Russo-Ukraine War 2017-2018

[Azor]

"Out to lunch" another strange comment from you as is normal....

Appears you have not been in Poland in the last few days...entire areas where the unemployment is over 23% forcing many of the men to become truck drivers to feed their families..if you drive say the A12 98% of all truckers and long haulers are privately owned and Polish..gas/diesel used to be really cheap on the border but now is only a few cents less that German prices....the overall cost of living has risen massively just on the last six months and if you live in around Warsaw..you are paying London apartment costs.....a lot of their problems were swept under the rug because they did not join the Euro but lately under the new government they have lost control of the currency and now their living costs are now matching Euro living costs in say Berlin...Berliners would drive on the weekends to shop for food and clothing as the Polish prices were cheap when compared to Euro prices...that consumer tourism is now completely dead....

Not so sure you have been following the Ukrainian economy as close as you should be..even and that is strange the IMF is surprised by the actual strengthening economy and the next boost will be with the coming large scale land reform which will open up the farming sector to become a massive food engine on the grain side rivalling the US.

So out to lunch...check your economic figures for the last six months and then compare it to those of say Ukraine 2013 or even say 1998...

Corruption has been the hallmark of all former Soviet countries as it is the exact way the SU and now Russia has held them captive...money and tons of it to corrupt leaders..or why do you think Maidan occurred...

Outlaw,

Anecdotal evidence isn’t helping your cause here. For the second time, you have dodged the questions about the Cossack and OUN/UIA crimes…

Ukrainian GDP growth in 2016, in constant prices, was Poland, Hungary and Romania, as well as the Baltic republics. The only reason growth was even this high in 2016 was due to a partial recovery from the tremendous losses suffered in 2014 and 2015. Even prior to the revolution, Ukrainian GDP growth was flat for 2012 and 2013. Ukrainian GDP per capita (nominal and PPP) has regressed to the levels around 2006 and the early 1990s. 1998? Shall we measure U.S. economic growth since the Great Depression?

The U.S. is the third or fourth largest agricultural producer, with a sector 7 to 9 times larger than that of Ukraine. The latter would have to double its productivity just to rival Canada, to say nothing of Brazil and other agricultural giants. Unless one is planning on carving out an autarkic empire in Europe that can withstand a naval blockade, the Ukrainian “breadbasket” is no longer as strategic as it was say in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is almost as though you blame Russia for Ukraine’s corruption, despite that the pro-Western Orange Revolution failed due to corruption. Ukraine’s corruption actually worsened during Yuschenko’s presidency per Transparency International, and Ukraine and Russia both have similar Corruption Index Levels at present.

Are you honestly telling me that the EU transfer payments to the new EU members and the remittances to these countries by their citizens now working in wealthier EU countries were not key considerations for Ukrainians who wanted to join the EU? Are you telling me that Ukraine’s stagnant economy and the success of the former Soviet or Warsaw Pact members that were now in the EU did not influence EuroMaidan at all? Don’t sell me the hooker with the heart of gold.

And see my response over at SWJ: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...#comment-57812

It seems that you are enamored of any country confronting Russia. I assume that if Canada and Russia get into a scrap over an ice floe, that you will be declaring that Trudeau is right and Canada's participation in Afghanistan and Syria outweighs its <1% of GDP spending on defense...

[OUTLAW 09]

Outlaw,

Anecdotal evidence isn’t helping your cause here. For the second time, you have dodged the questions about the Cossack and OUN/UIA crimes…

Ukrainian GDP growth in 2016, in constant prices, was Poland, Hungary and Romania, as well as the Baltic republics. The only reason growth was even this high in 2016 was due to a partial recovery from the tremendous losses suffered in 2014 and 2015. Even prior to the revolution, Ukrainian GDP growth was flat for 2012 and 2013. Ukrainian GDP per capita (nominal and PPP) has regressed to the levels around 2006 and the early 1990s. 1998? Shall we measure U.S. economic growth since the Great Depression?

The U.S. is the third or fourth largest agricultural producer, with a sector 7 to 9 times larger than that of Ukraine. The latter would have to double its productivity just to rival Canada, to say nothing of Brazil and other agricultural giants. Unless one is planning on carving out an autarkic empire in Europe that can withstand a naval blockade, the Ukrainian “breadbasket” is no longer as strategic as it was say in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is almost as though you blame Russia for Ukraine’s corruption, despite that the pro-Western Orange Revolution failed due to corruption. Ukraine’s corruption actually worsened during Yuschenko’s presidency per Transparency International, and Ukraine and Russia both have similar Corruption Index Levels at present.

