General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Wikileaks Ukraine cable proves US government knew of fascist threat [View all]The Magistrate
(95,247 posts)The use of force by Yanukovyk's riot police greatly exceeded anything displayed in the United States, at least in the modern era. If you want to go back to labor disputes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, you can find parallels. Police here greatly mistreat protesters, but no police actually shot into the crowds at Occupy encampments, or at the NATO protests here in Chicago. The idea Yanukovych refrained from violence for fear of western intervention is, to put it bluntly, laughable nonesense. He did not refrain, and Western intervention was never a possibility, just as it remains no possibility today.
Whether people in the east of Ukraine want annexation is immaterial: annexation by Russia will most likely occur, and annexation has been Russia's intention throughout. The armed men who spear-head the secessionist rising there are agents of Russia, actually Russian operatives in many cases, and what the people of the region want concerns them not the slightest. They are doing the job they were sent to do; creating conditions in which annexation by Russia is a practical possibility.
In the face of this, denouncing U.S. intervention is a piece of low comedy.