Ukraine and Russia Developments. Version 2.

[Kindjal83]

I find mindblowing how some people are still trying to find logical excuses for the "Separatists"/Russian stupid actions since the beggining of this conflict, with all the lies and they pulled of since the invasion of Crimeia... Now, they have crossed the line, and Mr. Putin as some serious explaining to do, and a hell of a lot to pay.

[Condottiere 40K]

One longtime Putin ally who runs a major state company said Ukrainian forces shot down the plane with U.S. connivance. This amounts to a war against Russia without a formal declaration, the executive said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
All this war and talk of war has the country’s business elite “living in a state of fear” and trying to get their money out of the country, Kryshtanovskaya said by phone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...isolation.html

[Geronimo2006]

Russian state pollster Vtsiom says Russians divided on Ukraine. Maybe the propaganda is not working so well or maybe the crash is responsible

Moscow - Russians are divided over the ongoing events in eastern Ukraine. A third says Moscow should support the militia; a third proposes not to interfere, and another third says Russia should mediate peace talks, the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) reported. It polled 1,600 adults in 42 regions of Russia on July 12-13.

[Pielstick]

IA 655 was misidentified due to something with it's IFF that I can't exactly remember, but the Americans mistook it for a military signal - again not sure how.

No. The IFF thing is one of the fictions that gets trotted out to excuse the US Navy's shooting down of IR655.

The data from USS Vincennes' AEGIS system was recorded and analysed, and is acknowledged to have shown that IR655 was squawking the correct civilian transponder codes and was not transmitting any military IFF signals.

(and this pales in comparison with the Soviet shotdown of KAL 007 in terms of stupidity and incompetence)

Not really. I suggest you go and read up on the sequence of events that day, in particular the accounts of Commander David Carlson - commanding officer of the USS Sides which was in company with USS Vincennes. Carlson has some very interesting things to say about the actions of Captain Will Rogers.

I am perfectly willing to accept that the possible firing on a civilian airliner was a mistake, but that doesn't diminish the responsibility of the shooter.

Agreed 100%.

[Roma_Victrix]

I rest my case

Your posts are simply the most entertaining to read here. Carry on, sir! I'm not ashamed at all to say I don't know much about Ukraine in general or conditions on the ground in eastern Ukraine, but my knowledge of the situation has certainly been enhanced thanks to you. Cheers, +1 rep.

[Dromikaites]

One longtime Putin ally who runs a major state company said Ukrainian forces shot down the plane with U.S. connivance. This amounts to a war against Russia without a formal declaration, the executive said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
All this war and talk of war has the country’s business elite “living in a state of fear” and trying to get their money out of the country, Kryshtanovskaya said by phone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...isolation.html

One interesting piece of information (among the many) is Mikhail Kasyanov's (Putin's Prime Minister between 2000 and 2004) statement that sanctions limited only to the financial sector would destroy the Russian economy in just 6 months.

Translation: the EU could leave the energy sector relatively untouched and focus only on the Russian financial sector and that would be enough to destroy Russia.

Kasyanov might be accurate in his evaluation.

Kasyanov might be wrong, and the Russian economy might still be alive after the West embargoes its financial sector.

Kasyanov might actually know the Russian economy could survive a financial embargo and is willingly trying to mislead the West into letting the energy sector alone and hitting only the financial sector.

Still it seems like a good idea for the West to cut off Russia from the international financial markets and see what happens. If Kasyanov is right, Russia would be ripe for reforming (or raping, if you prefer) in less than a year.

If he is wrong, the next round of sanctions can target the energy sector as well. Even if he is wrong the financial sector sanction will nevertheless severely affect the Russian economy even if they don't kill it off.

[Costin_Razvan]

Even if that happens, stressing the if, then China will just covertly save Russia economically.

Why? Because if the west is willing to do that with a country like Russia over Ukraine then what would stop the west from doing such a thing against China over it's disputes in the China sea? China won't allow it's greatest ally to collapse.

[Condottiere 40K]

I guess it's time for regime change.

[Dromikaites]

Even if that happens, stressing the if, then China will just covertly save Russia economically.

Why? Because if the west is willing to do that with a country like Russia over Ukraine then what would stop the west from doing such a thing against China over it's disputes in the China sea? China won't allow it's greatest ally to collapse.

