Russia Pushing Ukraine Conflict to ‘Point of No Return,’ E.U. Leader Says

[Purveyor]

Source: New York Times

By ANDREW HIGGINS and NEIL MacFARQUHARAUG. 30, 2014

BRUSSELS — Warning that Russia was pushing the conflict in Ukraine toward “the point of no return,” the president of the European Union’s executive arm said on Saturday that European leaders meeting in Brussels would probably endorse new and tougher sanctions in an effort to make Moscow “come to reason.”

After morning talks with the visiting president of Ukraine, Petro O. Poroshenko, the head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, voiced Europe’s growing alarm and exasperation at Russian actions in Ukraine and the risks of a wider war.

Mr. Poroshenko, speaking at a joint news conference with Mr. Barroso, said Ukraine still hoped for a political settlement with Russian-backed rebels in the east of his country but said a flow of Russian troops and armored vehicles into Ukraine in recent days in support of rebels were stoking the fires of a broader conflict.

“We are too close to a border where there will be no return to the peace plan,” Mr. Poroshenko said, asserting that, since Wednesday, “thousands of foreign troops and hundreds of foreign tanks are now on the territory of Ukraine, with a very high risk not only for the peace and stability of Ukraine but for the peace and stability of the whole of Europe.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/europe/russia-pushing-ukraine-conflict-to-point-of-no-return-eu-leader-says.html

[Igel]

1. The EU is amusing.

They really don't take being kicked in the groin as an answer. Even if it is the 6th or 7th time, they continue to insist it's an accident. Putin isn't convinced that they're wimps and wusses, but the longer it goes, the more bold he gets: He must be in disbelief that they're still playing the same game months after annexation of the Crimea, setting up puppet governments, sending hundreds of tanks, APCs, Grad units over the border and thousands of men. Even worse, they keep saying every time he pauses to observe if his escalation's going to provoke any real action that they're winning!

Meanwhile, the only real problem he's had was the one step that the Western politicians say cannot produce or even really be part of the solution: A military campaign that involved blood, dead bodies, artillery shells, airstrikes, and bullets. Even as they discuss how any solution in Iraq and Syria requires a solution that is at least partially military. Which was their attitude in Libya. What matters isn't the situation on the ground but the enemy. Airstrikes and military supplies *are* the solution. But only for some people. It's like playing poker: You are in a bathing suit, always show your cards, and have no funds available but what you have on the table; you show you can't count cards and let the organizer use his decks of cards. Meanwhile, the organizer is seen counting cards, you see funny symbols on cards, he holds his cards close and has nice sleeves that may hide all sorts of things.

There's no 24-dimensional chess. No chess at all or poker. Not even checkers. Rock-paper-scissors is beyond most Western politicians. They make Chamberlain look wily and cunning, and themselves out to be Wiley Coyote.

Don't put boots on the ground in Ukraine. Just have NATO fighters take out rebel installations. If there are no Russian troops or equipment there, any AA fire should be strictly pre-1991. No Russian bodies need to be returned home. Russia, simply put, keeps saying it has only a moral dog in this fight, so make it clear: Good, so stay out and let NATO be the dog-catcher. AWACS will fly over the area, and any incursion by Russian choppers or fighters will be met fighters. They say they're uninvolved: Make them choke on their words. Instead of acting like we know for an absolute fact that they are and we're mildly irritated by it and have to show our disapproval, but no more. It's like hearing about the Rwandan genocide in action and staging a protest in NYC against racism. It may feel good, but it's silly.

And if anything else happens in Ukraine, it will be NATO that tracks down the post-1991 AA systems, take out border crossings that contraband APCs and tanks cross; it will be NATO who guarantees that any results of the NATO referendum that Batkivshchyna is trying to organize will be honored and that Georgia, if it wishes, will be fast-tracked for NATO membership by the end of the year (Ukraine before then), with a whopping huge NATO army and naval base stationed in Georgia to support the major NATO naval port in Mariupol and NATO army base in Slavyansk.

At that point, there are possible points for negotiation and compromise. It incredibly, absurdly, stylishly foolish to confuse "powerful words" with "power" and "strong moral position" with "strong negotiating position."

[Purveyor]

2. NATO's problem here is that they have come up against a foe that can and

will fight back.

This hasn't been an issue for NATO for quite sometime and if it results in the halt of NATO expansionism and the great "liberating crusades" of the west, so be it as that would be a 'good thing'.

The 'Wests' track record in their worldly crusade for 'democracy' can only be considered a 'miserable failure'.

[joshcryer]

12. There were 14 Democratic States in 1940. Now there are 122.

Your statement is demonstrably wrong.

[Purveyor]

16. Are you suggesting that these 'democratic states' are a result of NATO? If so then

why are there only 28 member states in NATO the last I checked.

[tabasco]

18. What country did NATO take over and force into the alliance?

[KoKo]

3. Do you believe NATO is the only answer?

I couldn't tell if your post was sarcasm or not because you seemed so worked up. (not criticizing you for that...but, it just made your post hard to read because it sounded like a rant.)

