NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
Thank you for the long post. Definitely sheds light on your perspective on this whole thing much more than a bunch of throwaway one liners.
One thing I'm still uncertain about is what kind of suppression of minorities were you talking about that was enacted on people of Crimea and Donbas post-Maidan?
And I know this was outside of your original point, but your opening statement to this long post was:
Today’s crisis in Ukraine can’t be understood without understanding Maidan.
Surely talking about today's crisis in Ukraine must involve talking about Russia as well, which was conspicuously missing from your post? To ask a straightforward question, do you think Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent full invasion in 2022 would've had happened if the Euromaidan didn't happen?
I enjoyed the creation of a new band of radical extremists, the sovereignists, who are differentiated from regular folks due to their belief that their country shouldn’t be run by Russia. I see now that the normal people of Ukraine, and the Russians too, are the victims of these radicals. They really had no choice.
On November 05 2023 22:08 2Pacalypse- wrote: Thank you for the long post. Definitely sheds light on your perspective on this whole thing much more than a bunch of throwaway one liners.
One thing I'm still uncertain about is what kind of suppression of minorities were you talking about that was enacted on people of Crimea and Donbas post-Maidan?
And I know this was outside of your original point, but your opening statement to this long post was:
Today’s crisis in Ukraine can’t be understood without understanding Maidan.
Surely talking about today's crisis in Ukraine must involve talking about Russia as well, which was conspicuously missing from your post? To ask a straightforward question, do you think Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent full invasion in 2022 would've had happened if the Euromaidan didn't happen?
No, absolutely not. If the deal between the moderate opposition and Yanukovych had been seen to the end, which would mean free and fair elections in December of that year Crimea would not be a part of Russia today. But as I said in the previous post Ukraine was a deeply divided country whose politicians actively deepened the divide for cheap political points.
If Yanukovych had managed to hold onto power we would have see a civil war just in the western regions of Ukraine funded by NATO members instead of in the Eastern ones. The moment Maidan took over in the way that it did it was inevitable, neo-Nazis and open fascists that were polling at 2% were awarded six major cabinet ministries, including the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior which they began to openly abuse the moment they took over. These same characters who now had political power calling for the ethnic cleansing of undesirables from Crimea and the Donbass.
The impeachment and ousting of Yanukovych was done without any legitimacy and contrary to the Ukrainian Constitution, without the three-quarters of MP’s necessary (the MP’s being forced to vote at gunpoint not being too legal either), with no investigation or certification from the Constitutional or Supreme Courts of Ukraine going so far as to expel five members of the Constitutional Court that stood up to them.
The coup government also didn’t waste time ‘releaving of duty’ elected officials in Eastern Ukraine and replacing them with lackeys. The newly Kiev appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk (Boris Filatov) had this to say about the anti-Maidan protests on his Facebook page at the time: “This scum should be given promises, guarantees, and any concessions…And hung…They should be hung later,” I'm not going to even get into the vile trash said and posted by the far right.
This kind of rhetoric along with the abolition of the law that allowed regions to give Russian and other minority languages the status of a second official language was the backdrop that led to Crimea saying ’yeah, nah, fuck the whole lot of you’ and organizing their own vote to leave the country which was by this point a complete mess.
The annexation of Crimea gave a whole new dimension to the anti-Maidan protests which escalated further and further into violent oppression and jailing of dissidents in large Ukrainian cities until the Trade Union massacre in Odessa where Ukrainian nationalists, along with bussed in football hooligans and open fascists burned over 50 people alive. Which would turn out to be the spark that set off the civil war in Ukraine. What followed and the political landscape inside Ukraine leading up to February 2022 is beyond the scope of this post.
On November 05 2023 22:08 2Pacalypse- wrote: Thank you for the long post. Definitely sheds light on your perspective on this whole thing much more than a bunch of throwaway one liners.
One thing I'm still uncertain about is what kind of suppression of minorities were you talking about that was enacted on people of Crimea and Donbas post-Maidan?
And I know this was outside of your original point, but your opening statement to this long post was:
Today’s crisis in Ukraine can’t be understood without understanding Maidan.