Are you sure you fully understand how that works?

Hint: the French bank BNP Paribas was fined 9bn USD because the Swiss branch did business with Sudan and Iran.

Any Chinese bank doing business with Russia would have to forget about doing business with the West.

I doubt the Chinese would even consider helping Russia out, especially now. Because it would benefit them much more not to.

If Russia collapses then the Chinese can carve out a nice piece of Siberia for themselves. Not through military occupation, because the Russians would still have their nukes. But the Chinese would be able to extract all sorts of economic concessions from a starving Russia.

Those concessions would make irrelevant those islands in the China sea, at least for many years from now. So China would let that conflict die out and plunder Siberia dry.

[Geronimo2006]

Kerry said yesterday the US has evidence the shooting down was deliberate,

Also from BBC:

The Daily Mail explains that "the black boxes would be of great interest to Russia as they could be used to pinpoint exactly where the aircraft was when it was hit and so calculate where the missile launcher is likely to have been stationed..The paper quotes an air safety expert who says Moscow may be "able to alter" information on the recorders, if they have them in their possession..".

[Dromikaites]

Kerry said yesterday the US has evidence the shooting down was deliberate,

Of course it was deliberate.

The purpose was to enforce a no-fly zone over the terrorist-occupied territory. The leaders of the terrorists are Spetsnaz officers who know very well that commandos can be parachuted from airliners. The intercepted phone conversations explicitly prove they were worried about that.

They wanted to make sure no plane flies above their area. They obtained that.

The West might cripple Russia. Or may not.

Even if the West cripples Russia, Putin would still be able to point the finger at the evil Western homosexuals who starve the Russian people out. Just like Saddam was blaming the West for the consequences of the Western sanctions on Iraq.

The starved Russian people might not revolt, like they didn't revolt during Stalin's famine. Or like the Iraqis didn't revolt against Saddam (and when some of them did, Saddam wiped them out).

So if the West indeed cripples Russia and ruins the standard of living of the general population, the terrorist leaders and Putin's buddies would still live a great life.

On the other hand, if planes continue to fly above the terrorist-held area, one day paratroopers might drop from one of those planes and make short work of the terrorist leaders.

So from their point of view, murdering 298 people was justified.

[Geronimo2006]

Reports Rubizhne (63000 pop.) in Luhansk Oblast has fallen to the anti terrorist operation (ATO) troops.

[Pielstick]

The leaders of the terrorists are Spetsnaz officers who know very well that commandos can be parachuted from airliners.

I'm most curious about this. Could you please explain to me the process of parachuting out of an airliner at cruise altitude?

[Costin_Razvan]

Are you sure you fully understand how that works?

Are you sure you do?

Hint: the French bank BNP Paribas was fined 9bn USD because the Swiss branch did business with Sudan and Iran.

Any Chinese bank doing business with Russia would have to forget about doing business with the West.

A French bank getting fined is sure as not the same as a Chinese bank getting fined by the US given the very close economic cooperation between the EU and the US.

I doubt the Chinese would even consider helping Russia out, especially now. Because it would benefit them much more not to.

If Russia collapses then the Chinese can carve out a nice piece of Siberia for themselves. Not through military occupation, because the Russians would still have their nukes. But the Chinese would be able to extract all sorts of economic concessions from a starving Russia.

Those concessions would make irrelevant those islands in the China sea, at least for many years from now. So China would let that conflict die out and plunder Siberia dry.

People keep talking about Siberia as if China gives a damn about the region, hint they don't. It's a myth: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadom...ria-is-a-myth/

As for China helping Russia, of course it wouldn't be free but China wants Russian technologies and resources, they want trade agreements on those subjects and they've already started winning concessions from Moscow with regards to that for the first time in years ( and I don't mean the gas deal ), while at the same time pushing with their claims in the China Sea.

You may wish to pretend the west vs Russia political conflict is fought in a vacuum but it's not. It serves China's interests very well to keep the Kremlin fighting this political conflict and for the west to be distracted from what's going on in Asia and it serves them well to push with their sea claims right now while the west is distracted.

The more this conflict escalates the more troops America will send to Europe, troops that America was going to move to Asia.

EDIT: China has publicly denounced the western media coverage on the crash as being biased and inaccurate.