[joshcryer]

4. And if AWACS gets shot down?

Do you want to start WWIII? Because this is how you start WWIII. Russia denies being involved but many of the fighters are Russian or have dual nationality. The pretext for invading Crimea was ethnic cleansing of Russians. Any attack by NATO on the rebel forces would result in a full scale invasion. Putin could get away with it because it would be a complete deterioration of the rebel forces in a few days and that is inconceivable to the Russian people since Russian media is playing up their successes. Putin would say "Yes, I am invading, and it is for humanitarian reasons, because the Nazi's in Kiev are killing ethnic Russians." What's NATO then going to do? Say "OK, you win."

What needs to happen, and is the only really realistic outcome, is command and control. US intel. Actual guidance in the battle. Real time location feeds. What we saw in Ilovaysk was a complete disaster for the intel.

[ballyhoo]

5. If NATO moves to help militarily, there will be no NATO much

longer--and both NATO and RUSSIA know it.

[joshcryer]

6. Which is why Russia is acting with impunity.

[ballyhoo]

8. Yes, Joshcryer, I know that. The real question is are

the Russians attacking with real separtists or anti real separtists? Have you identified them? lol

[joshcryer]

9. They're attacking with tanks and artillery.

But laugh it up. It's unsustainable in the long run. If anything they're just destroying Ukrainian infrastructure so they can come back in a while and say "hey we'll help rebuild that bridge we blew up a few years ago."

War economies, the Russians know them well.

[ballyhoo]

10. I was laughing because of the question that other poster asked you, like

you would know the answer to that. No. The Russians will eventually take all of Ukraine and it will be their own bridges they are rebuilding. Russia is near going into supreme power with the end of the dollar. I don't think the major will try to rebuild the SU but he will want more buffer states between him and Hillary Clinton. I'm sure the major has a complicated PERT network already done.

[EEO]

7. The EU is a fundamentally bad idea.

You cannot mesh such different cultures and economies without doing damage to all of them. The few strong powers that want it to work so much cannot see it that way, though. The emperor is wearing no clothes and the people of the weaker economies suffer while the stronger economies try to prop them up and tell the word everything is swell.

[ballyhoo]

11. Right. A mistake from the get-go--

[Zorro]

13. I wonder whether Snowden's revelations have served to embolden Putin

[Iterate]

14. 'Novorossiya' Conference In Yalta This Weekend With European Neo-Nazi Speakers

17:26 (GMT)

A conference is being held this weekend in Yalta, Russian-occupied Crimea, titled "Russia, Ukraine, Novorossia: Global Problems and Challenges."

The conference is due to be attended by numerous separatist leaders, including Aleksandr Boroday.

It had been reported that Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, had been due to speak. However Anatoly El Murid, a Russian political theorist, posted a photo of himself in Russia with Girkin today on his blog, saying that the Russian separatist leader had only found out that his name had been connected to the event today. He says that Strelkov's name had been used by the organisers for their own purposes.



Interestingly, according to Anton Shekhovstov, an expert on Europe's extreme right, the conference is due to be attended by a number of prominent European far right figures.

He lists them thus:

Frank Creyelman (far right Vlaams Belang, Belgium)

Luc Michel (neo-Nazi Parti Communautaire National-Européen, Belgium)

Pavel Chernev (far right Ataka, Bulgaria)

Angel Djambazki (far right Bulgarsko Natsionalno Dvizhenie, Bulgaria)

Erkki Johan Bäckman (neo-Stalinist, Finland)

Márton Gyöngyösi (fascist Jobbik, Hungary)

Giovanni Maria Camillacci (far right Lega Nord, Italy)

Roberto Fiore (fascist Forza Nuova, Italy)

Mateusz Piskorski (far right Samooborona, Poland)

Konrad Rękas (far right Samooborona, Poland)

Bartosz Bekier (neo-Nazi Falanga, Poland)

Nick Griffin (fascist British National Party, UK)

http://www.interpretermag.com/ukraine-liveblog-day-194-humanitarian-corridor-uncertain-for-evacuation-of-ukrainian-soldiers/#4052

Brussels wasn't the only busy city in Europe this weekend. It couldn't be more clear where those who would excuse or justify the annexation and invasions have pitched their political tents.

[alp227]

17. Updated title: "Ukraine President Says Europe’s Security Depends on Stopping Russia "

Updated excerpt:

BRUSSELS — Accusing Russia of waging a campaign of “military aggression and terror” against his country, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine told European leaders here on Saturday that their own countries’ security depended on stopping Russian troops from stoking a conflict in eastern Ukraine that he said could escalate into a wider war.

His warnings won no pledges of military assistance from the European Union, but helped set the stage for a new round of sanctions against Russia. Leaders ducked an immediate decision on what new measures to take, despite agreeing that Moscow had escalated the conflict sharply in recent days. They instead asked the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, to prepare proposals for expanding existing sanctions, and said these must be ready “for consideration within a week,” according to a statement issued early Sunday.

Saying that Russia was pushing the conflict in Ukraine toward “the point of no return,” the president of commission, José Manuel Barroso, said European leaders who gathered Saturday in Brussels would endorse new, tougher measures in an effort to make Moscow “come to reason.”

Some European leaders, particularly those from former Communist nations in Eastern Europe, called for direct military assistance to Ukraine’s badly stretched armed forces, which are battling pro-Russian rebels on three fronts in eastern Ukraine. But officials said a decision on military aid would be left to individual countries.