
The Ukraine crisis: John Kerry and Nato must calm down and back off  - ghosh
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off
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coffeemug
This opinion piece is insane.

Sending troops in unmarked uniforms with unmarked vehicles to annex the
Crimean Peninsula under the pretense of protection from ethnic cleansing,
which anyone with access to Facebook and Twitter can easily see is completely
manufactured by the Russian propaganda machine, without buy-in from the
international community, is an obvious act of aggression. Putin keeps upping
the ante because nobody ever bothered to call him on his bluff. The
international community consistently let Putin cross boundaries with impunity,
and he's been getting more and more insolent with each incident. There comes a
time when enough is enough.

~~~
schultz9999
You may buy uniforms and any attributes in near by shops. It's simple as that
and doesn't go father than a lot of Hollywood movies with fake cops. We will
never know for sure who did what, why and when.

~~~
revolly
You obviously either Russian bot or have absolutely no clue what you talking
about. You cannot buy missile launcher or basically ANY military weapon in
nearby shop. And this is what Ukrainians saw in numerous occations.

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sdrothrock
I was confused by the claim that Kerry threatened "to expel Russia from the
G8." I clicked the link and went to the other article, which had the following
quote from Kerry: "He is not going to have a Sochi G8, he may not even remain
in the G8 if this continues."

Am I mistaken in assuming that the G8 is not under American control? At worst,
Kerry could recommend that the US not take part in the Sochi-hosted G8, but
that's it, correct?

I'm also confused by the writer's characterization of the situation in the
Ukraine as "a crisis that can easily be contained if cool heads prevail."

If you drill down to the basics, any crisis could "easily be contained" if all
parties involved are calm and willing to sit and talk indefinitely.

In this particular situation, it doesn't look like that would happen given
that Ukraine is essentially in the middle of a civil revolt (war?) and there
are a large number of parties who would have to be comfortable having some
kind of draw-down talk.

~~~
pedalpete
Australia has also talked of removing Russia from the G8, which is now being
called the G7, I'm sure just as a sign of the members being serious.

I suspect all it takes is for G7 countries not to invite Russia to the
meetings.

They have been uninvited to the G20 meetings in Australia.

~~~
sdrothrock
I'm still really confused because according to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8#Annual_summit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8#Annual_summit),
the next summit is supposed to be held in Sochi.

Nobody's going to be able to uninvite Russia from their own summit, so if the
US and Australia "remove" Russia and don't attend the summit, doesn't it just
become a G6 (G8 minus the US and Australia)?

In order to "remove" Russia, all seven countries would have to agree to not go
to Sochi and also to have the summit somewhere outside of Russia.

~~~
gregsq
Australia is not in the G8. The G8 is the G7 plus one. G7 agree to roll back
is the idea.

~~~
pedalpete
You are correct, my apologies. I'm still new to Australia. Australia is
hosting the G20, and there is discussion here regarding Russia's role in the
upcoming G20 meetings. [http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-
news/ukrain...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ukraine-
tony-abbotts-g20-summit-threat-to-russia-20140303-340gn.html)

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cinskiy
I'm Russian, I hate Putin, I support our troops in Crimea, and the article is
right that Nato just doesn't want to lose influence right under the Russian
border, that's all western hysteria is about.

However I think news like this probably should be posted on reddit than here.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
I'm curious, what makes you support the invasion?

I think it's obvious to everyone that NATO would love to have influence on the
Russian border, and that Russia would prefer if that didn't happen, but that
doesn't make a military invasion okay. The "Western hysteria," at least what
I've seen from over here in the good old US of A, is about the possibility of
a significant (which it would be even if nobody else gets involved) war in
Europe.

~~~
toufka
I am not him and I'm not qualified to speak with any kind of authority about
this particular event. However the use of the word 'invasion' is pretty
loaded. Keep in mind that the entire area was once a larger whole - the USSR.
Imagine if the US broke apart into its constituent states. Places like St.
Louis would feel mighty strange. Again, I'm not defending this particular
situation, but I can see how Missouri sending troops into Illinois might not
need be termed quite as harsh as an _invasion_ , though still an aggressive
act. So far as I can tell, so far there has been more violence in Kiev during
the protests than during this 'invasion'.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
I'm pretty sure if Missouri and Illinois were independent nations, either one
would be understandably upset about the other sending armed soldiers into its
territory unasked. Actually, the idea that they had been part of a whole
before would make me even more wary, particularly if it were California or
Texas (i.e. one of the more "dominant" US states).

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GeneralMayhem
I don't think it's possible to over-dramatize a sovereign nation's cities and
airports being occupied by its neighbor. This isn't a little misunderstanding
or an "oops, somebody flew a few miles off course and wound up in your
airspace."

~~~
kushti
I think you have a read a lot of media hysteria. First, Crimea people and
region parliament took control over region with no respect to Kiev before any
army forces. Second, it's not neighbour in airports / cities but Army of
Crimea(former army members / Kiev troops taken Crimea side / former Berkut
members etc).

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kushti
However, John Kerry and other agressive imperialists must calm down. But as
it's HN, we should talk about hackers responsibility to calm down media
hysteria supporting aggresive politicians. Personally I would like to have
following tools to prevent brain-washing:

1\. Browser plugin(or at least web service)showing "yelowness" of an article
and whole site as well. There are some semi-formal attributes of yellow
article: exaggerating(e.g. "peaceful protesters" vs "provocateurs"),
controversial sources, non-representative opinions(e.g. a crying woman with
children speaks for the whole country) etc.

2\. Some kind of facts graph. While the most yellow media has no links to
sources at all, slightly better option is just quoting source w/out any
links(and you have to spend a lot of time to check). Good media have links,
but reader have to check them(and source could qoute some controversial and
non-representative opinion). We should give users some kind of software able
to find root sources for all facts in an article immediately and build
linking/quoting graph.

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protomyth
The thought that Russia would do this was raised during the 2012 US
Presidential campaign and was mocked in the press and by the current
administration. I think we are seeing the effects of that attitude in the
response. I am not confident that the US has a good answer or one Putin would
believe.

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Grue3
Does Kremlin have shills even on HackerNews? They're really going all out.

