A little late, but if you can still get on this is pretty interesting:
http://csis.org/event/engage-or-cont...lly-considered
Written by three former US Ambassadors to the Ukraine:First, the United States and European Union should greatly expand the list of individual Russians—inside and outside of government—targeted for visa and financial sanctions. Sanctions should apply to family members as well.
Second, the West should sanction key parts of the Russian economy, beginning with its financial sector. It should target at least several Russian financial institutions. The European Union, particularly Britain, must join in, with the aim of halting international credit to Russian entities. That would further stress the slowing Russian economy.
Third, the United States and European Union should block their energy companies from new investments to develop oil and gas fields in Russia. With Moscow dependent on oil and gas sales for seventy percent of its export earnings, such a measure would send shudders through the Russian energy sector.
Link:http://nationalinterest.org/commenta...want-war-10327
davidbfpo
A little late, but if you can still get on this is pretty interesting:
http://csis.org/event/engage-or-cont...lly-considered
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
Who would have thought that countries can even suffer from PTSD.
Interesting link and article:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...tress-disorder
Outlaw,
The Germans have never done anything without calculating the end game and they have never jumped when the USG did. Not their style. But, they are entirely dependent on gas from Russia and we can't replace that. In their shoes, I would remain quiet too. Anti war ? How about freezing to death and not able to cook. Glad I dumped that BS Russian pipe in my apartment, bought a grill and installed an electric oven
We are supposed to reduce the Army to 420K and most are O3 and O4. So, you are about to be RIFed and you continue to worry about the Ukraine
Dude, it's a budget year with continuing resolutions out the ying yang.
You are about to dump your first ten years in the Army and you are wondering what Vova thinks
If you want to blend in, take the bus
kaur---the article has some minor holes---how does a "so called" criminal on the run and evidently in the Crimea for a number of weeks not get arrested by the local police when they fell under Russian control especially when the Ministry of Interior is running the place or better normally Russians needed a passport to cross into the Ukraine which the Crimea was Ukrainian and normally when on the run as a criminal in Russia one normally does not have a passport as that requires checking in with the local police/Ministry of the Interior or if he had one then it would have been revoked---unless he was paying bribes to keep it.
Then this paragraph stands out:
As TIME reported last month, thousands of state-sponsored Russian Cossacks were then streaming into Crimea to aid the Russian troops with that invasion. For most of March, Mozhaev says, he was there along with some of the men from his Cossack battalion, the Wolves’ Hundred, helping in the siege of a Ukrainian military base near the city of Bakhchysarai and guarding a local TV tower.
NOTE: Was the Cossack BN paramilitary, a loose conglomeration of individuals or under Russian management?
In late March, after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, “we were sitting around down there and wondering what to do next,” he says. “So we decided to go conquer some more historically Russian lands.” Eventually he wound up in Slavyansk, where Ponomaryov was glad to welcome him into his separatist militia.
Sitting around takes money and food so who was supporting the BN?
kaur---also go to the inforesist.org link and check their listing ---you will see another individual the SBU names standing next to your bearded guy--then check the individuals background from 2013 to 2014.
This was written in the article and it comes from the SBU side concerning Cossacks.
From the identified militants, a few notes can be made from the following gunmen who appear to be connected to the raids in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk . For one, not all are from Russia. While some may be local radicals, others appear to come from Belorechensk in Russia, or have connections to related neo-Cossack groups. This does not necessarily exonerate Russian state involvement, however. While it’s been known that military veterans and Russian ‘tourists’ have been actively involved for some time, the presence of Registered Cossacks of the Russian Federation connects Russia officially to the ongoing crisis. Registered Cossack organizations enjoy financial and organizational support from the authorities, including monthly salary as police auxiliaries. This, of course, isn’t the first controversial deployment of Cossack forces, who made a name for themselves on the world stage enforcing the law in Sochi.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 04-24-2014 at 05:50 PM.
A fleet ? I read that "From a fleet" of 17 aircraft, NATO operates two flights per day, one over Romania and the other over Poland.
David,
it happens here and in Scandinavia with such frequency that it has become boring even for the newspapers. C'mon, these stone age flying bathtubs such as seen in Georgia with fuses missing from the bombs WTF ? Maybe Putin should invest in training ground crews
We do this every year and that's a good thing when one considers how much sierra the Germans and Russians left behind, anchored to the Baltic Sea.
Ironically years ago the presence of five of six minesweepers barely drew the attention of the press... until now. What was once a port visit (excuse for port call) has now become such a (ahem) statement. How's that ?
