine’s predicament late last year. In it she quoted Volodymyr Oliynyk, a close ally of the president. “We go one way to Russia and we get hit,” he said. “We go the other way, to Europe, and we get hit. We stand still, and we get hit.” And then, referring to the turn back to Moscow: “But it will hurt less this way.”

It is persuasive. Look at the numbers Piper cites. Read the EU conditions, some of which were spiteful and without point other than to cultivate euro-tilted political tendencies, an intent with no place in a trade and economic package.

There are regrettable things in this. One is the extent to which geography and history can stifle aspirations and ask great sacrifice. Another — and we saw this severally after the Wall came down — there is a tendency in the East European nations to idealize the West, as if Westernizing is the solution to all problems. I see this among the Kiev demonstrators. It is a mistake. Disillusion is never far when people follow this line of thought to its end.

Now we come to Nuland’s remarks to her underling.

The Europeans and the Americans share a goal in Ukraine: The West unites on the thought of undermining Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions and pushing institutions such as NATO up to his doorstep. Here is the departure: The EU proposed doing this by enticing Kiev westward with a carrot surrounded on the dish with sticks, while the Americans wanted to go in directly to exert covert influence in the political process.

Nuland’s language interests me only to the extent it reveals the extraordinary limitations of an influential representative of the U.S. Repeat the phrase a few times, think of who said it and at what moment, and you are forced to recognize it actually stands as a policy judgment.

More interesting by far are the machinations Nuland and Pyatt describe. The American plot revolves around manipulating various figures in the opposition, backing the fortunes of some, keeping others from the table, so inducing some sort of friendly post-Yanukovich government, bent from its very conception.

We arrive only briefly amid a months-long conversation, but the undertaking is clear in outline and apparently not far from getting underway. “I think we’re in play,” Pyatt offers. And: “We’ve got to do something to make it stick … We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing.”

On this last point, Nuland thinks Vice President Biden is the man, and she wants some good U.N. cover in the meantime. “That would be great,” she remarks, “to help glue this thing and to have the U.N. help glue it and, you know, fuck the EU.”

We do not know who recorded these remarks. It is almost certainly the Russians, though neither Moscow nor Kiev has had any comment. And it is unlikely, let us say, that Moscow thought Nuland’s vulgarity was so awful it was worth exposing. The clip is about meddling; this was Putin’s point (assuming it was his point).

There are a couple of good guides through this important audio clip — interestingly, neither supplied by an American. The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, gives us an annotated transcript. Another view comes from the Centre for Research on Globalization, an independent think tank in Montreal.

There are take-homes for us in this mess. I find it astonishing that in 2014 Washington fields diplomats executing policies — intrusive, probably illegal, corrupting — that are in essence unchanged since the Dulles brothers — Allen at the CIA and John Foster at State — devised them in the early 1950s.

I find the revelation of ignorance astonishing, too. Look at a map. What good could possible come of an attempt to install a client government on Russia’s doorstep? How could anyone judge this wise — or to hold even a smidge of promise? Equally, the history: Do Nuland and Pyatt and those above them reflect upon how 60-odd years of these kinds of operations have worked out?

I hear a disturbing inability to think or see the world as it is or alter course in those four minutes of YouTube. Foreign policy is pure function now: No need to consider the why or the wisdom of it; ambitious apparatchiks will simply get it done as it has been done before.

In a world busy changing, the nation that cannot change — well, anyone can finish this sentence.

 

[ChinaBandit]

The Ukraine?

The 20th Century fucked this place up so badly that what happens in the 21st isn't an issue.

 

[Beco]

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/kiev021814/s_k29_70159141.jpg

 

[neci]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Government snipers kill at least 70 protesters.

 

[KingOrfeo]

President Yanukovych backs down.

IEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yanukovych signed a deal with Ukraine's opposition leaders on Friday brokered to end the deadly violence that put the country on the brink of civil war.

He agreed to early elections and to surrender some of his powers after 77 people were killed as a geopolitical tug-of-war over whether Ukraine should embrace the West or Russia turned violent this week. (The agreement can be read in full by clicking here.)

