Comment on Brian Whitmore's RFE/RL podcast, “The Daily Vertical: Return Of The Russian World> http://www.rferl.org/content/daily-vertical-return-of-russian-world/27340254.html
Not much understanding of Russkiy Mir or its role in Russian foreign policy in this podcast.
Russkiy Mir is often represented as some new, strange, perhaps threatening concept cooked up in the Russian Foreign Ministry as part of a new Russian imperial project. Not so! Russkiy Mir existed long before even...
... private space taxis are not expected to take place until at least 2017. Now Nasa says it has been forced to extend its contract with Roscosmos at a cost of $490m – despite the tense political relationship between the two nations - the invasion of Crimea in 2014 led to a ban on Nasa/Roscosmos collaborations. Nasa administrator Charles Bolden has written a letter to US Congress saying it had been forced into this position because of "continued reductions in the president's funding requests"....
... authorities had neither a prepared plan in relation to Ukraine nor long-term goals in connection with the crisis in that country, not fixed objectives that required the use of military resources. It is therefore difficult to explain Moscow’s actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in terms of the concept of “hybrid war”, including a “preparatory phase”, an “attack phase” and a “stabilisation phase” as described by András Rácz.
An unscientific concept
REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Pavel Kanevskiy, Oksana Nechyporenko:
...
... high standard of living, as GDP per capita there was less than €5,000 in 2012 against the national average per capita GDP of €6,800, with the maximum reaching €20,700 in certain regions
[5]
. The share of total exports of goods from Ukraine to Crimea was 1.6% and about the same figure describes Crimea’s share in the country’s total imports in 2013
[6]
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The share of goods exported to Russia in 2013 accounted for 8.3% of Ukraine’s GDP, whereas that to the EU – only 0....
... political decisions.
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Although Russian and Ukrainian leaders use the same historical facts surrounding the Kievan Rus, their motivations differ. While Russia wants to add additional legitimacy to its political decision over the voluntary entry of Crimea into the Russian Federation, Ukraine is trying to restore the shattering legitimacy of its state borders and the national identity of its population.
The use of historical facts is a long applied instrument for fueling an entire political context, usually with quite material consequences....
... Franks: After the conclusion of an arms deal between Russia and Venezuela, President Putin was called a “thugocrat” engaged in “dangerous alliances.
Keep in mind all of the above statements were uttered before the 2014 crisis in Ukraine even broke out. So before the U.S. Congress received what has been portrayed as undeniable and irrefutable proof of Russian aggression in Ukraine, it was already quite prepared to view Russia as a corrupt kleptocracy willfully abusing human rights ...
... Catherin the Great. The thorny question of the potential opening of the Kerch Strait to the international shipping, and the subsequent internationalization of the Azov Sea’s waters, featured among the long list of issues which strained Russia-Ukraine relations after 1991.
Through the annexation of Crimea, Russia recovers the full sovereignty over the best coasts and the best port, Sevastopol, of the Black Sea basin. In absorbing the peninsula, Moscow retrieves nearly 1 000 km of additional coasts, including ports such as Feodossia and Kerch, which ...
... international law it is possible to find contradictions in the question of how the citizens of Crimea expressed their will, but from the point of view of the essence of the popular will, of the risk that the same situation that is being observed in South-East Ukraine might arise in Crimea, and the military-strategic risks for Russia, the incorporation of Crimea into Russia that has taken place is beyond doubt and is underpinned by a decision of the Crimean people. Europe has already seen similar precedents. The situation in Kosovo,...
... Russian-Ukrainian relations. Less than two months after being sworn in, Yanukovych signed the so-called Kharkiv Pact with then President Dmitry Medvedev resolving the issue of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation’s continued presence in Crimea and Ukraine receiving favourable conditions for obtaining gas. In February 2012, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Law “On the Principles of the State Language Policy” establishing the conditions for the use of regional languages. This ...
... people labor under the mistaken belief that the only reason they have not been solved is because of Russia’s alleged propensity to make trouble.
Some of these unresolved, and poorly-resolved issues are at the roots of the current crisis in Ukraine. The fate of Crimea, for example, was a highly complex matter. It should have been carefully examined and negotiated, instead of being left to Yeltsin’s whim. A decision affecting the fate of 2 million people was made without even being seriously discussed. ...
