Ukraine: military (Aug '14 to mid-June '15) closed

[davidbfpo]

At first this headline in 'The Moscow Times' puzzled me,, but they do explain they are a Moscow-based, independent English language newspaper:http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinio...ls/504197.html

No surprises in the content. more that this is available inside Russia:

Rather than Ukrainian citizens carrying a legitimate grievance against the Kiev government's pro-EU outlook, they are outsiders and usurpers, men with either mercenary or imperial motivations. They are pro-Russian, yes. They are separatists. But these men are invaders — and they are not Ukrainians.

[OUTLAW 09]

At first this headline in 'The Moscow Times' puzzled me,, but they do explain they are a Moscow-based, independent English language newspaper:http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinio...ls/504197.html

No surprises in the content. more that this is available inside Russia:

David---it is actually balanced based on writers/their locations and on occasions even Russian supportive although not Putin supportive.

[kaur]

AmericanPride, have you studied those numbers?

A survey, which was conducted for my research project by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in Ukraine, except Crimea, from April 29 to May 11, shows that the representation of separatism in Donbas by the Ukrainian and the Western governments and the media as small groups of Russian military intelligence agents and local “terrorists” or “rebels” who lack popular backing in this region and, therefore, can be easily defeated by force is unfounded. Most residents of Donbas supported different forms of separatism (54 percent).

The survey results also show that views expressed by the Russian government and media concerning widespread popular support for separatism in all of eastern and southern Ukraine are unfounded. Crimea and Donbas do not represent the entire southeast, because they have much larger ethnic Russian populations and a history of separatism. Minorities of residents of three eastern regions neighboring Donbas (15 percent) and in the south (10 percent) support separatism. Ethnic Russians, who are concentrated mostly in the east and the south, are split on the issue of separatism. Some 44 percent of ethnic Russians support different separatist options, including joining Russia (18 percent), while 40 percent favor preservation of the current unitary system, mostly with expanded powers. Among Russian speakers, who include many ethnic Ukrainians, 24 percent favor secession from Ukraine or regional autonomy in federal Ukraine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...out-secession/

About Crimea.

Forty-one percent of Crimeans in the latest KIIS poll, conducted from Feb. 8-18, said Ukraine and Russia should merge into one state. That percentage has ebbed and flowed in recent years, in part because of the small sample size of any one of Ukraine’s 24 oblasts (provinces) in a national poll. Based on recent years, 41 percent could be an overestimate — just one-third of Crimeans wanted Ukraine to join Russia last year, and fewer than 1 in 4 did in 2012.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...t-polls-didnt/

First Putin accomplished coup d'etat in Crimea despite KIIS numbers. From Russian side were involved green polite men (Russian army), cossacks, spezturisty from Russia, Presidential administration election specialist, propaganda specialists etc. Then Putin tried to repeat the same in Eastern Ukraine. Look at the Novorossija rhetoric. Then they just run out of steam or decided to use different strategy that balanced resorces and aims. They were stuck in Crimea with resources, EU/NATO started to react etc. Then they switched to propaganda by deed track. This is going on under Russia's leadership. They have hidden in huge cities of Donetsk and Lugansk and due to Ukrainian armed forces training and equipment, their action is producing grievancies among the Donbas people.

This paper models a scenario in which an extremist faction considers attacking
a government in the hopes of provoking a counterterror response that will radicalize
the population, increasing the extremists' support at the expense of a more moderate
faction. In our scenario, such radicalization can result either from the economic damage
caused by counterterror operations or by the way in which such operations change the
population's assessment of the government's motivations.

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politic...propaganda.pdf