Yanukovych said he offered the concessions to "restore peace and to avoid further victims of the stand-off," and addressed his statement to his "compatriots."

The deal states that:
•Within 48 hours Ukraine must revert to its 2004 constitution, meaning some of Yanukovych's powers will be given over to parliament. This was passed by parliament shortly after the deal.
•A coalition government will be formed in the next 10 days and presidential elections will be brought forward from March 2015 until no later than December.
•Illegal weapons must be handed in and there will also be an investigation into the deadly violence that has dominated Kiev this week.

 

[Dazzle1]

Salon has a good summary:

Don't value Saon's oppinions

the World should admire and thank us.

No superpower has had a more ethical foriegn policy like the U.S. For the most part we don't gloss over human rights violations the way China and Russia do.

And in the middle East the U.S has been the only moral force since the 1960's

Yes Nuland is an idiot and Obama is out of his league

 

[Skiddles2014]

Don't value Saon's oppinions

the World should admire and thank us.

No superpower has had a more ethical foriegn policy like the U.S. For the most part we don't gloss over human rights violations the way China and Russia do.

And in the middle East the U.S has been the only moral force since the 1960's

Yes Nuland is an idiot and Obama is out of his league

You really are a blind and stupid bastard.

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

Do you remove that flag from your ass when you shower?

 

[Dazzle1]

You really are a blind and stupid bastard.

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

Do you remove that flag from your ass when you shower?

Why because I am not part of the PC apologize for america's greatness crowd?

Without the U.S Hitler would have won or Russia would be far more dominant than it is today.

What 3rd rate sink hole of a country are you from?

 

[ChinaBandit]

http://www.thechinawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/248.jpg

There is something about topless women climbing wire fences that gets me off! The only things missing are the razor wire with a sliced bra hanging off it.

 

[1sickbastard]

.....

 

[KingOrfeo]

I could get behind this:
http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/s_f16_65431715-e1365141751687.jpg

http://www.thechinawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/248.jpg

http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/306094/femen.jpg

Are those Ukrainians? Why is everything on their bodies written in English?

 

[Beco]

Those gals are ugly.....the Ukraine has hot chicks, where are they?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Those gals are ugly.....the Ukraine has hot chicks, where are they?

On their webcams. This is prime time for east coast US viewers.

 

[renard_ruse]

The EU, backed by the US, is behind the "protests." They are taking their orders from Bilderberg, which ultimately wants to create a world government under its own control, of course. The Russians have never been on board, though it took Yeltsin a few years to figure out what was going on. Even the drunken fool eventually realized the "west" just wants to get Russia's resources and rape its economy.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The EU, backed by the US, is behind the "protests."

How do you know that?

 

[pointless]

maybe they should just join up with poland and lithuania again. i mean those were days. nothing but good times and plenty of 'em.

 

[Byron In Exile]

The Ukraine?

The 20th Century fucked this place up so badly that what happens in the 21st isn't an issue.

First, it's "Ukraine," not "The Ukraine," any more than one would say "The France" or "The Poland." Okay?

Secondly, quisquis.

 

[Byron In Exile]

maybe they should just join up with poland and lithuania again. i mean those were days. nothing but good times and plenty of 'em.

Or Finland.

Talk like this gets you back to breaking rocks in sub-zero temperatures, you know?

 

[KingOrfeo]

maybe they should just join up with poland and lithuania again. i mean those were days. nothing but good times and plenty of 'em.

Unfortunately that did not last, because their parliament was a Polish joke: Every single nobleman in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a veto.

 

[KingOrfeo]

First, it's "Ukraine," not "The Ukraine," any more than one would say "The France" or "The Poland." Okay?

Secondly, quisquis.

It's called that because the name means "The Frontier." (From a Russian POV, that is.)

However, the Russian language has no definite article. I don't know whether Ukrainian does.

 

[jeninflorida]

as stated before, obama is a pussy and a wimp of a leader


maybe obama loves getting bitch slapped with Putin's cock, question is who's is bigger? Michelle's or Putin's?