Wow, what a thread. Two fucking idiots talking past each other.
Although I can kinda understand Metalman's position. It does in some ways seem like Putin has out smarted Obama but you're really just falling for Putin's tough guy charisma like the other thread's big dummy, just in a different way.
The fact is Putin isn't gonna win this, that's why he made such a desperate play here and in the end this will be seen as the chink in his armor that will undo him. Putin might have tanks and planes and a navy, but Ukraine has the full economic power of the EU and the US supporting it right now and they're gonna unload into Russia this week. Putin has already realized his blunder and is already trying to find a way out. Here's the thing, Putin's incursion into Crimea has created a huge backlash against him. In fact, he really has no allies. China distanced themselves from this incursion but that's not really a surprise nor does it really matter much. However, Kazakhstan and Belarus have both freaked out over this, and those were Russia's two closest post-Soviet allies, willing to follow Putin anywhere. Except Ukraine I guess. Belarus has already recognized the new Ukrainian government and Kazakhstan has condemned the Russian deployment. This isn't likely to entice other former Soviet nations to grow closer to Russia, and in fact, these kinds of actions tend to drive people away. Not only that, NATO nations are likely to slap Russia with all sorts of sanctions and deploy a missile defense system right on his border. Mostly harmless to Russia but it'll make Putin look like a loser - seriously tainting his image. Hell, even RT.com has come out against the incursion. Wow.
But back to the economy. Putin and his idiotic apologists like Fluffy like to point to the fascists running in the streets and blame them for all the problems. But that's not really what forced Yanukovych to leave (and for the record, Russia is full of fascist wackos too (Zhirinovsky is actually in Crimea right now, surprise surprise) and so are most European cities). He fled because he lost support of the people. But most importantly, he lost support of the rich people. And guess what? Putin is losing support over this as well. The vast majority of Russians don't approve of what he's doing in the Ukraine but most importantly, neither do the rich Russians. Putin has done well for them in the past decade or so, but if this stupid little incursion is gonna have all their offshore assets frozen, well, maybe it's time for a forced change of command in Russia too. The more you believe in Putin's strong man image the more far fetched that might seem, but Putin isn't super human and the list of his enemies is very long. Anything can happen and he's probably smart enough to know that.
4 Reasons Putin Is Already Losing in Ukraine
At home, this intervention looks to be one of the most unpopular decisions Putin has ever made. The Kremlin’s own pollster
released a survey on Monday that showed 73% of Russians reject it. In phrasing its question posed in early February to 1,600 respondents across the country, the state-funded sociologists at WCIOM were clearly trying to get as much support for the intervention as possible: “Should Russia react to the overthrow of the legally elected authorities in Ukraine?” they asked. Only 15% said yes — hardly a national consensus.
That seems astounding in light of all the brainwashing Russians have faced on the issue of Ukraine. For weeks, the Kremlin’s effective monopoly on television news has been sounding the alarm over Ukraine. Its revolution, they claimed, is the result of an American alliance with Nazis intended to weaken Russia. And still, nearly three-quarters of the population oppose a Russian “reaction” of any kind, let alone a Russian military occupation like they are now watching unfold in Crimea. The 2008 invasion of Georgia had much broader support, because Georgia is not Ukraine. Ukraine is a nation of Slavs with deep cultural and historical ties to Russia. Most Russians have at least some family or friends living in Ukraine, and the idea of a fratricidal war between the two largest Slavic nations in the world evokes a kind of horror that no Kremlin whitewash can calm.
Indeed, Monday’s survey suggests that the influence of Putin’s television channels is breaking down. The blatant misinformation and demagoguery on Russian television coverage of Ukraine seems to have pushed Russians to go online for their information. And as for those who still have no Internet connection, they could simply have picked up the phone and called their panicked friends and relatives in Ukraine.
That's right, it seems as though most Russians in Russia are smart enough to see past Putin's lies, totally unlike our resident Putin evangelist here on whyzzat.com.
Oh, speaking of television and lies, Russians in Ukraine are not falling for Putin's crap either. So who are those Russian Ukrainians we see on TV all scared about imaginary armed Ukrainian fascists rampaging across the Crimea? Well, it seems those scared Russian Ukrainians are actually Russian Russians.
Opinion: A divided Ukraine? Think again
Many people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine don't want the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But there are some who are afraid of forced Ukraineization because they have been fed propaganda by Russian TV channels for years. The purpose is to convince Ukrainians that we are divided, not one country, and that the safest course of action for Russian-speaking areas is to break away and join Russia.
These ideas have been cultivated since I was a child. I remember when I lived in Donetsk in the '90s, how scared we were that a candidate from western Ukraine would win an election and force us to speak Ukrainian. But when I moved out of the area of aggressive Russian information, I quickly realized I can speak Russian in Kiev or Lviv and no one will ever be upset with me!
Over our 22 years of Ukrainian independence, fears of language or ethnic persecution have never come true. But they were kept alive by Russian propaganda. We understand that Putin is trying to escalate tension and provoke civil war in Ukraine right now. He can't afford for a free Ukraine to succeed: His own people might get an idea that it's possible to overthrow a tyrant and build a prosperous country.
Yuri in Simferopol told me that it's a handful of pro-Russian extremists in the streets trying to make a scene for Russian video cameras -- they are showing that these are the Russians who request protection!
Meanwhile, the rest of the city is terrified by the presence of Russian military forces and are evacuating their families to central or western Ukraine.
I got a similar report from Luda in Kharkov. She said that a large group of Russians were brought across the border by buses, and they were the ones inspiring and instigating unrest that resulted in putting a Russian flag on a municipal building.
The amount of propaganda Russia has poured onto Ukraine is hard to comprehend. Putting troops on Ukrainian land is going to bring the very opposite result from what Putin expected: I believe it's uniting Ukraine.
And there's more to that then some anecdotal evidence. The lies come straight from the top.
Many Ukrainians Want Russia to Invade
For the most part, what drove so many people to renounce their allegiance to Ukraine was a mix of pride and fear, the latter fueled in part by misinformation from
Moscow. The most apparent deception came on Saturday morning, when the Russian Foreign Ministry put out a
statement accusing the new government in Kiev of staging a “treacherous provocation” on the Crimean Peninsula. It claimed that “unidentified armed men” had been sent from Kiev to seize the headquarters of the Interior Ministry police in Crimea. But thanks to the “decisive actions of self-defense battalions,” the statement said, the attack had been averted with just a few casualties. This statement turned out to be without any basis in fact.
Igor Avrutsky, who was the acting Interior Minister of Crimea during the alleged assault, told TIME the following afternoon that it never happened. “Everything was calm,” he says. Throughout the night, pro-Russian militiamen armed with sticks and shields had been defending the Crimean Interior Ministry against the revolutionaries, and one of the militia leaders, Oleg Krivoruchenko, also says there was no assault on the building. “People were coming and going as normal,” he says.
It's quite clear that for Putin's plan to succeed he'll need the full support from all his useful idiots. But let's face it, there just aren't enough idiots for that.
