Why write "When the West looks at Vladimir Putin...", followed by "When Putin looks at the West and at his own interests..."
Is the West not also looking at its own interests?
If there is strong evidence to suggest that many of the pro-Russia spokespeople are being paid by Russia, is it not also true that many of the pro-West spokespeople are being paid by the West?
I think the recent developments in Ukraine are clearly 1) an attempt to split Ukraine, if not away from Russian influence, then into two pieces, and 2) an attempt to deny Russia's Black Sea Fleet access to Sevastopol.
It looks in these early days as though the first might succeed, but the second has already failed.
And lastly, I do wish our Government were not such camp-followers.

When I started to read this article I was dismayed that yet again ignorant ill-informed nonsense was getting space. Then I reached the end and saw the pean of praise for Abbott (surely our worst informed PM on foreign affairs in recent decades) and saw that the writer was a paid propagandist for the Liberal party and it all became clearer.

Graeme, if you are serious about encouraging informed debate, there have been a number of excellent articles written in recent days that are freely available. Please stop inflicting this self-serving drivel on us.

An excellent article Peter Shmigel.

It certainly has the two parrots above squarking.

Their claim of independence from Putin's policies are somewhat undercut by the interest of one of them in maintaining "Russia's Black Sea Fleet access to Sevastopol."

They are truly Putin's Useful Idiots. The definition is:

"...useful idiot is a term for people perceived as propagandists for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause."

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

They don't realise that Russian aggression towards Ukraine, including Crimea, cannot be excused.

Regards

Pete

When it comes to Colonel Putin, I've always seen him as a power hungry psychopath!?
And POWER HUNGRY PSYCHOPATHS, are not know for rational decisions.
Clearly, the majority of Ukraine citizens, would be prepared to lay down or risk their lives, than return to the Russian yoke!
A very dangerous situation, when that citizenry, feeling they have very little left to lose, have their fingers, hovering over nuclear armed ICBM's!
Nor would they be very troubled by the need to re-aim these weapons of mass destruction at Moscow, or St Petersburg, or the industrialized Urals!?
Given any fall out would travel east to west, only Russia and Putin, has very much to lose?
Other than that, the Ukraine could chose to turn their quite massive exportable reserves of grain into ethanol?
Which would allow them to live without Russian gas or energy supplies, particularly if they converted their current biological waste, to biogas, which could be used to power and heat their cities, indefinitely, and indeed, long after Russian gas supplies have completely dried up!

"This needs to be viewed through an historical lens."

Indeed it does. Pity the author doesn't take his own advice.

Ukrainian language and identity are inventions out of wholecloth from the last 125 years and stem from Polish-dominated Austrian Galicia.

Prior to that time, no one had ever spoken a language called Ukrainian, no one called themselves Ukrainian or claimed a Ukrainian ethnicity, and there was no place or subdivision or country called Ukraine.

What now passes for Ukrainian language is a sort of pidgin-Russian heavily influenced by Polish loanwords and phonetics, and spoken as a dialect of Russian inside the Galicia, Volhynia, Vinnytsia, Zhitomir regions dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and Polish nobles from 1350 to 1790/1940. Ukrainian language exists in a continuum of basically mutually comprehensible East Slavonic dialects which in a circle are Russian, Surzhyk, Ukrainian, West Polesian, Belarussian, and Trasianka before coming back to Russian.

People who now call themselves Ukrainians prior to 1890 called themselves Rusyns as opposed to "Rossians" or "Russians". Anyone with any intelligence will notice that ethnonym is identical to Russian. The "Ukrainians" in Transcarpathia, the part of Ukraine ruled by Hungary and Slovakia up until 1945 still call themselves Rusyn, not Ukrainian.

In truth, Ukrainian should be thought of as a political party promoting separate identity from Russia coming out of Austrian Galacia, and opposed to the Russophile Party looking towards Russia, and the Ugro-Rusyns in Transcarpathia. These divisions are still present in Ukraine.

I'll repeat the words of my pacifist grandfather who fought against conscription, and who was jailled for his troubles, in WW1.

We are seeing the start of another European War. It's none of our business. Stay out of it it will only lead to the pointless spilling of Australian blood in faraway lands.

Lets give that message to all our politicians and our eurocentric friends... again.

@drab

Here is some history for you.

Putin is following the well trod path of all Russian leaders ie. brutal, miscalculating and authoritarian.

Ukraine has enjoyed independence from Russia for only a short period of time in its history - with the establishment of a republic after the timely collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.

Ukraine has suffered a tragic history as a vassal of Russian imperialists. It was in the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 that Ukraine got its first glimpse of independence.

It was under the rule of the USSR and Stalin from 1932-1933 that the Ukraine faced the extreme measures that Russians would go to in order to ensure political domination. During the Holodomor (Death by Hunger).

The Soviet government diverted food deemed “surplus” to other parts of the USSR, causing the deaths of somewhere between seven and twelve million Ukrainians. This was intentional murder - to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people.

The official Soviet census in 1926 showed a population of 29,018,817 Ukrainians, with an estimated growth rate of 2.65%. By the time the next census was taken in 1939, there should have been a population of 40,770,506, however there was only a population of 30,946,218. Using the methodology used by The Lancet in the mid 2000s (for Iraqis who should have been alive) the Ukrainian figures indicate the Russians killed over nine million Ukrainians.

also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor

Clearly Putin needs to bring in a Ukrainian Sorry Day or at least not torture the Ukraine again.