Are you honestly telling me that the EU transfer payments to the new EU members and the remittances to these countries by their citizens now working in wealthier EU countries were not key considerations for Ukrainians who wanted to join the EU? Are you telling me that Ukraine’s stagnant economy and the success of the former Soviet or Warsaw Pact members that were now in the EU did not influence EuroMaidan at all? Don’t sell me the hooker with the heart of gold.

And see my response over at SWJ: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...#comment-57812

It seems that you are enamored of any country confronting Russia. I assume that if Canada and Russia get into a scrap over an ice floe, that you will be declaring that Trudeau is right and Canada's participation in Afghanistan and Syria outweighs its <1% of GDP spending on defense...

Azor...you truly do not understand Ukraine nor what drives younger Ukrainians but maybe that is because you are in the US....

NOR have you lived within the former East Bloc before the fall of the WALL....

So now do your homework...both Ukraine and Russia were actually vying for visa free travel to EU...

Russia was on track to get it until they shot themselves in the foot...with Crimea now that will never happen.

So are you trying to sell me Russia wanted EU remittances as well??

Anybody who understands the EU joining process knows that it takes roughly 10 years and a country must fulfil 21 points before even being invited to join and Ukraine knows this..they wanted the association agreement due to open and free trade and trade preferences AND they really wanted visa free travel....

WHY..for two reasons...they really do like to travel to EU without having to be restricted to two months, X amount of money in the bank, medical coverage and lining up to get the visa from any EU Embassy...and then paying the fees for it.

BUT more importantly it symbolizes a clear and concise break from Russia and the former Soviet Union....

This issue of visa free travel is an interesting thing which you tend to overlook.......

There are documents from several GDR SED Central Committee meetings in the months proceeding the fall of the Wall and the large number of GDR refugees that were in the BRD Embassy in Prague and then their exiting to West Germany...which they openly and heatedly discussed the potential of allowing GDR citizens the right to travel for 30 days every year to the West and or allowing all the time free travel.....

WHY ...and this is where you do not know anything as you never dealt with large numbers of GDR citizens arriving in Berlin ....one of the largest complaints from them was their inability to travel to places they saw of West German TV next to the dream of getting bananas....on a regular basis that were not black or brown and from Cuba and only during Xmas....

BTW...one of the hottest fruits always on sale in former GDR is in fact still bananas...

The SED Politburo seriously thought about the free travel or 30 days but in the end rejected both ideas as they were afraid no one would return and thus eventually the Wall came down and GDR citizens were free to travel anywhere they wanted to...exactly what was being discussed in the SED Politburo...

Yes many would not returned but eventually the numbers would have stabilized when they saw they could travel when they wanted to....some historians say had the SED allowed unhindered travel to the West GDR would be there today---

If you talk today with that generation that is now in their late 40s mid 50s..many say they would have returned...

That drive for free travel is a greater draw towards the EU than you think it is....

BTW right now the IT abilities of young Ukrainians taught IT in Ukraine is head and shoulders above much of what we see currently in the US...they can match US coders step for step....

The U.S. is the third or fourth largest agricultural producer, with a sector 7 to 9 times larger than that of Ukraine. The latter would have to double its productivity just to rival Canada, to say nothing of Brazil and other agricultural giants. Unless one is planning on carving out an autarkic empire in Europe that can withstand a naval blockade, the Ukrainian “breadbasket” is no longer as strategic as it was say in the 1930s and 1940s.

You really are off on your figures....check the latest export numbers and check the massive investments coming into the farming sector from US companies...BTW check the last years corn harvest and how much of it have been destroyed as it was contaminated by black fungus....AND if NAFTA was not in place the US corn market would be a deep deep black hole and many farmers would be out of business.....

Grain is what the Ukrainians produce not corn which is largely what the US has shifted to as well as soybeans...

It seems that you are enamored of any country confronting Russia.

You still do not get it...I am enamored with any country..political party and or individual who actively pushes back against Russian political warfare..do you not agree...and it that is the goal so be it...

BUT right now the Trump WH and Trump himself are actually enabling Russian political warfare against the US and Europe and that my friend is unacceptable...

