US vs Russia: Ukraine fiasco

[pgardn]

Russia has Europe by the balls, and can dump all its gas in Asia, if you can read.

Yes. They basically showed Europe and other investors that you CANNOT count on Gazprom or any Russian company because Putin can make dumbass moves at any moment.

If Putin has Europe by the balls, the West has already neutered The Russian economy. Long term you buy that Gazprom stock and hold it. You don't think Europe has already determined it shall look to OTHER sources? Yeah that's what a Russia will do, dump that energy for no profit in Asia. You buy that Gazprom stock as China slows down and starts to cut down on petroleum due to the inability to breathe... Buy that Gazprom stock and hold it, I dare you.

Totally re ed play by Putin for Russia's economy.

[boutons_deux]

Yes. They basically showed Europe and other investors that you CANNOT count on Gazprom or any Russian company because Putin can make dumbass moves at any moment.

If Putin has Europe by the balls, the West has already neutered The Russian economy. Long term you buy that Gazprom stock and hold it. You don't think Europe has already determined it shall look to OTHER sources? Yeah that's what a Russia will do, dump that energy for no profit in Asia. You buy that Gazprom stock as China slows down and starts to cut down on petroleum due to the inability to breathe... Buy ithat Gazprom stock and hold it, I dare you.

Totally re ed play by Putin for Russia's economy.

[pgardn]

Emoticon = Boots has nada...

[Winehole23]

... implementing US State Dept policies

shush, you. was talking to WC.

[boutons_deux]

shush, you. was talking to WC.

GFY

[Winehole23]

with pleasure, but I work on my own schedule. busy posting right now.

[Winehole23]

53 Apr 14, 2014 2:08 PM EDT
By Leonid Bershidsky





There's one ploy Russian President Vladimir Putin has mastered and perfected in his 14 years in power: If something appears to threaten your power, create its evil twin.

When radical young Russians started organizing against him, he responded by generously funding a cluster of pro-Kremlin youth movements. When the Russian blogosphere turned hostile, pro-Kremlin resources sprang up and hundreds of active Putin-friendly commentators emerged from nowhere. When, in 2011, the Moscow middle class protested a rigged parliamentary election by holding mass rallies, Putin's staff sought to organize bigger gatherings by ordering public sector workers out on the streets with preprinted signs. Recently, even the anti-corruption agenda of blogger Alexei Navalny, who has been banned from posting while under house arrest, has been replicated by the Putin-created All-Russian People's Front as mild criticism of the government auction system. Putin's fake civil society dwarfs the genuine one, because it is a more efficient social ladder.


Now the same sort of mimicry is happening in eastern Ukraine. Anyone who watched the Ukrainian protests that led to the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych must be feeling a sense of deja vu. People are seizing government buildings, erecting barricades, burning tires and waving flags, only the flags are Russian and the people waving them are vehemently opposed to the post-Yanukovych regime in Kiev.


There's one notable difference: The anti-Kiev forces include heavily armed paramilitaries. Their unmarked uniforms are different from those worn by Russian occupying troops in Crimea last month, but the forces appear well-organized, and in numerous videos of the attacks they do not sound Ukrainian. In fact, they often freely admit that they are Russian. In one video, the man assuming command of local policemen in Gorlovka says he is a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army, and in Slavyansk, the commander of the group that seized the mayor's office told a reporter for Echo Moskvy radio that he was an entrepreneur from a Moscow suburb.

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...ama-in-ukraine

[Winehole23]

getting hairy: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...56a_story.html

[boutons_deux]

why is this Putin putsch even phrased as USA vs Russia? Obama vs Putin? Sounds like adolescents in the schoolyard playing "my is bigger" games.

Russia didn't stop (Repug) USA from invading Grenada, Panama Canal, Iraq, Afghanistan, so why would USA stop Russia from taking over ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine?

USA pushed out the pro-Russian Ukraine president, initiating the crisis.

[Winehole23]

thread le is obnoxious, but it's the happening thread so far ...

[boutons_deux]

thread le is obnoxious, but it's the happening thread so far ...

it's not only the thread le, it's the murderous, war-mongering right wing calling Obama a wimp, chicken for not manning up personally to Putin, going back to the Syria mess.

[Winehole23]

beg pardon, but so what? the mess in Ukraine isn't primarily about GOP name-calling.

[Winehole23]

well, maybe for you it is.

[boutons_deux]

Beneath the Ukraine Crisis: Shale Gas


Moscow’s alleged meddling in eastern Ukraine and its earlier annexation of Crimea spurred worldwide rebukes and much international commentary regarding the growing East-West divide. But one aspect that we have heard less about is the corporate struggle for Ukraine’s oil and natural gas. By some accounts, it is this struggle that is as much to blame for the current crisis as any geopolitical tug-of-war between East and West.


Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland (" the EU" ), speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.


Ukraine has Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet,according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While for years U.S. oil companies have been pressing for shale gas development in countries such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria only to be rebuffed by significant opposition from citizens and local legislators concerned about the environmental impacts of shale gas extraction – including earthquakes and groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – there has been considerably less opposition in Ukraine, a country that has been embroiled in numerous gas disputes with the Russian Federation in recent years.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, controlling nearly one-fifth of the world’s gas reserves, supplies more than half of Ukraine’s gas annually, and about 30 percent of Europe’s. It has often used this as political and economic leverage over Kiev and Brussels, cutting gas supplies repeatedly over the past decade (in the winters of 2005-2006, 2007-2008, and again in 2008-2009), leading to energy shortages not only in Ukraine, but Western European countries as well. This leverage, however, came under challenge in 2013 as Ukraine took steps towards breaking its dependence on Russian gas.

On Nov. 5, 2013 (just a few weeks before the Maidan demonstrations began in Kiev), Chevron signed a 50-year agreement with the Ukrainian government to develop oil and gas in western Ukraine. According to the New York Times, “The government said that Chevron would spend $350 million on the exploratory phase of the project and that the total investment could reach $10 billion.”

In announcing the deal, President Viktor Yanukovych said that it “will let Ukraine satisfy its gas needs completely and, under the optimistic scenario, export energy resources by 2020.”

Reuters characterized the deal as ”another step in a drive for more energy independence from Russia.”

The United States offered its diplomatic support, with Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, saying, “I’m very determined to cooperate with the Ukrainian government in strengthening Ukraine’s energy independence.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland spoke at an international business conference sponsored by Chevron on Dec. 13, 2013, after just returning from Kiev where she handed out cookies and sandwiches to demonstrators on the Maidan (US "foreign aid!" ).

In her speech, she urged Ukraine to sign a new deal with the IMF which would “send a positive signal to private markets and would increase foreign direct investment that is so urgently needed in Ukraine.” This is important for putting Ukraine “on the path to strengthening the sort of stable and predictable business environment that (Big US Oil) investors require,” she said.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/24...sis-shale-gas/
.

[boutons_deux]

[Winehole23]

Around 300 U.S. troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv last week to begin training Ukrainian National Guard forces. Part of what is being called Operation Fearless Guardian-2015, the U.S. forces were dispatched under the au es of the Global Contingency Security Fund, created to provide security sector assistance to partner countries to help them address challenges important to U.S. security interests.

http://www.realclearworld.com/articl...iv_111143.html

[m>s]

They're just going to keep on until they get something that they don't want

[Winehole23]

They?

[m>s]

U.S. Govt

[Winehole23]

what is it "they" don't want?

[m>s]

War with Russia and its allies

[Winehole23]

the article suggests the presence of US troops even in very small numbers could be a lever for negotiations short of war.

is war inevitable, in your opinion?

[Winehole23]

also, what allies? who else wants a hot war with the US?

[m>s]

its kind of hard to explain, you won't see a bunch of countries simultaneously declare war all at once. It'll start out against Russia and conventional but if they lose even the slightest ground they'll let tactical nukes fly. Not on the American mainland but in Europe. There are a growing number of people in the EU who are sick of our . Germany secretly hates us but is still occupied so they won't speak out directly at this time. You see it with merkels relationship with Putin and their reluctance to go along with sanctions. Let us start another major European war and see the masks drop. Brezinski said in his book that the number one goal of American foreign policy over the past 100 years has been separating and dividing the German and Russian people because if allied they are the only ones capable of defeating the U.S. The Russians have always known that the Americanswere not friendly and the Germans are just now starting to realize it. Let's not forget the outrage in Germany just last year over NSA spying. The moment we're tied up in Europe the Shia-Sunni conflict will erupt and China will jump Japan. Whether we go to war with China will depend on whether or not we choose to open up a third front.(the second being Iran and the Middle East) Also India does not like us and will be aiding Russia in the very least passively with aid and supplies.

[Winehole23]

U.S. troops will begin training regular Ukrainian military forces later this year in an expansion of their current mission, which so far has been limited to instructing Interior Ministry national guard units, the State Department said on Friday.

"This training is part of our long-running defense cooperation with Ukraine and is taking place at the invitation of the Ukraine government. This additional program brings our total security assistance committed to Ukraine since 2014 to over $244 million," State Department Mark Toner said.


Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, head of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said earlier this month that U.S. officials were discussing expanding the military training to include regular Ukrainian troops under the Defense Ministry.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0PY28A20150724