[Nedusa]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I have a genuine question Nedusa - not intended to be inflammatory... but, if you can see and are aware of all of this re: the US of A (and I'm not saying you're wrong) then I find it difficult to understand your stance when it comes to extremism / terrorism. It is ALL tied into exactly this warmongering that you're talking about here. Not just as a distraction technique, but the Gulf has always involved US / Russian tensions somewhere in the mix, these two juggernauts going at it with the Middle East sandwiched in the middle played a HUGE role in destabilizing the region and in allowing terrorist organizations to grow (not to mention, arming them). It's also a huge contributing factor in the angry "anti-west" sentiment that is used to twist young minds and create terrorists. But you never mention any of these issues - the huge, global issues that have been caused or at least hugely aggravated by a power-hungry United States - when posting in the various ISIS / terrorism threads. I'm just wondering why that is? Do you just genuinely keep the two issues separate?

I actually do T.S because to try and intertwine these would produce so many grey areas that trying to debate them in forums like these would become virtually impossible.

I appreciate geopolitics and terrorism are connected but we are not really privy to what really goes on behind the scenes.

But coming back to this situation with Ukraine I honestly believe the US and Russia should stand together when fighting this extremist Muslim terrorist threat, not one trying desperately to start a new Cold War with the other.

Really hope the US backs off and Russia removes all it's troops/weapons from Ukraine also.


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[DemolitionRed]

The Crimea has been part of the Ukraine since 1954 but like the rest of the Ukraine and all the countries bordering Russian territory, it strongly depends on Russia for gas (amongst other things), Russia is known as a petro-state and the Ukraine is its lapdog.

In more recent years the Ukraine has been trying to break away from that dependency by building their own gas terminals for both themselves and with the intention of selling that gas to a viable market. Russia was, for obvious reasons, not prepared to lend money on this project but the US and the EU were. The Ukraine is a big country and its stability does affect the stability of Euope as a whole. Free trade agreement insured that countries stability and up until early last year the Ukraine believed they were heading towards that much needed signature.

Why do we want to get into a proxy war with Russia? the answer is, we don't, we really don't. This isn't about triumphalism and that's why we only started to implement sanctions after endless diplomatic talks with Moscow. The west very much stood back because they wanted the Ukraine to determine their own destiny; we wanted a peaceful resolution. We only started to up our game after the ceasefire in September wasn't honoured. I'll add to that... there is so much information from both Washington and Moscow about this ceasefire; nobody really knows who threw the first stone.

What we do know is, Russia started to cross borders into the Ukraine with tanks and heavy rocket launchers. We also know that Russian artillery has been fired across the borders and that Russian backed rebels are being armed with rifles and anti-tank weapons. This is a fratricide war but only one side are armed. Why shound the west not back those who need to fight the Russian separatists? We were already involved in Negotiations with the Ukraine before this upheaval. So far, the west has only sent emergency aid for the 1.5 million displaced Ukrainians. Its shown and still shows no eagerness to to pour gasoline onto an open fire like the Russians appear to be doing.