Blaze wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 8:57 am
There was always going to be a problem in Ukraine since Stalin's mass murders and the installation of Russians in the south eastern states. We can only hope that this doesn't spread to other former Soviet countries where Russians also settled after Stalin's purges.
My concern would be Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia who were part of USSR and have a relatively large Russian minority - rather than Poland, Bulgaria etc who were separate countries within the Warsaw Pact.
In addition, we also have Moldova (Transnistria), Georgia etc as potential flashpoints.
But as you say, transfers of people and lands under Stalin and Khrushchev have not helped.
Last edited by niemeyjt on Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Spardo wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:29 am
Hasn’t he rather shot himself in the foot there? Not that it matters because he is probably not the full quid. But how can he recognise 2 small enclaves as independent states while denying that the much larger established Ukrainian state does not exist?
On the other hand, if there is indeed a large proportion of the populations of those 2 enclaves who speak Russian and consider themselves Russian, doesn’t that put them in some ways in a similar boat to other regions which would/might rather be independent, like Catalonia and Scotland for example, and thus could legitimately have their positions clarified by a free and fair referendum?
Just a thought, but if so and if it could be organised and overseen independently (very difficult if not impossible I know) would not that be one way out of this crisis?
Of course, they may just be an excuse in the mind of Putin, but personally I have never understood what advantage Russia could have in a bloody absorbing of an unwilling population into its own, already diverse, one.
Two small enclaves as independent states is halfway point to them being absorbed into Mother Russia, I suggest.
And I would ignore western propaganda around his mental health - it is Biden's I would worry about.
The way out was the Minsk Accord - that Macron was also pushing - but Ukraine failed to implement.
But really Putin's aim is to reverse the Maiden Coup and reinstate a Russia-centric government, I suggest.
He has Crimea already, not to mention the Sea of Azov - he does not need any more - and he could not blockade Ukraine even if he wanted to due to its border with Poland amongst other countries.
niemeyjt wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:30 am
My concern would be Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia who were part of USSR and have a relatively large Russian minority - rather than Poland, Bulgaria etc who were separate countries within the Warsaw Pact.
Agreed, particularly with the Kaliningrad enclave.
I don't get involved in politics people tend to let their emotions run away, so will just add a small point, isn't time someone told Mother Russia that if it wasn't for the western world in the 1940s that they would properly have had a very large part of Western Russia under German control, the USA and Britain and other country's, lost thousands of men, hundreds of thousands of tons of goods and shipping to help them defeat to bad guy, these people soon forget their history when it suits them, I don't think the average man/women in the street will have, if they have been told by the grandparents, but I don't know.
Spectrum wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 12:20 pmI don't get involved in politics people tend to let their emotions run away, so will just add a small point, isn't time someone told Mother Russia that if it wasn't for the western world in the 1940s that they would properly have had a very large part of Western Russia under German control, the USA and Britain and other country's, lost thousands of men, hundreds of thousands of tons of goods and shipping to help them defeat to bad guy, these people soon forget their history when it suits them, I don't think the average man/women in the street will have, if they have been told by the grandparents, but I don't know.
Given one of the four countries involved in the Minsk Accords was Germany I am not sure that argument would go very far.
Spectrum wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 12:20 pm
isn't time someone told Mother Russia that if it wasn't for the western world in the 1940s that they would properly have had a very large part of Western Russia under German control
I don't think the Russians see it that way.
They remember the thousands of Russians that died "liberating" Eastern Europe.
I don't think he will go for The Baltic States as they are in NATO and that would mean WW3.
Grab a chair, kick off your shoes, chill and chat.
