@Bill Moore/carl: I agree that the best propaganda inflates some grain of truth. If you look at the propaganda streaming out from the Russian media it is quite revealing on how little it can base itself. The only big Ukrainian own goal was the language law which was portrayed as a threat to throw guys speaking Russian into prison. If there were really brutal attacks on streets on Russian speakers or arson attacks the propaganda machine would milk it with gusto. But just like in the case of all those 'fascist bandits' there is so little, so few facts which can be brought to bear without having much to add. But if you would believe some of the Russian media a genocide seems to be almost at hand.
One of the most shocking aspects of the whole Russian invasion is how pure of a cold war power play it was so far. The pretext was so feeble that it is not even worth discussing. Putin was doing an Afghanistan-type invasion with some Sudetenland elements while he seemingly reassured the Western leaders. As I have written before the take-over in the Crimea is something out of an old Soviet textbook minus the killing with some brown markings.
To be honest I don't know to which extent Putin acted to avoid the loss of face in front of his own people after the media went wild with fascist bandit this, fascist bandit that for months. In any case he did what he did and this tells enough.
So nobody should be surprised by this news:
James Mates @jamesmatesitv
Latvia has a far higher amount of Russians which were settled there, like in the Crimea after WWII, partly to provide more control over the locals. How else but very concerned should they feel after such Russian aggression?Latvia+Lithuania have invoked NATO art. 4 in response to #crimea NATO now obliged to hold emerg council meeting. Only 4th time in history
In my humble opinion Putin is risking to lose the Ukraine with it's 40+ million by invading the 2 million Ukrainian Crimea. It could well turn out to be a Phyrric victory. Just like the US invasion of Iraq promoted the importance of actually having powerful WMD (think Iran) the recent Russian invasion has shown to western-minded Ukrainians how important it is to get under the umbrella of the EU or/and NATO. I doubt that the Ukrainian elections will give pro-Russian any significant power in the national parliament for a long time unless we see a repeat of East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968. And with the element of surprise now gone it is difficult to imagine that the Russian troops can just drive into Kviev to eat ice or drink cocktails.
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