Russian vassalization of Ukraine

[Dylan]

[exploited]

[Dylan]

Ha. Tragically that may actually be half the forum.

[Spider]

[The Comrade]

[The Comrade]

[The Comrade]

[exploited]

[The Comrade]

or or OR we stop being an idiot and remember azerbaijan, a former SSR, has a lot of oil and natural gas. that georgia is a potential NATO country, like ukraine was trying to be, and that an emboldened russia, with a larger alliance, would be more willing to meddle in places beyond their backyard. maybe start competing with the US and EU in trade deals? maybe, oh i don't know, go back to what they were doing 20 years ago?

your only method of criticizing anyone's foreign policy on this site is to minimize the current problem and ignore future ones.

"lol whats crimea to the west?"

well what's the entire ukraine to the west? what's the balkans? what's mongolia?

hurhurhurhur russia won't do that, right? just like they wouldn't invade ukraine over something that had nothing to do with them. just like they wouldn't invade georgia over something that had nothing to do with them.

[Do5a]

I think its a deeply naive to think that this is the end of Russian pressure on Ukraine or other ex soviet republics. Russia's world view that Western Europe and the US will not apply any real pressure in response to Russian muscular foreign policy will be solidified. Its belief that Germany in particular can be isolated from the US will also also be solidified.

What form that pressure will take I don't know gas is less of a weapon in spring and summer, military action in defense of Baltic state Russian speakers is unthinkable as they are in NATO. But I can't see any Europeans wanting to defend Latvia should Russia decide that the 25% of the population that is Russian need defending from phantom enemies.

But I do find the Idea that this rigmarole is an expression of Russian strength laughable. Russia's policy is to put as much distance between in and its perceived enemies as possible. Make no mistake it perceives "the west" as a threat. It thought it had done that by buying part of Ukraine's elite. Their stooge has fled the country and Putin's has been humiliated after thinking he had stole Ukraine away from "the west" just as he was previously humiliated in 2004. Russia has nothing to offer Ukraine other than cheap gas, Europe offers the hope of modernization the rule of law and representative democracy.

Russia has lost the shield of Ukraine's land mass, Russia is on damage limitation its military does not have the capacity to subdue and occupy the Ukraine any more than the Soviet union could subdue Poland in 1981 and Russia now lacks the ability to get a Jaruzelsk to impose martial law.

By effectively annexing Crimea Russia has violated the territory of a sovereign state that it recognizes (unlike the breakaway parts of Georgia which it never recognized) this weakens its international position that sovereign states are sacrosanct.