Surely talking about today's crisis in Ukraine must involve talking about Russia as well, which was conspicuously missing from your post? To ask a straightforward question, do you think Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent full invasion in 2022 would've had happened if the Euromaidan didn't happen?
[...] that led to Crimea saying ’yeah, nah, fuck the whole lot of you’ and organizing their own vote to leave the country which was by this point a complete mess.[...]
At least that part is correct. It can reasonably be called a vote to leave the country if that is the only option on the ballot!
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
I am sure you can produce quotes for those claims.
While I don't doubt Poroshenko didn't want to eat the shit sandwich France and Germany served him, Merkel really hoped this would appease the Russian hunger for Lebensraum. As she has stated continuously to this day. Don't know what Hollande was thinking.
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
I am sure you can produce quotes for those claims.
While I don't doubt Poroshenko didn't want to eat the shit sandwich France and Germany served him, Merkel really hoped this would appease the Russian hunger for Lebensraum. As she has stated continuously to this day. Don't know what Hollande was thinking.
That article is hilarious. Putin is complaining that he felt betrayed because Merkel remarked that they sought to strengthen Ukrainian defenses against Russian aggression and that this violated the Minsk agreement.
In the end he and his stooges were the ones to continue assaults on Ukrainian lands after the Minsk agreement in 2014 and 2015, both directly and indirectly, and then transition into a full-scale invasion in 2022. It's a serial killer complaining that he cannot trust anyone because whenever his victims ask for a break or ceasefire, they use it to run away from him and that just isn't cash money in his eyes. How is he supposed to murder people like this when everyone is clearly all about abusing his trust.
That is so bizarre. But it shows where zeo gets his inspiration from.
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
I am sure you can produce quotes for those claims.
While I don't doubt Poroshenko didn't want to eat the shit sandwich France and Germany served him, Merkel really hoped this would appease the Russian hunger for Lebensraum. As she has stated continuously to this day. Don't know what Hollande was thinking.
That's not what she said in the interview. The quote is straight up wrong, and has been widely misquoted all over. Even the closest translations are slightly altered to make it sounds like she said something close what is claimed by these 3rd hand accounts.
She said the Minsk agreement was meant to give Ukraine time. And she said Ukraine used this time to get stronger. The misrepresentations put these two separate statements together to make it seem that was her or the Normandy's format agenda.
Nowhere does she say that "getting strong" was the intent of the agreement, nor that it was anyone's but Ukraine's initiative.
But, we don't even have to try to interpret what Germany and France might have meant to achieve or not with Minsk, we can simply look at what happened after. Neither Germany nor France provided any meaningful military assistance to Ukraine following the agreement. Germany went full on the opposite direction, started building NS2 and went headfirst into full dependence on Russian gas.
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
From the source you gave. The second sentence.
The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
Later on, it also mentions the Russian stooges also signing. But if this really were a true Ukrainian civil war, why is Russia even involved? Why are they more important at the peace talks then the people "rising up"?
One might get the idea that Russia is involved because everyone knew that Russia is pulling the strings of the so-called LPR and DPR, to the point that they might as well be part of Russia.
Which surprisingly, Russia now claims they are. Weird...
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
I am sure you can produce quotes for those claims.
While I don't doubt Poroshenko didn't want to eat the shit sandwich France and Germany served him, Merkel really hoped this would appease the Russian hunger for Lebensraum. As she has stated continuously to this day. Don't know what Hollande was thinking.
Obviously a direct confession that they used the Minsk agreements as a mechanism to give them space to arm Ukraine to the teeth would make them guilty of a Crime Against Peace, something that entails an international tribunal. Implicit confirmations were to be expected. For instance Poroshenko:
At around 8min into the video along with this Financial Times interview
The Minsk agreements bought Ukraine time, including to build its army, by freezing the conflict with Russia. But the accords were never properly implemented, and in the hindsight brought by this year’s invasion are seen by Ukrainians to have been at best a stop-gap that failed to address its root causes or contain further Russian aggression. Does he, I ask, now regret signing them? No, he says, paraphrasing the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu: “The main achievement is to avoid war, not to win war.” ------------- He lists his achievements: the first was building up Ukraine’s armed forces — though in many Ukrainians’ telling, the push was in large part a bottom-up initiative, starting with volunteer fighters at the Maidan, then in the Donbas.
