Ukraine

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Interesting article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26610276

'The Crimea of Russia's imagination'

[Peter D Williams]

I agree fully with what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said here today http://rt.com/news/putin-address-parliament-crimea-562/

Our western partners created the Kosovo precedent with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary,” Putin reminded, adding that the UN International Court of Justice agreed to those arguments.

“That’s what they wrote, that what they trumpeted all over the world, coerced everyone into it – and now they are complaining. Why is that?” he asked.

Lets enjoy this picture of Mr Putin who in great shape for his age.

[Roger de Coverly]

Our western partners created the Kosovo precedent with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary,” Putin reminded, adding that the UN International Court of Justice agreed to those arguments.

Kosovo remains more or less independent under partial UN control, it hasn't been annexed by Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro or Bosnia. I would have thought that a key difference.

In 1939 and 1940, Stalin annexed on behalf of the USSR quite a bit of territory in Eastern Europe, which was only released from Russian or Soviet control when the Soviet Union imploded. The worry for Russia's near neighbours is that Putin wants it back.

[John McKenna]

Interesting article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26610276

'The Crimea of Russia's imagination'

Also, the BBC's imagination?

(The quote below is from the article above.)

"Crimea is a site of a different kind of longing for Crimean Tatars, whose entire population was sent into exile by Stalin in 1944. Nearly half the 200,000 Tatars perished during the Surgunluk, or exile, when the Tatars were (wrongly) accused of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, rounded up and sent to Uzbekistan to live on remote and inhospitable reservations. Since independence, about 100,000 Crimean Tatars have returned, but after a determined effort to erase their presence..."

Is it really possible that the Crimean Tartars were "(wrongly) accused" after the following treatment?

Soviet policies on the peninsula led to widespread starvation in 1921.[citation needed] Food was confiscated for shipment to central Russia, while more than 100,000 Tatars starved to death, and tens of thousands fled to Turkey or Romania.[28] Thousands more were deported or slaughtered during the collectivization in 1928–29.[28] The government campaign led to another famine in 1931–33. No other Soviet nationality suffered the decline imposed on the Crimean Tatars; between 1917 and 1933 half the Crimean Tatar population had been killed or deported. (Wikipedia)

The situation is probably better described rightly rather than 'wrongly' (see quote of BBC article, above), as follows -

During World War II, the entire Crimean Tatar population in Crimea fell victim to Soviet policies. Although a great number of Crimean Tatar men served in the Red Army and took part in the partisan movement in Crimea during the war, the existence of the Tatar Legion in the Nazi army and the collaboration of Crimean Tatar religious and political leaders with Hitler during the German occupation of Crimea provided the Soviets with a pretext for accusing the whole Crimean Tatar population of being Nazi collaborators. (Wikipedia)

Regarding Putin and his current actions in the Crimea what follows should be remembered - we are probably all by now familiar with UK & US politicians and military men speaking about the investment of "blood and treasure" in recent wars. Below is Hitler's attempt to obliterate Stalin's forces and their investment of blood in one campaign of WWII alone. A similar cost to the British Empire could only be found in the Fall of Singapore - the greatest military defeat in numerical terms in the history of the British Empire. There were multiple 'Singapores' for the Soviets before they turned the tide at Stalingrad.

On 5th April 1942, in a directive, Hitler told his generals of an intended major offensive, southeast, towards the Caucasus... He added, almost as an afterthought, that Leningrad would have to be captured - a proposition never to be realised...
To accomplish this Army Group South was divided into Army Groups A & B to conquer the Crimea and eliminate the Russian forces west of the Donets and south of Kharkov. To be followed by a concerted three-pronged attack on Voronezh. Once the Crimea was occupied German forces would advance eastwards across the Straits of Kerch - connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov - and invade the northwest Caucasus...
Once established there Hitler would have possession of the Caucasian oilfields, and beyond them lay the Middle East with yet more oil and an overland route to the Suez Canal. To Hitler, peering south-eastwards in spring 1942, the horizon seemed boundless and every prize attainable...
The Russians upset his timetable in two ways. First, an abortive attempt to recapture Kharkov, which worked to Hitler's advantage (the Germans surrounded the attackers and took a quarter of a million pisoners). The second was more serious - Russian resistance in the Crimea was surprisingly and unexpectedly stubborn. It took the Germans eight months... to capture besieged Sebastopol in the Crimea. (The World at War by Mark Arnold-Foster)

The Germans claimed that over 90,000 Red Army soldiers had been taken prisoner, and an even greater number killed. However, this claim appears to be overstated as, according to Soviet sources, the Soviet garrison defending Sevastopol totalled 106,000 men beforehand (and received only 3,000 reinforcements during the attack), while it is known that 25,157 persons were evacuated, the overwhelming majority being either wounded soldiers or officers evacuated on Stalin's orders.

An interesting and brutal observation about the siege and its aftermath was given by Lt. Joseph Avokian, an Armenian who was fighting with the Soviet forces at Sevastopol. This account was given to Lt. Carl A. Keyser, USNR, and was recorded in Lt. Keyser's diary: "He was captured at Sevastopol after 83 days of bombardment. He had fought in Odessa and Kiev. He reported that they ate their own comrades in Sevastopol and in the prison camps." (Wikipedia)

Edit: More older historical info about the Germans (and others) in Crimea -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea_Germans

There's much more to all this, of course, but I'll leave it there.