[OUTLAW 09]

Anyone who thinks #Mariupol-Berdyansk metallurgy is not an "asset" to be acquired by force by Russia - think again

Azor I posted at the very beginning over two years ago a long series of Ukrainian companies that Russia wanted to takeover when their so called "separatists" arrived in Donbass from Crimea.....I notice that many commenters have forgotten that list and it was a majority of Ukrainian companies working in the defense sector supplying Russia..

[OUTLAW 09]

Active fighting east of #Mariupol

[OUTLAW 09]

19:39 #Avdiivka: We seem to have civil casualties. Lots of ambulances rushed. Impacts on private housing area

19:50 #Mariupol: Oh, boom, loud even in the #Center

Battle also at #Vodyane, near #Mariupol.

[OUTLAW 09]

Popasna: Fighting
#Svitlodarsk_Bulge: Fighting

22:53 #Horlivka: I think there were more than 2 loads [of outgoing Grad MLRS] from 2-3 places. The uninterrupted hum was too long

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia allocates $180 million to supply ore to the Donbas
http://uawire.org/news/media-russia-...to-the-donbas#

[davidbfpo]

There have been a few posts on the attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia and why for years they appeared to be silent - until the Maidan "moment".

Twenty years ago I visited western Ukraine, centred around Lviv or Lvov, which had been Polish until 1939. I have three abiding memories of talking to our hots, professional architects. One was a remark when we stopped at a war memorial, with a plaque for WW2 from 1939-1947; I was puzzled at the post-1945 extension and was told about the Ukrainian resistance to the return of Soviet rule.

Then we visited a small museum in a medium sized villa in Lvov, which had a display of civic or state funerals after independence (in 1991) and I asked what they were. One host explained the funerals were for victims of the Soviet state when Lvov became Soviet again in July 1944. Adding many victims were not reclaimed by their families who feared the Soviets / Russians would return one day exacting revenge.

A glimpse into the 1944 history comes in:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_uprising

Finally at our final dinner a host asked our group (all "Westerners") 'Not to forget us, we are West Europeans'. I never imagined the Ukraine was part of Western Europe, but they did.

The Ukraine's modern history is bloody and rightly they fear / feared an end to their independence after 1991.

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...you truly do not understand Ukraine nor what drives younger Ukrainians but maybe that is because you are in the US....

NOR have you lived within the former East Bloc before the fall of the WALL....

So now do your homework...both Ukraine and Russia were actually vying for visa free travel to EU...

Russia was on track to get it until they shot themselves in the foot...with Crimea now that will never happen.

So are you trying to sell me Russia wanted EU remittances as well??

Anybody who understands the EU joining process knows that it takes roughly 10 years and a country must fulfil 21 points before even being invited to join and Ukraine knows this..they wanted the association agreement due to open and free trade and trade preferences AND they really wanted visa free travel....

WHY..for two reasons...they really do like to travel to EU without having to be restricted to two months, X amount of money in the bank, medical coverage and lining up to get the visa from any EU Embassy...and then paying the fees for it.

BUT more importantly it symbolizes a clear and concise break from Russia and the former Soviet Union....

This issue of visa free travel is an interesting thing which you tend to overlook.......

There are documents from several GDR SED Central Committee meetings in the months proceeding the fall of the Wall and the large number of GDR refugees that were in the BRD Embassy in Prague and then their exiting to West Germany...which they openly and heatedly discussed the potential of allowing GDR citizens the right to travel for 30 days every year to the West and or allowing all the time free travel.....

WHY ...and this is where you do not know anything as you never dealt with large numbers of GDR citizens arriving in Berlin ....one of the largest complaints from them was their inability to travel to places they saw of West German TV next to the dream of getting bananas....on a regular basis that were not black or brown and from Cuba and only during Xmas....

BTW...one of the hottest fruits always on sale in former GDR is in fact still bananas...

The SED Politburo seriously thought about the free travel or 30 days but in the end rejected both ideas as they were afraid no one would return and thus eventually the Wall came down and GDR citizens were free to travel anywhere they wanted to...exactly what was being discussed in the SED Politburo...

Yes many would not returned but eventually the numbers would have stabilized when they saw they could travel when they wanted to....some historians say had the SED allowed unhindered travel to the West GDR would be there today---

If you talk today with that generation that is now in their late 40s mid 50s..many say they would have returned...

