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

[OUTLAW 09]

He has used a UW campaign. I agree with that. However, he has used it in a way that as been overt and dragged Europe into deeper economic sanctions that will have lasting harm on Russia. He is doing it in a way in which his objectives may not be attained and he has alienated the population of East Ukraine. He has put things on the table for the West, actual military aid, that I never thought would be.

This is for an objective he could have seized in a week and faced a few screams from the west?

BW---it is far deeper than UW--and by the way you did notice that the Russian soldiers are in fact defense contractors so therefore he can actually argue which he does "there are no Russian soldiers in the Ukraine"--notice no one asks the question well what about defense contractors---he would not answer it anyway as you will notice he does when the questions get to close to the reality.

By the way the use of defense contracting "companies" are part and parcel of his new UW strategy which was published for all to see and read in 2013.

This is an excellent article by the current Director of the Carnegie Center Moscow and goes to what he is calling the New Russian National Strategy going forward which is interesting if one matches it to the New Generation Warfare and the New Russian Nuclear Strategy from late 2012.

http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?i...ign=buffer#top

There is a paragraph that grabbed my attention like a red flag---Stalin once told a high level group of Soviet Communist Party members in 1939 after the German/Russian agreements---roughly the following---yes we will sign agreements and yes we will hold to them--BUT if it goes against us then we will ignore them.

Russia will also feel free to withdraw from international treaties and agreements if it concludes that they no longer serve its national interests. In particular, this may apply to the 1987 U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned both countries from having a whole class of missile systems, but left the rest of the world free to arm itself with them. Likewise, Russian participation in the European Court of Human Rights is in danger: Moscow considers the court to be too politicized. Neither decision has been taken yet, but warnings have been served. Note: right after the US pointed out the Russian INF violation they complained 1) the accusations should have been in private and not for the world to hear and 2) a top active duty Russian General stated the treaty does us no good---let's simply leave it.

Russia joined all these international organizations to in fact defend themselves and to use them for their own benefit but has since the Crimea they have seen that they can be used against them---ie the Yukos decision, the pending decision in Stockholm on Gazprom's Ukrainian gas price fixing and the lack of support from the WTO against the sanctions.

Read the paragraph---then the questions begs to be asked---what has changed inside Russia in 2014 that was not already there in 1939? Or is basically Russia just a continuation of the Soviet Union just under a new name?