Russia demanding Ukrainian military leave Crimea by 5am | Hacker News Reader

Russia demanding Ukrainian military leave Crimea by 5am

cnn.com

22 pointsmelling30 comments

Tough situation for the Ukrainians to be in. I wonder what Russia's response would be if the Ukrainians pulled out as demanded but then cut electrical power from the peninsula. It would put Russia in a serious bind with no shots fired.

Well what did they expect throwing out an elected government? While it had its problems it was still the legal government, its not like Tymoshenko is better than those driven off, there are many who think she is worse.

My only concern is, why are so many in the West so keen on countries overthrowing their elected leadership? Granted most of the EU's concern is probably with natural gas, the US is probably hoping for some Putin embarrassment after the US's botched Syria approach

The election was criticised quite harshly. But that is not Russia's problem, anyway... [Or do you think elections in Europe is Russia's problem to "correct"?]

Consider the scary thing here:

To AGAIN start invading and taking pieces (Transnistria, Georgia, etc) of countries in Europe is not just small meaningless realpolitik, as you imply.

Especially since the motivation is "Protecting Germ... Russian speaking populations"... :-(

What will happen now is that the West will continue to say "Peace in our time" while starting to also rearm.

Are you seeing the obvious parallels here? You need to wait for Putin to get a moustache first? :-(

How so? Doesn't Crimea have any power plants? I would imagine there was enough power available for all the critical infastructure. Besides, wouldn't it be just the civilians suffering from that anyway? The Russian military must have plenty of generators for their own use with them.

From what I have read, although trying to find the source is proving difficult so maybe it was incorrect, all of the peninsula's electricity comes from the mainland.

Ceding Crimea to Russia may just make things more difficult to be honest. There are many other parts of eastern Ukraine that are primarily ethnic Russians and I would think Russia, at least, would consider the ceding of Crimea as justification for their further involvement.

It would also really hurt the civilian population, while not particularly hurting Russia's military. I'm impressed so far at Kiev's maturity in not rising to Russia's provocations.

But it would force Russia to deal with the actual populace instead of the government, if the region is as heavily pro-Russian as Russia claims the truth will come out real fast. Would it then be a Russian crisis or a Ukrainian crisis?

However, it would lend an awful lot of legitimacy to Russia's claims of just being their to protect the people if Kiev did such a thing, while not endearing anyone in the peninsula to the Kiev based government. Kiev would prefer to have the world view this purely as an issue of sovereignty; introducing questions about the ethnic makeup of the area poses a decent argument for self determination, which Kiev would like to avoid. Of course, none of this condones Russia's actions, but someone needs to tell RT that, as they continue to spout their propaganda.

You seem certain that the truth would favor Ukraine ;) If we hypothetically assume the population ends up celebrating their liberation, how is Ukraine ever going to have any credibility demanding the region back?

Absolutely unreal.. The cultural history plus geopolitics has combined into something really scary.

This is all FUD there is no ultimatum, stop reading these shitty news sites

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/03/ukraine-crisis-...

EDIT: oh and stop posting newspaper news on hacker news

> This is all FUD there is no ultimatum, stop reading these shitty news sites

From the article -- "Russia says...".

At this point anything starting with "Russia says" might as well be interpreted as the opposite of what they claim.

All that link states is that Russia is denying they have given an ultimatum. Ukrainian leaders still claim they have. Its all he said she said at this point...

Scroll down or click the link to get to

A source in the Ukrainian defence ministry has told the Guardian’s Shaun Walker, in Crimea, that he has heard nothing about an ultimatum that has reportedly been posed to Ukrainian forces in the region to surrender before 3am GMT or face an assault.

UPDATE: The Russian defence ministry denies any such ultimatum.

Shaun writes:

He is not that senior but says he’s on a base right now and neither he nor the base commanders have heard anything of the sort. He said: “It’s probably another red herring to stir up trouble.”

You're welcome

What happens when an ultimatum is given and Russia does decide to do something?

  “also be remembered that there have been ultimatums at all bases, including the one I was inside at Feodosia yesterday. They were ignored, and nothing happened.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/03/ukraine-crisis-...

Those also aren't Russian troops either. They aren't in regular military uniforms.

Putin wins again. Nobody can do anything except recall ambassadors, at least Russia hasn't annexed the entire East or cut off gas, which Ukraine solely relies to keep the lights and heat on. US has shaky ground to stand on while demanding intl borders be respected considering Iraq/Libya/Yemen/Pakistan/Somalia/Afghanistan military adventures

Meanwhile they can clean their shit in the countries you mentioned.

All this is so damn sad. After such a hard, hard history you really wish the Russians and Ukrainians would get better than such corrupt thieves for leaders.

At least those leaders seems Hellbent on exporting the suffering, so the Russian/Ukrainian populations won't have to be alone... :-(

Putin's biggest mistake so far.

Long term perhaps, maybe not short term.

All the European countries (especially East European ones) have started to slowly warm up to Russia, and by that I mean stop believing it is their ideological mortal enemy and occupier. There was some inkling of "hey maybe they are civilized enough to start doing business with".

This now has rolled all that back to Soviet Union times. This will not destroy or kill Russia, but it will increase the rift between itself and the West.

In the short term they have the gas resources and they have the military might (and now the additional port and more land). So from Putin's pragmatic short term view he is winning.

In the long term, Russia will become more isolated. So it is a bad move long term. This will not be forgotten for many generations.

You are totally correct imho, but miss the point.

Read about the resource curse on Wikipedia. It is too lucrative for the junta in an oil country to steal the elections, get external enemies -- and send the oil money to Schweiz.

Putin needed to get isolated from the West, so he can condemn all criticism as Western conspiracies. :-(

I wish I could believe that, but at this point it's difficult to imagine an outcome that doesn't include Russian possession of the Crimea, with only diplomatic (i.e., nothing economic, political, or military) repercussions.

Maybe not politically or militarily, but definitely economically. No way Russia thrives if it cuts itself off from the West.

I don't expect Russia to be cut off in the way you describe. I understand their economy to be based largely on petroleum, both too big and too connected to Europe to be sanctioned in the way that e.g. Iran has been. Spring is coming, so there could be a few months of sanctions, but by this fall Russia will probably still be in the Crimea, and will certainly again be heating Europe.

Will Russia thrive if it doesn't cut off from the West, but the West will continue to ignite unrest in all parts of the world? Feel free to not reply.

Yes, it was the West who paid that guy in Egypt to burn himself alive.

I think that was Tunisia?

There are no Ukrainians in Crimea, it was part of Russia and was literally given to Ukraine as a gift during USSR. Not Putin, but people in Crimea decide what they want. They'll have a referendum on 30th of March.

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