[Colin S Crouch]

I heard Martin Sixsmith on the radio earlier today. He gave the estimated number of deaths in the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine as around 6 to 8 million. This, according to various estimates, seems to be a credible figore. Perhaps "one Holodomor" to "one Hitler",

And yet Putin is peddling the line that Ukrainians who distrust what is going on by Russia are nazis...

[Matt Mackenzie]

Of course he is going to say that.

It doesn't help that Kiev *does* have neo-Nazis in their new government, though

[David Robertson]

A couple of years back, I read the well-researched, expansively-sourced and authoritative Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, an American history Prof, and a go-to expert on Eastern Europe. I can dig out the numbers another day if you need them: the death toll, 1930-1945, is shocking. Frankly, I'm surprised anyone in Ukraine survived the famine, the terror, the purges, and finally the Nazi slaughter. But from memory, I think Snyder puts the Ukrainian famine toll at c. 3 million.

[Gerard Killoran]

I heard Martin Sixsmith on the radio earlier today. He gave the estimated number of deaths in the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine as around 6 to 8 million. This, according to various estimates, seems to be a credible figore. Perhaps "one Holodomor" to "one Hitler",

And yet Putin is peddling the line that Ukrainians who distrust what is going on by Russia are nazis...

Here's a couple of MPs from the Svoboda (formerly Social Nationalist) Party who make up a significant part of the new government.

Eduard Leonov and Ruslana Zelika.jpg

You might wonder why they are holding up the numbers 14 and 88. The answer is very chilling when you know a member of their party is now the head of the Ukraine armed forces.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_symbolism

88, code for Heil Hitler. Again the number comes from the position of the letter H in the Latin alphabet.
14, from the Fourteen Words coined by David Lane, a late 20th-century American white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children."

[John McKenna]

"The United States will work on greater diversification of energy sources in the Baltics and may consider rotating units of its ground and naval forces through the region for training exercises, US Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

Biden, who was speaking after meeting Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in the Polish capital, also said that his country remains committed to NATO's pledge to help member states if military action is taken against them.

Ilves said during a joint news conference with Biden that the European Union's response to Russia's politics on Ukraine must be more robust and 'should not be about the price of gas'."

(Voice of Russia, Reuters)

I'd suggest dusting off the plans for the blockade of "Kaliningrad" but NATO have probably already done so. Although not an island, or even a peninsula like the Crimea, it is an isolated Russian enclave that should be dealt with in the long run so why not start now?

[Gerard Killoran]

I'd suggest dusting off the plans for the blockade of "Kaliningrad" but NATO have probably already done so. Although not an island, or even a peninsular like the Crimea, it is an isolated Russian enclave that should be dealt with in the long run so why not start now?

So you'd suggest starting World War Three?

[John McKenna]

No, not immediately, and perhaps not at all - it is bluff and counter bluff with a bit of pushing & shoving.

I am sure you remember the 1960s' Cuban missile crisis - the US had missiles installed in TURKEY.
The USSR tried to up the ante by installing better ones in Cuba and the US announced a blockade.

Also, I think you may recall the blockade of Berlin by the USSR in the 1950s it did not lead to war either.

Is this situation that much different?

Some say if Putin's hand is not called in some way he'll have gained an almost bloodless Crimean victory.

What price would you put on that - Ukraine's entry into NATO and the EU?

(In the more distant future the plan of the West is to incorporate Israel into those structures, I believe.)

Edit: Cuba to TURKEY

[Paul McKeown]

So you'd suggest starting World War Three?

There will be no World War. Putin wants wealth, personal power and national prestige; he doesn't want his own death. His is a game of testing how much the European democracies and their partners will swallow.

[John McKenna]

Paul, why have you failed to mention the United States of America's pivotal role in all this?
Or do you think their "pivot" to Asia and the Pacific so complete that they'll let Europe go hang?

Edit: I'm off now - have to pop to the shops.

[Paul McKeown]

Paul, why have you failed to mention the United States of America's pivotal role in all this?
Or do you think their "pivot" to Asia and the Pacific so complete that they'll let Europe go hang?

In no sense. It isn't in the interests of the USA to allow Europe to fall under an autocracy that has a reflexive antipathy towards the US. Europe thought it could beat its swords into ploughshares, Uncle Sam thought he could go home. That proved to be wishful thinking: lesson learned.

[John McKenna]

Paul McKeown>In no sense. It isn't in the interests of the USA to allow Europe to fall under an autocracy that has a reflexive antipathy towards the US. Europe thought it could beat its swords into ploughshares, Uncle Sam thought he could go home. That proved to be wishful thinking: lesson learned.<


Thanks for that cogent reply, Paul.

However, I detect a couple of flies in the balm - although you have drawn the appropriate conclusion and learned a lesson, I do not think our leaders and the institutions they command are learning very effectively at all. In fact, I think they are confused and bumbling along. There is a growing number of "learnings of lessons" in other areas of our lives combined with a similar number of excuses of "with benefits of hindsights".
Even in the USA there is the dichotomy of involvement/isolationism that is half expressed in the Monroe doctrine - that others keep out of their hemisphere. The other half could be expressed by the Eurasian giants, China & Russia as - US go home and keep out of our spheres of influence.

Uncle Sam may in the end have to settle for Airstrips 1,2 & 3 (the UK, S. Korea & Japan) at either end of the Eurasian landmass. With Airstrips 4 & 5 (Australia & NZ) in the southern hemisphere just in case there is trouble down there.