[Exarch]

Any Chinese bank doing business with Russia would have to forget about doing business with the West.

because that worked so well with Iran...

No, what happened was that the US 'gave concessions' to Chinese banks doing business with sanctions ridden Iran because the embarrassment of having Chinese banks flouting US sanctions would've been devastating

[pajomife]

I didn't know that Ukraine is in South America.

He don't ask political asylum yet,he return ,I guess.
And I'd like to know how could the west target the energy sector in Russia ,reducing the demand?To half?They could raise the prices,mainly because the winter is coming and nobody wants a gas war now.
Another funny stuff,all the European stock markets are down,but not the US ones...

[Dromikaites]

Reports Rubizhne (63000 pop.) in Luhansk Oblast has fallen to the anti terrorist operation (ATO) troops.

Regaining control over Rubizhne is "killing to birds with one stone".

On one hand it may open a route into the Northern part of Luhansk, which is connected to Rubizhne by road T-13-03.

On the other hand it eliminates a threat on Artemivsk from the East (Rubizhne and Artemivsk are connected via the road T-13-02). Now only the Spetsnaz forces in Horlivka or Popasna could get to Artemivsk.

And there is a third option: the "People's Republik of Luhansk" has a "second capitol" city in Stakhanov, which is sort-of midway between Luhansk and Horlivka. Stakhanov is much closer to Rubizhne than Luhansk, so the Ukrainian army may want to deal with that "second capitol" first. Liberating Stakhanov would also eliminate the terrorists from Popasna (5km north west from Stakhanov and 15 km east of Artemivsk), so the 3rd option is in itself very attractive.

Since we're placing things on the map, here's something interesting: the intercepted phone calls of the terrorists say the Buk launcher which shot the plane was located in Chornukhine.

Chornukhine is a village on the M04 highway, connecting Horlivka with Luhansk. The key strategic point there is the crossroads of highway M03 (which leads to the Russian border) and M04 which connects Luhansk, Horlivka and the northern part of the city of Donetsk.

The way the terrorists are placing their forces in the region show several interesting things:

1) They still count for Russian support, coming to them along highway M03;

2) They still hope for a successful attack on Artemivsk, capturing the huge weapons depot there, or else they would have left Horlivka and shortened their lines.

Now if the Ukrainians go after Stakhanov and in the process eliminate the terrorists from Popasna, not only they eliminate "Luhansk People's Republic" "second capitol" and consolidate the defense of Artemivsk.

They also gain access to the eastern side of highway M03. That would enable them to move strong forces down that highway without the fear of ambush, capturing the crossroads with M04 and isolating both the terrorists in Horlivka from Russia and the city of Luhansk from the city of Donetsk as well.

So we will see some interesting developments pretty soon.

[Geronimo2006]

Associated Press: UN to vote on crash resolution; Russia has doubts


Also terrorists arresting journalists including the one from the Daily Beast blog who wrote this article on how the separatists are under prders to arrest all journalists looking for the victims bodies in the Donetsk morgue.

[Dromikaites]

I'm most curious about this. Could you please explain to me the process of parachuting out of an airliner at cruise altitude?

Why take my word for it when Google is your friend?

Google up HALO/HAHO (those stand for "High Altitude Low Opening" and "High Altitude High Opening" respectively) and see what you get.

Hint 1: you may discover to your astonishment that both the VDV (Russian paratroopers) and the Spetsnaz (Russian Special Forces) are trained to do that.

As for the fact that opening the cargo bay of an airliner at that altitude is tricky and might result in the airplane being forced to make an emergency landing afterwards, that is indeed a risk. But there were plenty of airports nearby for a plane to safely land after delivering its commandos.

So which of the two was at work here:

1) You were unwilling to look things up for yourself. That would be bad if in the age of Internet that is a permanent attitude to things unfamiliar to you;

2) You imagined I talk about things I have no idea about. In such case you must be really new here.

EDIT: China has publicly denounced the western media coverage on the crash as being biased and inaccurate.

The only thing worth replying to.

And the reply is a 4-letter word.

ROFL

[Geronimo2006]

Russia massing troops on border with Ukraine, deploys mines in Sea of Azov


These criminals in the Kremlin have no shame whatsoever.