Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told

[Octoldit]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkfpGCAAuw]Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told - YouTube[/ame]

 

[waltky]

Ukrainian marines head back to Ukraine...

BUSLOADS OF UKRAINIAN TROOPS LEAVE CRIMEA
Mar 25,`14 -- As former comrades saluted them from outside a base overrun by Russian forces, Ukrainian marines in Crimea piled into buses Tuesday to head back to the mainland.

It was a low-key exit from this eastern Black Sea port, with fewer than a dozen friends and relatives on hand to bid the marines farewell. A troop transporter bearing black Russian military plates trailed the bus as it pulled away. Their departure came as Ukraine's defense minister stepped down after harsh criticism for authorities' often-hesitant reaction to Russia's annexation of Crimea, which was formalized following a hastily organized referendum this month. And while Ukraine struggled to deal with its humbling by Russia, it also faced the menace of seething Ukrainian nationalists angered by the police killing of a leading radical.

Troops were given the stark choice of either staying in Crimea and switching allegiance to serve under Russia's military, or leaving the peninsula to keep their jobs with the Ukrainian defense forces. "The Russians threatened, intimidated, bullied and tried to get us to switch sides to Russia. It has been very difficult to resist this enormous pressure but I have made a choice that I can live with," Senior Lt. Anatoly Mozgovoy told The Associated Press after arriving in the Ukrainian city of Genichesk . "We were greeted as heroes in Ukraine. I was able to breathe freely for the first time in months," the 30-year-old Mozgovoy said.

He said he left behind his wife and 7-month-old daughter, who were staying with his mother-in-law in Crimea until he finds out where he is being permanently deployed. So far, 131 Ukrainian marines have left Crimea, the defense ministry said. They were being temporarily stationed at a military barracks in Genichesk but their final destination was still unclear. At a summit on nuclear security in The Hague, Netherlands, President Barack Obama said Russian troops would not be dislodged from Crimea by force.

He noted that one of the achievements of his first nuclear summit in 2010 "was Ukraine's decision to remove all of its highly enriched uranium from its nuclear fuel sites." "Had that not happened, those dangerous nuclear materials would still be there now. And the difficult situation we're dealing with in Ukraine today would involve yet another level of concern," Obama said.

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OBAMA: NUCLEAR BLAST A BIGGER CONCERN THAN RUSSIA
Mar 25,`14 -- President Barack Obama says he's more concerned about the prospect of a nuclear weapon exploding in New York City than Russia's recent actions and called President Vladimir Putin's country "a regional power."

During a news conference Tuesday, a reporter asked Obama whether his opponent in the last presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, had a point when he described Russia as America's top geopolitical foe. At the time, Obama criticized that characterization. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea.

"With respect to Mr. Romney's assertion that Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical foe, the truth of the matter is that America has got a whole lot of challenges. Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness," Obama said at the conclusion of a nuclear security summit.

He later said Russia's actions were a problem but didn't pose the top national security threat to the United States. "I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan," he said, "which is part of the reason why the United States, showing its continued international leadership, has organized a forum over the last several years that's been able to help eliminate that threat in a consistent way."

While calling Russia the nation's top geopolitical foe during the campaign for the White House, Romney said Iran was the top security threat to the U.S. because of its nuclear ambitions.

News from The Associated Press

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - dey turnin' it into a nookielar war...

Ukrainian Women Have Launched a Sex Strike Against Russian Men
MAR 24 2014, "Don't give it to a Russian" uses the oldest protest trick in the book.

In the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea, some Ukrainians have been boycotting Russian goods. And some Ukrainian women are boycotting the most basic "good" of them all. The campaign, "Don't Give It to a Russian" encourages women to "fight the enemy by whatever means," on its Facebook page. The initiative borrows its slogan from the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s 1838 poem, Kateryna: “Fall in love, O dark-browed maidens, but not with the Moskaly [the Russians]," according to the news site Global Voices. Like any respectable guerrilla group, the campaign has created a line of merch:

And just a few days after launching the effort, organizers have succeeded in causing a stir on the Russian Internet. Much of that stir has, sadly, involved Russian bloggers calling them prostitutes. The campaign's Facebook page is written partly in Russian, which has raised questions about its authenticity. But one of the women who set up the page is Katerina Venzhik, an editor at the Ukrainian news site Delo.UA who lives in Kiev. And the use of Russian could also be a sign that opposition to Moscow's actions has spread beyond Ukrainian-language speakers in the country. About two out of six Ukrainians speak primarily Russian.

