| > As far as I can tell, your link [1] implies that the only reason Kiev is using air strikes or artillery is because of the presence of hostile military forces in their sovereign territory. No, it doesn't. Because there is no evidence of massive Russian troop presence, not to my knowledge. This is why you cannot attribute the sheer scale of Ukrainian Government actions to this issue. I will quote the article for your convenience: Poroshenko’s “peace plan” and June 21 cease-fire may have seemed such an opportunity, except for their two core conditions: fighters in the southeast first had to “lay down their arms,” and he alone would decide with whom to negotiate peace. The terms seemed more akin to conditions of surrender, and were probably the real reason Poroshenko unilaterally ended the cease-fire on July 1 and intensified Kiev’s assault on eastern cities, initially on the smaller towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which their defenders abandoned—to prevent more civilian casualities, they said—on July 5–6. [1] The fact that there is a genuine insurgency by the Eastern Ukrainians that is not attributable to Russian influence has been supported by multiple experts from different countries. [2] Even the sociologist that gets his money from US State Department says that: "And the polls which were done in the first half of [May--and?] it means after massacre in Odessa and after very brutal attack on Mariupol by Ukrainian forces, they were showing that at least even in Donbass there are various--some sort of support for the claims of separatists, and the people in Donbas saw their seizure of governmental buildings as people's [incompr.] not as a terrorist act, not as a Russian intervention. But this were the public opinion in Donbass." [3] >He wouldn't be fined or jailed in the U.S. either, due to the First Amendment (although maybe you could make a good case that it's "hate speech"). Does that make the U.S. "fascist"? OK, for me it was too emotional to claim this and to talk about this TV show. [1] http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw... [2] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=... [3] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=... |
But that is not, by itself, justification for Russia to intervene, especially unilaterally. It's not, never will be.
Think of the logic: If there were a group of 5,000 Americans living in Russia (who had been forced to move there 50 years earlier during a period of American rule in Russia), and they rebelled against Moscow (after lengthy exhortations and propaganda from D.C.), would you really be OK with America sending military forces to intervene on behalf of those separatists? Would you be OK with America providing very advanced weaponry, passports, military support, intelligence support, international top cover and more, all to support this separatist movement?
Or would you say that it was an internal matter for Russians to resolve amongst themselves, and that other states should stay out of the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation? I can tell you the U.S. certainly didn't want outside intervention during our own civil war.
See, this isn't two states playing covert war games in a third state, this is Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty against a separatist movement (however many legitimate aspects it might contain), with Ukraine's bordering neighbor deliberately intervening to tilt the scales as they wish.