Before It’s NewsThe Ukraine is mobilizing for war this Sunday morning, after Putin declared he had the right to invade, creating the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the cold war.
President Barack Obama is a little dazed and confused. It took US President Barack Obama 90 minutes of intense dialogue with the Russian President Vladimir Putin to grasp that Putin is unshakably fixed on the course he has set for Ukraine and has no intention of withdrawing the Russian troops he has positioned in the Crimean peninsula.
In fact, behind the diplomatic verbiage, Russian President Putin was clearly on the offensive. He let it be understood that unless the US and Europe rid Kiev of the “fascist gangs,” which had taken over, Moscow would move forces into additional parts of Ukraine to uphold its interests and “protect the Russian citizens and compatriots living there” for as long as the interim regime remained in Kiev.
Vladimir Putin was not impressed at all by Obama’s accusation of being in ”clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Neither was Putin deterred by the US president’s threat of “international political and diplomatic isolation” – or even a Western boycott of the G8 summer summit in Sochi.
After all, Putin did stand alone at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Winter Games – unattended by a single Western leader. After that experience, he is not afraid to stand alone on Ukraine as well, regardless of US and EU efforts to force him to abandon what he views as an imminent strategic threat on Russia’s doorstep.
They may be said to share four significant conclusions.
1. President Obama was seen backing off a commitment to US allies for the second time in eight months. They remember his U-turn last August on US military intervention for the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons. They also see Washington shying off from Russia’s use of military force and therefore not a reliable partner for safeguarding their national security.
2. The Middle East governments which opted to range with Vladimir Putin – Damascus, Tehran, Hizballah and, up to an initial point, Egypt, are ending up on the strong side of the regional equation.
The pro-American camp keeps falling back.
3. American weakness on the global front has strengthened the Iranian-Syrian bloc and its ties with Hizballah.
4. Putin standing foursquare behind Iran is an insurmountable obstacle to a negotiated and acceptable comprehensive agreement with Iran – just as the international bid for a political resolution of the Syrian conflict foundered last month.
With the Ukraine crisis looming ever larger, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s scheduled meeting Monday with President Obama at the White House is unlikely to be more than an exchange of polite platitudes.
Ukraine’s security council ordered the general staff to immediately put all armed forces on highest alert, the council’s secretary Andriy Parubiy announced. The Defense Ministry was ordered to conduct the call-up, potentially of all men up to 40 in a country that still has universal male conscription.
Russian forces who have already bloodlessly seized Crimea – an isolated Black Sea peninsula where most of the population are ethnic Russian and Moscow has a naval base – tried to disarm the small Ukrainian contingents there on Sunday. Some Ukrainian commanders refused to give up weapons and bases were surrounded.
Of potentially even greater concern are eastern swathes of the country, where most of the ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native language. Those areas saw violent protests on Saturday, with pro-Moscow demonstrators hoisting flags at government buildings and calling for Russia to defend them.
Putin’s declaration that he has the right to invade his neighbor – for which he quickly received the unanimous approval of his parliament – brought the prospect of war to a country of 46 million people on the ramparts of central Europe.
Ukraine puts forces on combat alert, warns of war Play video
Ukraine puts forces on combat alert, warns of war
“President Obama expressed his deep concern over Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is a breach of international law,” the White House said after the leaders spoke for 90 minutes on Saturday.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, leading a pro-European government that took power after Moscow ally Viktor Yanukovich fled a week ago, said Russian armed action “would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia”.
Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said he sent a request to NATO to “examine all possibilities to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine”. Ukraine also appealed for help to Britain and the United States, as co-signatories with Moscow to a 1994 accord guaranteeing Ukraine’s security after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
NATO ambassadors were due to meet in Brussels on Sunday. Washington has proposed sending monitors to Ukraine under the flags of the United Nations or Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, bodies where Moscow would have a veto.
Washington and its allies have suspended plans to attend a G8 summit in Sochi, where Putin had just finished staging his $50 billion winter Olympic games.
President Obama has shown so much weakness since he took office, no foreign leader respects him, wspecially a seasoned combat leader like Putin. Obama’s media appeal will not be as effective for him on the international scene as it has been for him on the domestic scene in America over the last 5 years. Will this lead to the beginning of war and world conflict? What is China thinking?
It is obvious that Obama is in way over his head at this point. This is what should scare the American people. What is the likely result.? Obama knowing he is in way over his head, thinking he is really looking weak at this point, will over react in such a way that he actually escalates this conflict into WWIII.
Putin knows damn well that Obama can’t get any support for a war, so despite the treaty we have to protect Ukraine (in exchange for them giving up their nukes), the U.S.A. won’t be able to do anything to stop this. Putin’s taking advantage of that fact to exercise a free hand, and bring Ukraine back into his fold.
There would probably be too much dissension in our ranks. Our troops are fried from a decade of war that they’re now discovering was waged for fraudulent reasons, or heroin profits, and every last one of them is going to think twice before storming off to fight the Russians.
We don’t have willing “boots on the ground” to fight this war, and Putin knows it.
Keep them posts coming Josey… Thanks
‘Before it’s news’ is full of crap.
Parts of this article ripped nearly word for word from
mossad mouthpiece debkafile.
Example:
“After all, he stood alone at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Winter Games – unattended by a single Western leader. After that experience, he is not afraid to stand alone on Ukraine as well, regardless of US and EU efforts to force him to abandon what he views as an imminent strategic threat on Russia’s doorstep.”
See and compare for yourself:
http://www.debka.com/article/23722/Ukraine-calls-up-reserves-against-Russia-Putin-spurns-Obama%E2%80%99s-call-to-de-escalate-with-fallout-on-Mid-East
Josey Wales care to explain? Or did you also write the debkafile exclusive analysis article?
I smell zio-fraud.
-flek