Do the Russians plan on putting more of their sierra into the Baltic Sea than is already stagnant and very much still there?
Why would I want minesweepers here and not in the Black Sea ?
Last edited by Stan; 04-24-2014 at 05:53 PM. Reason: forgot the friggin quotes
If you want to blend in, take the bus
Outlaw,
I'm a smiggin cynical and about to turn 60. What message are you sending to an egotistical Russian leader suffering from mid-life crisis with a million idiots with firearms a stone's throw from your border ?
It might be a battalion, but in stark comparison, like my equally cynical Estonian and Ukrainian friends think, it's hardly worth laughing over.
So, the message is for whom and what exactly does that person end up getting out of it if all the countries here think it's BS ?
If you want to blend in, take the bus
Stan---what initially puzzled me was the term Combined Arms Group which in the scenarios we ran with them ---Russian BNs are tied into a Bde strength unit or Groups in Russian speak.
The initial release had the flavor of only BNs maneuvering.
This Interfax release confirms the missing piece the movements are at least Bde levels which takes on a different flavor.
20:15 Russian Army to set up aviation brigades - Shoigu
Go back and check the open source photos of their positions and you will see at least 2-3 aviation brigades ie attack, support and transport.
Outlaw.
Growing state support has fed the Cossacks’ newfound importance. Those who belong to one of Russia’s 11 federally registered Cossack organizations — including the Central Cossack Army, to which Zaplatin’s group is subordinated — are officially recognized as volunteer civil servants, whose status and activities are regulated to some degree by a federal law signed in 2005.
Last fall, Putin — who’s reportedly an honorary Cossack colonel — signed a strategy for the development of Russian Cossacks until 2020. It’s aimed at setting out economic and logistic terms for even closer cooperation between Cossacks and the government.
In exchange, the Cossacks provide legions of ready-made public service professionals with years of experience. True to the Cossack tradition, many of those who belong to a registered society in Russia have served — or currently serve — in the armed forces or in one of the so-called “security structures,” such as the Interior Ministry.
Nenarokov, who also works as a combat instructor at the Federal Security Service’s FSB Border Guard Academy, estimates that about 40 percent of the military’s officer corps is made up of Cossacks.
“The role of the Cossacks in the near future will be that of a national guard, like the Italian Carabinieri,” he says. “It’ll be more like a national militia, rather than a police force per se.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...ossacks-return
Gents,
This Telegraph article seems to have a different spin on your intel.
Ever served a tour in Africa ? Until the dictator dies, nobody wins. When he does finally expire, you still don't win and WE will pay for all this BS via humanitarian aid til the cows come home... Paradoxically.
I love the conversations and predictions. Are they real indicators when dealing with someone who is not affected and could care less ?
Seriously
If you want to blend in, take the bus
Stan---Interfax runs in a rolling principle as the releases go out so there is no specific link outside of a general one---will go back and dig out the open source briefing from breedlove.
http://www.interfax.com/news.asp
kaur---you just called the Time reporting into question---and this bearded Cossack was what "on the run as a common criminal"---what a poor cover story for being in the Crimea just in "time" to welcome Russian troops- and then "just sitting around" he decides to cross into the Ukraine with no Russian passport since he was on the run?
He had a passport and was not on the run---but still one must give him credit for even having a cover story for the Time reporter---that is the problem these days not many reporters even understand the background of the events they are reporting on and simply take for granted everything they see or hear as being gospel.
You found a really interesting article based on this paragraph referencing the Orthodox Church relationship to the Cossacks.
I have maintained here part of the problem in understanding Russia is that we must understand the four pillars that constitute their decision makers in a foreign policy strategy 1) security services, 2) military, 3) oligarchs and 4) Russian mafia/gangs and layered over all of them the Orthodox Church driving a form of religious nationalism or better formulated and what Putin is--- an ethnic nationalist.
“They don’t understand that we will fight to the end,” he says. “We don’t stop half-way.”
Not the words one would expect from a Russian Orthodox priest. But then, Nenarokov isn’t a typical clergyman.
A slight, whiskered man of middle age, Nenarokov also serves as a chaplain in the Moscow City Cossack Society, where he runs seminars on hand-to-hand combat training, one of the many activities aimed at helping revive the culture of Cossacks — the centuries-old defenders of Russia’s frontiers and, historically, the tsar’s most dedicated and seasoned enforcers of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and empire.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 04-24-2014 at 06:46 PM.
Bookmarks