Vladimir Putin refers to Eastern Ukraine as "Novorossiya" ("New Russia")

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Holy shit.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-putin-ukraine-20140417,0,469177.story#axzz2z9KbGI7L

"Putin also reiterated his position that the southeast regions of Ukraine for centuries were Russian territories called Novorossiya or New Russia, and it was the Bolshevik leadership in the early 20th century that handed those regions over to the newly formed Soviet Ukraine."

Now do you understand why many Ukrainians were furious when Yanukovych chose to cozy up to Russia?

[Adrahil]

1. But.... But..... NEONAZIS!!!!!!!

Putin doesn't have any ambitions for Ukraine! Bankers!!!! IMF!!!! Propaganda!!!

Did I get all the talking points?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. You forgot Victoria Nuland's magical coup cookies.

Guaranteed to turn any apathetic ordinary Ukrainian into a bloodthirsty super-fascist neo-Nazi loving, EU/IMF embracing CIA agent with a single bite.

Now in cinnamon!

[arely staircase]

3. + 1 nt

[KittyWampus]

7. Victorian Nuland's magical coup cookies is only in competition with Wes Clark's

Haitian Man Tits.

[NuclearDem]

6. And pensions! Don't forget pensions!

Also, here's a laundry list of every imperial action taken by America in the last sixty years. Bet you didn't care about them!

[arely staircase]

4. putin could nuke kiev

and some here would argue it was in the best interest of Ukrainians ans what they really wanted.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

5. Any idea if he'd do something this weekend?

It's Orthodox Easter, as well as Easter for the Western churches. I don't know if that makes it more or less likely he'd make his move this weekend.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. I think he likes what he's doing right now.

Which I believe is mixing in Russian military operatives with the armed ethnic Russian militants occupying government buildings in Eastern Ukraine, while other unarmed local ethnic Russians are used as human shields to try to provoke an incident with the Ukrainian military.

People who are quick to bash the interim Ukrainian government as "illegitimate" and "coup imposed" clearly don't want to understand that the very last thing in the Ukrainian government's interest is for any civilians to be killed and they've resisted the Russian bait so far.

But if there is any type of perceived incident--even if it involves the armed militants and not the unarmed civilians--Russia could use it as an excuse for a formal move of regular Russian forces into Ukraine.

Before that happens, though, I think he'll be happy playing up the plausible deniability card like he did in Crimea.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. The full quote:

http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/728447


"I would like to remind you that this is Novorossiya - the term used back in the tsarist epoch. Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in the tsarist epoch. These are the territories which were turned over to Ukraine by the former Soviet government in the 1920s. God knows what they did that for.

All this dates back to the victories won by tsarist Russia in notorious wars in the epoch of Catherine the Great and Prince Potyomkin with the center in Novorossiysk; hence the name- Novorossiya. Then for different reasons these territories were lost, but the people remained.

Indeed, the people in the southeast of Ukraine are citizens of Ukraine, but they must be equal citizens in their country,"

[GeorgeGist]

10. Nice.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

11. True....nt