That drive for free travel is a greater draw towards the EU than you think it is....

BTW right now the IT abilities of young Ukrainians taught IT in Ukraine is head and shoulders above much of what we see currently in the US...they can match US coders step for step....



You really are off on your figures....check the latest export numbers and check the massive investments coming into the farming sector from US companies...BTW check the last years corn harvest and how much of it have been destroyed as it was contaminated by black fungus....AND if NAFTA was not in place the US corn market would be a deep deep black hole and many farmers would be out of business.....

Grain is what the Ukrainians produce not corn which is largely what the US has shifted to as well as soybeans...



You still do not get it...I am enamored with any country..political party and or individual who actively pushes back against Russian political warfare..do you not agree...and it that is the goal so be it...

BUT right now the Trump WH and Trump himself are actually enabling Russian political warfare against the US and Europe and that my friend is unacceptable...

Map of European countries where Ukrainians won't need visas

[OUTLAW 09]

Fighting has gone on all night at a rather high level and is still continuing this morning.....

08:45 #Horlivka: #Zhovanka-#Zaytseve - battle since morning

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian-backed separatists fired Grad rocket systems 60 times in Donbas last night.

Fire spread through the settlements.

4 civilians killed.

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian supported and financed mercenaries are now using the Aleppo tactic....fo shelling civilians and their residences...

Russia attacked four Ukrainian towns and villages using the terrorist tactic of firing shells & rockets from residential areas

[OUTLAW 09]

#Gazprom to Zatulin: $2 million per year for subversive activities in #Ukraine
https://informnapalm.org/en/gazprom-...ine-photo/#BTW...

Gazprom is Russia's major soft power money giver and used to drive their political war with the West....

[Azor]

Azor...

…you truly do not understand…
…you are in the US…
…NOR have you lived within…
…and this is where you do not know anything as you never dealt with…
…So now do your homework...

My understanding of special forces operators is that they are able to shoot accurately in battle, despite the physiological conditions that affect the gross and fine motor skills of most soldiers. Yet your ad hominem is wide off the mark.

…both Ukraine and Russia were actually vying for visa free travel to EU...

Russia was on track to get it until they shot themselves in the foot...with Crimea now that will never happen.

So are you trying to sell me Russia wanted EU remittances as well??

Apparently the Russians decided that association with the EU wasn’t worth it.

Anybody who understands the EU joining process knows that it takes roughly 10 years and a country must fulfil 21 points before even being invited to join and Ukraine knows this..they wanted the association agreement due to open and free trade and trade preferences AND they really wanted visa free travel....

WHY...for two reasons...they really do like to travel to EU without having to be restricted to two months, X amount of money in the bank, medical coverage and lining up to get the visa from any EU Embassy...and then paying the fees for it.

BUT more importantly it symbolizes a clear and concise break from Russia and the former Soviet Union....

This issue of visa free travel is an interesting thing which you tend to overlook...

But were the Ukrainians who rejected the EAEU and Russian incentives in favor of association with the EU fully aware of the process and its conditions?

Given the transfer payments from some EU members to others, remittances from EU member citizens and illegal migrants alike, Greek profligacy and the eventual bailout, and the reluctant back-stopping of the PIGS economies, Ukrainians can be forgiven if they believed that the EU’s streets were paved with gold, and the ten years and twenty-one points were more a nudge-nudge wink-wink type of arrangement.

…now the IT abilities of young Ukrainians taught IT in Ukraine is head and shoulders above much of what we see currently in the US...they can match US coders step for step...

Yawn. You aren’t in the U.S., so what are you “currently seeing”, exactly? The Russians and Chinese are excellent coders as well. Who was it that created Olympic Games/Stuxnet? Who was it that infiltrated the Chinese Communist Party’s meetings via malware? Did the Ukrainians paralyze Russian infrastructure or was it the other way around?

You really are off on your figures...check the latest export numbers and check the massive investments coming into the farming sector from US companies...BTW check the last years corn harvest and how much of it have been destroyed as it was contaminated by black fungus...AND if NAFTA was not in place the US corn market would be a deep deep black hole and many farmers would be out of business...Grain is what the Ukrainians produce not corn which is largely what the US has shifted to as well as soybeans...