With co-operation from Nato countries — which has intensified since the invasion — Ukraine has indeed developed a military that has so far proved more flexible in its structure and effective on the battlefield than Putin’s Soviet-issue top-down army.
“It is like my child, and I am very proud,” he says. “Now the whole world can see, and the Ukrainian armed forces surprised the world.”
Second, Poroshenko says, his presidency “institutionalised the Ukrainian state” and promoted the Ukrainian language (not without controversy), switching off the Russian TV signal that was “poisoning Ukrainian society”. Third, he says, his presidency saw the creation of an independent autocephalous Ukrainian church; fourth, “significant progress” on European integration; and fifth, co-operation with Nato.
---------
In 2019 he ran a nationalist re-election campaign under the slogan “Army! Language! Faith!” that flopped. Zelensky trounced Poroshenko, campaigning on a ticket of unity and throwing out the old order, and taking 73 per cent of the vote compared with 24 per cent for Poroshenko. I ask him why he thinks he lost.
“After five years of war, people wanted to have somebody who promised peace within two weeks, promised that we had ended the time of poor people, and that now it would be the time for rich people,” Poroshenko says. “They really liked to believe in tales.”
During Zelensky’s presidency, Poroshenko was charged with treason and financing terrorism for allegedly having been involved in the sale of coal to state companies by separatists in the Donbas — the very men his administration was fighting. A Kyiv court deemed the charges serious enough to freeze his assets in January as part of the investigation.
From 2015 Kiev had fulfilled zero of the signed obligations it had according to the Minsk agreements with Poroshenko even being investigated for treason by the UKR government for signing the peace deal.
President Petro Poroshenko has warned Ukrainian politicians that the collapse of the Minsk agreements aimed at ending a war with Russia-backed separatists could set off a "full-scale conflict" with Russia.
Poroshenko was speaking at a conference of local leaders in Kyiv on January 23.
"Those political forces that want to torpedo the Minsk agreements at any cost...and to block the constitutional process, must clearly understand the consequences of their actions," he said.
"They will lead to the resumption of the 'hot phase' of the conflict, including a full-scale -- and not local, as it has been so far -- conflict with Russia," he added.
His words appeared to be aimed at foes of "decentralization" legislation that Ukraine is required to pass under the peace deal signed in February 2015 by Ukraine, Russia, and separatists who hold parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The Minsk deal is crucial for Kyiv because it calls for the restoration of Ukrainian control over the state border between the separatist-held territories and Russia, which has backed the separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.
Here you go. Should wrap up any questions you have about active warfare stopping since the beginning of 2015.
Weird how an agreement between Russia and Ukraine would stop a Ukrainian civil war.
Almost as if it was Russia doint all that "independent seperatists" things all along.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with your comment. The Minsk agreements were negotiated between the two Donbas Republics and the post Maidan elected Kiev government in 2015. France and Germany signed as guarantors for the Kiev government and Russia acted as a guarantor for the Donbass Republics.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande though would all later admit that they had no intention of fulfilling the Minsk agreements when they signed them. Stating that they wanted to buy time in order to get more weapons from the West and build up the UKR army.
The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
Later on, it also mentions the Russian stooges also signing. But if this really were a true Ukrainian civil war, why is Russia even involved? Why are they more important at the peace talks then the people "rising up"?
One might get the idea that Russia is involved because everyone knew that Russia is pulling the strings of the so-called LPR and DPR, to the point that they might as well be part of Russia.
Which surprisingly, Russia now claims they are. Weird...
Its almost as if large countries often work as mediators in international disputes. The first Minsk agreement was dead on arrival because it didn't involve the Donbass Republics.
Are you implying any country involved in any peace talks is a direct combatant in that conflict?
EPT
