Warning shots fired to turn monitors back from Crimea

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: Reuters

A spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said no one was hurt when shots were fired to turn back its mission of more than 40 unarmed observers, who have been invited by Kiev but do not have permission from Crimea's pro-Russian separatist regional authorities.

They had been turned back twice before, but this was the first time shots were fired.

Kiev's security council said it had been targeted by hackers in a "massive" denial of service attack designed to cripple its computers. The national news agency was also hit, it said.
...
Ukraine's border service said Russian troops had also seized a border guard outpost in the east of the peninsula overnight, kicking the Ukrainian officers and their families out of their apartments in the middle of the night.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/08/uk-ukraine-idUKBREA1H0EM20140308

[TwilightGardener]

1. Just protecting the Russians from ethnic cleansing, remember.

Those mean, nazi-like Ukrainians are the ones causing all the problems, they MADE Russia invade!

[Igel]

2. I'm getting tired of these reports.

All these non-Russians show up and spontaneously suck the lead out of guns, causing small explosions as the lead's pulled out.

It's only due to the sheer awesomeness of the pro-Russian folk that they manage to spot this before it happens and make sure the barrels of the guns are pointed up. Who knows what harm those guns would do if they were simply left home--spontaneously firing and injuring those lesser folk who, through no avoidable fault of their own, lack the necessary degree of russkost' or "Russianness."

[Demeter]

3. Keep on pushing, all you outsiders

and you'll get your Third World War.

It's the interfering busybodies who need to de-escalate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I'd call firing warning shots more than being 'interfering busybodies'

it's also possible that those who fired weren't the Russian outsiders, but pro-Russian Crimeans. But you're right, whether Russian or Crimean, they are trying to escalate it to a war.

[7962]

5. Yes, lets just give Vlad ALL of Ukraine & maybe throw in Belarus as an incentive to be nice.

I'm sure that would be enough to stop his "expansion" ambitions. OR maybe even Latvia and Estonia, since they have large Russian populations that surely need to be "protected".
Gee, sounds just like 1938.

[amandabeech]

11. Vladdie already has Belarus.

Belarus is the last confirmed dictatorship in Europe, and it's lead by a Soviet-type strong man.

He does whatever Putin likes, and the conditions for the people of Belarus are very bad.

The Baltic countries may be in trouble, though, because a considerable number of ethnic Russians live in them and do nothing but complain. Of course, they never go back to Russia.

It seems that many people here give no credit to Ukrainians themselves. They think that the only reasons that the previous president abandoned ship was because of US meddling and home-grown Nazis and has nothing to do with very bad conditions inside Ukraine and almost unbelievable levels of official corruption.

I spent most of the past year in Michigan helping my elderly mother. She doesn't have the internet, but she does have Direct TV. I spent a lot of time watching Al Jazeera and Blumberg, which were the only networks paying any attention to this situation for any length of time. They have been covering the Maidan demonstrations and the complaints of Ukrainian citizens since autumn. Al Jazeera is no tool of the right wing, and their reporting convinced me that the US and EU could not have whipped up this level of discontent out of nothing.

A lot of DUers supporting Russia seem not to have paid much attention to Ukraine until the Russians leaked Victoria Nuland's conversation. I don't like Nuland or what she was saying, but I think that she was actually well behind the opinion of the Ukrainian people at the time.

Here's a question: what were the Russian ambassador to Ukraine and the Russian foreign ministry saying to each other at the same time? Were they talking about making threats to Yanukovich and Ukraine to get Ukraine to enter an EU equivalent with the dictatorships of Belarus and Kazakhstan and Putin's version of a democratic Russia?

[7962]

12. Very good info. I knew Belarus was no walk in the park.

And I'm one here on DU that has ALWAYS said beware of Russia. What do people think happened to all the bad guys since the breakup of the Soviet Union? Did they just disappear? No, they began planning for a return and continued to work against the US. And China is no different. But to many here, the US is just the meanest country on earth. We've got our problems, but we're not the major cause of the world's.

[hrmjustin]

6. I doubt posting the news on DU will cause a war.

[chrisa]

7. Reporters should just stay out and not report news! It's better that way!

[okaawhatever]

9. By interfering busybodies you mean Putin, right? Because the majoirty of Ukraine citizens supported

joining EU. It was Russia's interference in the matter that caused all the protests to start. There also haven't been polls showing Ukraine wanted to join Russia, either. Even on the Crimea. As recently as 2011 72% ethnic Russians and Russian speakers answered that they were "ethnic Ukrainians" in a poll.
And the whole vote to join Russia is nothing more than intervention from Putin. Why haven't they taken this vote before? Why did it take a military invasion and occupation, not to mention the changing of the parliamentary leader before the vote happened? Why is it the Russian soldiers have shut down the Ukraine media on Crimea if joining Russia is what they really want? Don't friggin' kid yourself. The outsiders and busybodies are at the kremlin.

[geek tragedy]

10. Someone at DU justifying armed aggression vs unarmed international observers.

Jesus fucking Christ, this place's crazy filter is broken.

[NickB79]

13. And someone with 70K posts to boot

This place is NOTHING like I remember it when I joined over a decade ago.....

[joshcryer]

14. Firing warning shots at OSCE = necessary to protect Crimeans from nazi genocide.

[Cali_Democrat]

15. Some people here just love Putin

Why?

1) He's sticking it to "The West" and more specifically, the United States. Remember, the USA is always wrong in some people's eyes.

2) Some people here really despise capitalism and the West embodies capitalism.

3) Putin is sheltering Snowden, so he gets extra credit points.

4) Putin is a strong-arm authoritarian President who likes to impose his will. Many folks on the left don't like Obama because they think he's too weak and not dictatorial enough. Brass knuckles!

I could go on and on....

It's just kinda sad at this point.

[quadrature]

8. nice to see flexibility being shown by all sides...nt