Of course, the women of "Don't Give It to a Russian" are hardly the first to have this idea. Just last month, a group of women in Tokyo threatened not to sleep with any man who voted for a gubernatorial candidate who was seen to have outdated views on gender. In 2003, a group called the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace led a sex strike for an end to the Liberian civil war. And just a few years ago in Ukraine, the feminist group Femen called on the wives and girlfriends of the members of the prime minister's cabinet to boycott sex in opposition to what they called the prime minister's "caddish and humiliating attitude towards Ukrainian women."

It is, in fact, a strategy as old as time. In the Greek comedy Lysistrata, the eponymous character rallies her fellow women to withhold sex from their husbands until they agree to end the Peloponnesian War. For what it's worth, it worked for the women in the play. "Russian women, care to join us?" the "Don't give it" group wrote in one recent Facebook post. "Our men are all still at home, but yours appear to be going to war."

Ukrainian Women Have Launched a Sex Strike Against Russian Men - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic

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ANALYSIS: RUSSIA DEEPLY LINKED TO OBAMA PRIORITIES
Mar 26,`14 -- Even as he criticizes Vladimir Putin and imposes sanctions on Russia, President Barack Obama is struggling with the consequences of his own earlier quest for a fresh start between Washington and Moscow.

From early in his presidency, Obama has engaged Russia to help achieve some of his key goals, including preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power and, more recently, solving the war in Syria before it spreads further in the Middle East. Now, he finds that the engagement may limit how hard he can hit back at Russia without toppling everything else. White House officials insist that the U.S. can't go back to a business-as-usual relationship with Russia as long as Putin still has control of Crimea, the strategically important peninsula he annexed from Ukraine.

Exactly what might be changed is still being debated inside the West Wing. Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, said Russia's incursion in Crimea "is causing the countries and people of Europe and the international community and, of course, the United States to reassess what does this mean and what are the implications." But even as officials warn of curtailed ties with Russia, they're seeking to insulate Obama's most pressing foreign policy priorities from any major harm that might result. Examples are plentiful and worrisome:

- Russia is part of the international negotiating team working with the U.S. to strike a nuclear deal with Iran.

- The Kremlin's participation is crucial to keeping Syria on track with a plan to rid Damascus of its chemical weapons stockpiles.

- Russia also allows the U.S. to use an alternative to a supply route through Pakistan to bring military personnel and equipment out of Afghanistan as the war there comes to an end.

Then there's the International Space Station and Russia's agreement to ferry American astronauts to and from it. And the concern, more pointed in Europe but well-noted in the U.S., that a deeper rift with Russia could interrupt crucial energy supplies now flowing to European nations. U.S. officials say they're skeptical Russia would upend any of these partnerships given that its own strategic interests are also at stake. Russia wants access to Iran's economy, which is now cut off from much of the world by U.S. sanctions. In Syria, Putin sees the chemical weapons deal as a way to stave off a possible American military strike and the ouster of his allies in the Syrian government.

American officials say they instead want to cut off cooperation in areas where Russia will suffer more than the U.S. That means stopping joint military operations and canceling trade talks that were eagerly sought by Moscow. "We must meet the challenge to our ideals, to our very international order with strength and conviction," Obama said Wednesday in Brussels. He closed three days of talks on the Russia dispute with European leaders in the Netherlands and Brussels.

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[tinydancer]

Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told - YouTube

Can you give me a synopsis on the video? I'd appreciate it. I'm on dial up and can't view it.

What I can see in the first frame is The leader of Right Sector.

 

[Nutz]

Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told - YouTube

Can you give me a synopsis on the video? I'd appreciate it. I'm on dial up and can't view it.

What I can see in the first frame is The leader of Right Sector.

They still have dial-up internet service?

 

[tinydancer]

Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told - YouTube

Can you give me a synopsis on the video? I'd appreciate it. I'm on dial up and can't view it.

What I can see in the first frame is The leader of Right Sector.

They still have dial-up internet service?

I really do live in the middle of nowhere. No cell phone service either.