Then provide some figures and sources, including links. All of the GDP per capita PPP, constant dollars and overall growth is publicly available. Ukraine’s economy is a basket case, and has only seen growth as part of a recovery from 2014. Ukraine’s grain hasn’t been strategic since the 1950s. Khrushchev had to buy wheat from Canada, remember, when the “Virgin Lands” initiative failed, but I’m sure you’ll have an excuse for that.

You still do not get it...I am enamored with any country...political party and or individual who actively pushes back against Russian political warfare…do you not agree...and it that is the goal so be it...

I haven’t had the ‘I support whatever country is taking on Russia’ attitude since I was 18-years old. I regret that Operation Unthinkable wasn’t launched, but I can understand why it wasn’t. In hindsight, were Patton and MacArthur so wrong?

In 2008, I was rooting for the Georgians to bleed the Russians white, rather than embarrass themselves, which they did (fortunately, the Iraqi Army surpassed their record in 2014). It was further embarrassing to learn that Saakashvili was the aggressor and that the Georgians started off committing clear war crimes. The lessons of that war were obvious: SAMs, SAMs, ATGMs, and more SAMs. But instead of spackling Poland and the Baltic republics with Patriots we have the useless BMD/EPAA to protect Central Europe from Iran.

…Maidan was a birth of the Ukrainian identity which they created themselves during the Maidan and that is driving them today...the national pride in standing up to power is sometimes a far stronger feeling than all the nationalism of say a Trump...

Maidan was not about a single age group but cut across all ages and levels of education...1,762 dead UAF later they still are defending Maidan...and not even the US can effectively counter Russian information and cyber warfare...Ukraine is doing a good job of it though...The support of the general public is still very much there...with every burial of a UAF soldier as he is carried to where ever he is being buried the local people line the roads on bended knees in respect..that does not even happen on the US... At Maidan a Ukrainian national identity was born and the drive to become of a "European" was achieved...and Russia lost forever Ukraine...

What of the nationalism of Khmelnitsky or Bandera? The latter was closer to Hitler than Franco or Mussolini. What about Trump again? Why the attachment to America’s Christina Kirchner?

The Orange Revolution collapsed into corruption, and Yuschenko awarded “Hero of Ukraine” status to Bandera and his fellow criminals before he left power. My concerns about Ukrainian nationalism developing in dark ways are neither unjustified nor unreasonable given Ukraine’s history, and the inability or unwillingness of Ukrainian nationalists to come to terms with it. At present it is too early to tell in what direction it will develop.

Despite the Ukrainian nationalists’ historical antipathy for Poles and Jews, it was in precisely those parts of Ukraine under Polish rule and with large Jewish populations, that the Ukrainian nation – culturally, linguistically and religiously – was able to establish itself. Perhaps Bandera and his admirers should “inform” themselves?

That was not the case of most of the other Eastern European countries that broke away after 1991....BTW none of these countries have made the strongest set of reform laws in just under three years..that Ukraine has even in the face of continued corruption and war....not even the Baltics...

The Poles, East Germans, Czechs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Romanians used non-violent resistance to win their freedom from the local Communists and the Russians. The Ukrainians were merely given independence.

AND Russia is ever so slowly heading towards a "Maidan"...and Putin knows it...

Galeotti and Goble are agreed that if Putin is ousted and replaced by true Russian democracy, it will most probably be an illiberal one. Don't get your hopes up. Yet unlike Ukraine today, a civil war in Russia will throw into doubt the effective C2 of the world's largest, if not most effective, nuclear deterrent.

Azor I posted at the very beginning over two years ago a long series of Ukrainian companies that Russia wanted to takeover when their so called "separatists" arrived in Donbass from Crimea.....I notice that many commentators have forgotten that list and it was a majority of Ukrainian companies working in the defense sector supplying Russia..

BUT right now the Trump WH and Trump himself are actually enabling Russian political warfare against the US and Europe and that my friend is unacceptable...

Ukraine’s industries in Donbas were dependent upon Russian energy inputs and the Russian market. They are completely noncompetitive when separated from the Russian military-industrial complex.

How is Trump enabling Russia? Arguably Obama did much more to enable Russia, and even Bush did nothing when Russia occupied parts of Georgia.

You gave up your U.S. citizenship, right? Paid the tens of thousands of euros, right? You no longer pay taxes to the IRS, right? Shouldn’t you be focusing on more important matters, such as taking in some migrants and enabling Merkel? Or demanding that Poland proscribe the PiS? Or bring up the status of Kaliningrad?