Ask HN: Are there any HN readers on Crimea and can tell us what's going on? - dexcs
======
friendlyguy85
I will try to sum up what is going on. After Ukrainians made government
turnover of president Yanukovych ( he and his sons have stolen over 40 billion
$ during last couple years), the new government made a terrible mistake and
cancelled pretty conditional and stupid law, which allowed russian language to
be used in official documents ( Ukraine is mostly bilingual, and everyone
understands both russian and ukrainian). Canceling this law doesn't mean that
russian language is banned. It is just CANT be used in official documents.
After canceling this law, parliamentary representatives told that there will
be a new law which will respect not only two languages, but will spread on
others which are used on Ukrainian territory.

Putin's propaganda presented this as infringement of ethnic Russians and that
new government are fascists which made illegal turnover.

Three main nationalities in Crimea are ethnic russians (1.5m), ukrainians
(500.00) and tatars (who actually lived in Crimea, before Stalin repressed
them in 1944-1950). Also Russia pays Ukrainian government for keeping part of
their fleet in Crimea.

So, these forces "invaded" Crimea, but the had no russian markings and it was
again presented, as these are volunteers who help to protect Crimea from west-
ukrainian fascists (yeah, right, volunteers with guns, helicopters and armored
cars). The Crimea parlament was capruted and now is ruled by pro-russian
marginals who declare Crimea autonomy and that is should be a part of Russia.
The officially request help from Putin to protect themselves. And yesterday
Russian Council of federations allowed Putin to invade Crimea. But post-faktum
it already happened.

~~~
kushti
You forget to say about new "power" in Kiev and west Ukraine:

BBC video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiSPMpTp_I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiSPMpTp_I)
Sasha Biliy @ Rovno government meeting(UA language):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01is0p0mzJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01is0p0mzJQ)

(and much more)

Of course, people of Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Odessa
see that violent nazi power and want to detach from the new Ukraine.

~~~
friendlyguy85
Okay, i will say this only once - there are NO nazis in ukraine.

Sasha Biliy is not the whole country or doesn't represent even a city. He is
just a mad guy who walks city streets with empty machine gun. This video made
a huge resonance in Ukraine, so even our Interior minister [secretary of
state] (Arsen Avakov) reacted to this on his FB page saying that this is
absolutely inappropriate. And i am sure, that this man will be in jain really
soon.

I ask this question every person who speaks about nazis in ukraine. IF there
are nazis, who hate russian people - WHY there was NOT A SINGLE attack on
russian embassy in whole ukraine? Why not a single russian was killed by evil
ukrainian nazis?

~~~
kushti
If Ukraine is against nazis, Biliy & Yarosh should be in jail already not
walking on the streets with empty(??? how did you check that?) machine gun.
And we already see violence against jews [http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-
world/jewish-world-news/.premi...](http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-
world-news/.premium-1.576230) and communist party offices. Remember history,
german nazis started with jews & communists.

------
Casseres
Not HN (edit: or specifically from Crimea), but there is a Reddit post by a
self-reported Ukrainian protestor which I found interesting:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1z9pkm/iama_ukrainian_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1z9pkm/iama_ukrainian_protester_of_euromaidan_our/)

There is also another series of interesting posts here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1zad2p/ukraine_pu...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1zad2p/ukraine_put_its_armed_forces_on_full_combat_alert/)

It's not HN, but it beats the worthless commentary that I've seen on TV while
they show stock footage of tanks rolling around (which I haven't heard is the
case).

~~~
kushti
But he is not in Crimea! He's engaged a much as EuroMaidan protester living in
Kiev

------
kushti
I have a friend in Sevastopol. He states almost all people there are suppose
Crimea independence & Russia(though he personally doesn't share that).

~~~
sorenbs
The sentiment is for an independent Crimea or to become part of Russia?

~~~
kushti
He says it depends on how referendum question will be formulated.

------
grey-area
It's weird the way any stories to do with Ukraine are being flagged off the
home page - I'd understand if they were taking over the homepage, but this
request seems like a useful one to me, and the topic one of interest for
everyone here - plenty of things to discuss other than politics or tribal
allegiances, here are some:

The reporting of wars and revolutions by the people involved themselves is
causing a huge change in journalism - some news journalists I know are
starting to question how to involve reader stories and reader opinions in
reports without ending up with an incoherent cacophony of people shouting
their opinions, with those the loudest to shout being those who are heard.
Scepticism, source checking and editorial independence are needed more than
ever when you are able to hear an entire crowd at once.

The use of twitter is also growing to cover conflicts like this - I find it
really interesting just how far newspapers are now going in using twitter as a
source (and verifying afterwards). Look at all the twitter refs in this live
feed. [1]

Web images/video of conflict, and message boards such as this one have become
the new battleground in establishing what the world thinks about a conflict,
and techniques of manipulating them with false comments, hacking and false
information are growing more sophisticated - RT was hacked today [2], and some
protests have been reported as fake [3].

I have no position on the conflict that I'd like to share as I don't know
enough about it, but an informed public is more essential than ever if the
world is on the edge of war.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/02/ukraine-
warns-r...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/02/ukraine-warns-russia-
crimea-war-live)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/RT_com/statuses/439981255052898304](https://twitter.com/RT_com/statuses/439981255052898304)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/howardamos/status/440128242620825600](https://twitter.com/howardamos/status/440128242620825600)

