President Obama was very careful to distance himself from Ukraine’s latest allegations of a Russian invasion, saying that there was “not really a shift” in Russia’s policy toward Ukraine, despite this morning’s claims of thousands of Russian troops in the east.
The allegations were seized upon by some officials, but Ukraine’s increasingly hysterical, and often untrue, allegations have the president a bit gun-shy about putting his name to the invasion, and there isn’t exactly evidence to back up what Kiev is saying.
Still, Obama is not one to let a crisis go unexploited, even a likely imaginary one, and he is promising to impose yet more sanctions against the Russians, insisting Russia brought the moves on themselves by opposing Ukraine’s crackdown on eastern secessionists.
The “invasion,” which US media outlets were reporting as absolute fact, was never explicitly mentioned by President Obama, but was clearly the pretext for the latest round of sanctions.
Sanctions are not the way of solving the problem. USA and Europ should IMPOSE to Kiev to stop bombing their own civilians and start constructive dialog with the south.The representatives of separatists have clearly said many times that they are open to discussion,that they defend themselves but never had serious proposals from Kiev. What we have here ? Any time that Kiev loose a battle.they accuse Russia,then cry to uncle Obama.Uncle Obama take sanctions against Russia,Russia deny involvment etc,…One of the responsable of that is the master of conspiracy,Mr.Yatseniuk. USA and Europ do not understand with who they are dealing. It is not because Kiev guys have nice costums and expense after shaves that they can be trusted. It is not because they both hate Putin and Russia that Russia is the bad guy in this story.USA and Europ acted without thinking and understanding the situation on the field.We already see the total destabilization in the world.They act the same way in Ukraine: with total incompetence.They should understand that is not normal to support people totally obsessed by hyper nationalism wich deny other ethnic groups of their own country.
USG really needs to sanctions all and every nations in this world if they want for their sanction to impact Russia economy, that goes for EU too.
Obama seems to be trigger happy with those sanctions no matter which way the wind blows.
Essentially, Obama is forcing Putin either to escalate or back down. A very wise strategy which wholly wrongfoots Putin. He can strut and posture and bluff and bluster all he wants, but if he invades, he will probably meet a military response. The first step would be to train and equip the Ukrainian military up to NATO standard, the next would be a Yugoslav-type air war in southern Ukraine, including Crimea, which could slowly be extended to Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and, why not, Chechnia. The campaign could then be extended to attacks on Russia's Arctic oilfields and pipelines, easily accessible from Canada, and so on. Russia doesn't have either the economic resources or the modern technology to fight a "slow bleed" type of war. Will Putin be that stupid?
Do you really think the west is going to fight a war with Russia, a nuclear armed power? You are delusional Michael. Russia isn't Serbia or Iraq. It can punch back, and very hard too. America, like all bullies, only attacks defenseless countries.
The only stupidity is coming from you. To advocate the bombing of Russia, somehow thinking that it would not go nuclear.
Russian air defenses aren't off the shelf junk from the bazar – they were specifically engineered to counter Nato – won't be any "cake walk".
Where will the US get the 3-5 million soldiers for this little adventure? Not from Germany; they tried that one and ended up wearing their ass for a hat. The UK? On the winning side in WW2 but bankrupt and busted? France – WW1. Even assuming there was no nuclear exchange, the US will be bankrupt before it can finish the job. Don't underestimate the tenacity of the winners of the Great Patriotic War – this was where the real killing and dying was done.
Actually, Poroshenko himself backed off the claim of Russia's invasion changing his line to "Russia's troops have been brought into Ukraine"
http://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-poroshenko-says-ru…
This is of course BS: there is no apparent shift in Russia's stance and its level of support for the rebels. The self-defense Donbas militias kicked ass these past two weeks and routed large units of the Ukrainian forces and the paras. Everyone knows that, in Kiev and Washington.