Pete

what a dilemma. Putin outlaws homosexuality and acts as a dictator. Obama promotes homosexuality and shows himself as a terribly weak leader. Interesting.Tick tick.

No mention of all the illegal wars and invasions by the USA prompted by Israel.

What would the USA say if Russia put their agents in Canada and de-stabilised their Govt?

The war mongers are in the West.

Thank you, Mr Schmigel, but frankly, I believe we Australians should do as Australian Leader Abbott so winningly told Russian Leader Putin to do..."Back off"!! Abbott clearly knows as much of the situation in Ukraine as Putin does of our pathetic 'leadership' here.
We must allow the International bodies deputed to handle such matters and try to restrain the ridiculous idea that Abbott has any 'statesman' ability to handle the complexities of "a faraway country about which we know nothing".
Abbott et al. can't even manage contracts in PNG and a few days ago, in an appropriate manner, was told to 'back off' from Timor L'Este!

Aye runner

I hear Vlad the Impaler, despite his name, wasn't gay.

Does that make him a Cissy or Putin's Pussy Riot?

--

Hi Arjay

A war between the US and what is now Canada has been fought already - the War of 1812. Unlike Russia in war or peace they didn't kill millions.

US and Canada kissed then made out - all friends now :)

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Long-term_consequences

Pete

Carol83

You are blind to the stupidity of the local socialists in relation to both Timor and PNG. Why is that?

Now tell me the name of the international body that will be competent to solve this European crisis.

Don't tell me it is that stupidly ineffectual Security Council of the UN. That one of our dumber leaders wasted millions of our dollars to gain us membership. Watch how they fold. We'll be totally ineffectual. You should acknowledge that at least Abbott hasn't wasted money on crap like that.

There are a number of elements to consider. First, millions of ethnic Russians have married millions of ethnic Ukrainians! That young Russians in the east have had a good long hard look at Putin's Russia, and don't want a bar of it, nor do the remnant Muslim Tarters. Therefore, a new iron curtain is impossible!
The prize for the new parliament, which the west has already recognized, is easy immediate entry into NATO, which has clearly protected the Baltic nations, even as Georgia, was reabsorbed back into Mother Russia; and is now an independent state in name only.
The Poles who share a common border with the Ukraine have less than found memories, of Russia and Russian influence. And may be more than willing to supply huge, if covert military aid and or material; and or, become a conduit for the west to do the same on an even larger or virtually endless scale?
The basically bankrupt Ukraine has one of the largest armies in Europe and would be a force to be reckoned with if the Ukrainians could somehow recover the 78 billions residing in secret accounts, stolen from their treasury, by the previous administration? And use those stolen funds to fully rearm and modernize?
Perhaps an almost equally bankrupt Russia, thinks it can get its grubby hands on some or all of this money?
After all, it has quite a history of annexing/resuming other poeples' money and or assets?
That said, the greatest imperative here is to do nothing, and for Russia, having secured it's port facilities for now, to withdraw, before it rouses, any more nationalistic fervor or opposition!
Rhrosty.

It's a short read with a 30 minute video at the end and well worth the time:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37833.htm

it seems a bit rich for the U.S. to be lecturing Russia for aggression:
what about Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Chile, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), justified by 'manifest destiny' and the Monroe Doctrine?

Of course there seems little justification for invading another sovereign nation (Tibet?)(East Timor), but let's have no more of this 'being on the wrong side of history' malarkey: history, like justice, is blind to favorites, but only time will tell.

As for the complicated situation in Ukraine, there are not only the obvious Russian and geographically and culturally distanced American perspectives - as well as the two Ukrainian positions, more or less torn between these two Cold War alternatives that should not be any more - but also a (continental) European way of seeing things, perhaps best summarised in the German Foreign Minister’s warning “not to pour more oil on the fire”, see e.g. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/angela-merkel-plays-central-role-in-russia-diplomacy-over-crimea-a-956834.html.

It is true that Putin and the German Chancellor Merkel “have a difficult personal relationship” (certainly more difficult than the personal friendship that existed, and apparently still exists, between Putin and Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schroeder). After all, Merkel comes from former East Germany and Putin spent five years in Dresden as a KGB “translator and interpreter” (so that not only Merkel speaks Russian but also Putin speaks German).

We shall have to wait to see what, if any, fruit will their recent numerous phone discussions bear. At least Putin seems to have accepted Merkel’s proposal to set up a "contact group"(http://bigstory.ap.org/article/germany-putin-accepts-merkel-contact-group-idea). Maybe this is already indicative of something, because economically EU and Russia desperately need each other.

I also think a reasonable British assessment of the situation can be found in http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/why-president-putin-will-do-everything-he-can-to-prevent-a-normal-ukraine-9169253.html).

Oh god, another war in the Balkans.

I wonder if we could rustle up enough horses for another Charge of the Light Brigade.

Nah, no need, we've got KRuddy charging over there to fix things.

Heaven help them all.

Hi Hasbeen

A good comparison. The Crimean Wat of the mid 19th century had all the ingredients for a World War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

With KRudd - World Diplomat and Savior - "fixing" this current Crimean War could WWIII be far away?

Pete

Peter
What were your motives in writing this farrago of half truths and ignorance? If it was to further understanding of this crisis,( and leaving to one side your emotional involvement) why didn’t you explore questions like; why has NATO persisted decades after the Cold War? and seek to encircle Russia? Why has Putin reacted so forcefully to the new anti – Russian, US supported Kiev regime? Was it because he felt that the Black Sea Fleet, and thus national security, was in jeopardy? A key dimension of all conflict is now propaganda. OLO is an opportunity to search for the truth