Malaysian airline MH-17 discussion thread

KahBoom · 02-08-2014 10:02pm

gandalf wrote: »

...
The so called separatists are Terrorists.

On the 17th of July either by mistake or on purpose a missile was fired from a Russian supplied Buk which blew an airliner out of the skys over the Ukraine. This was an act of terror by people who have demonstrated that they do not give a damn about the people that they claim to represent.

Here you are claiming the separatists are responsible for downing the airliner - there is no credible evidence of this, nobody knows who shot it down yet; if you think you have something that constitutes credible evidence, link it.

tomwaterford · 02-08-2014 10:05pm

KahBoom wrote: »

Here you are claiming the separatists are responsible for downing the airliner - there is no credible evidence of this; if you think you have something that constitutes that, link it.

look it they did it...a **** up...but nevertheless they did it....short of them coming out and publically admitting it (which they wont) there is no evidence will do for you is there???

KahBoom · 02-08-2014 10:06pm

tomwaterford wrote: »

look it they did it...a **** up...but nevertheless they did it....short of them coming out and publically admitting it (which they wont) there is no evidence will do for you is there???

There is no evidence full stop. Evidence with impartial third-party verification, that's not much to ask for, if it's really so obvious to everyone - certainly, it needs to be evidence of a high standard, to justify sanctions against Russia - given that that can lead to escalations, on a path to war (not to mention economic consequences for Europe as well).

darkpagandeath · 02-08-2014 10:21pm

KahBoom wrote: »

There is no evidence full stop. Evidence with impartial third-party verification, that's not much to ask for, if it's really so obvious to everyone - certainly, it needs to be evidence of a high standard, to justify sanctions against Russia - given that that can lead to escalations, on a path to war (not to mention economic consequences for Europe as well).

With who ? And even if their was evidence given the pro side would say "ah sure" America or (insert western country) Ofc they would say that they don't like Russia. Russia is well able to cover any tracks it has made, It's has proven that time and time again in the Cold war. Same guys are still around, Thinking of the glory days.

InTheTrees · 02-08-2014 11:01pm

KahBoom wrote: »

Evidence with impartial third-party verification

The living room window is smashed, there's a soccer ball on the floor, and outside vlad is standing in the garden in his football kit.

But vlad wants incontrovertible smoking-gun evidence before you take away his xbox and send him to bed early?

pablo128 · 02-08-2014 11:18pm

pablo128 wrote: »

Here's a link to the deleted tweet. I don't speak Russian, so make of it what you want.
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDAQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpressimus.com%2FInterpreter_Mag%2Fpress%2F3391&ei=1FPMU47XDuS57Abyt4DYAg&usg=AFQjCNEjT5Ctdz0mR4NqxIuzZlb0ImS2kg&bvm=bv.71198958,d.ZGU&cad=rja

I'll post this again. Has it been proven a fake yet?

Egginacup · 03-08-2014 4:22am

Nonamigo wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiXjXmZ3NYg

so maybe there WAS a fighter jet following mh17....

Have there been any missile fragments found anywhere?

Egginacup · 03-08-2014 4:31am

miss tickle wrote: »

This bbc news report was deleted from their website, the local eyewitnesses say they say another plane alsongside the passenger jet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8gmNY0v5RM

Just prior to the blonde woman reporting, wasn't that the same footage of BUK systems allegedly being reported to be crossing back over the Russian border but in fact the footage is in actuality in Krasnoameirsk, 80 miles away?

Why was this footage deleted?

Egginacup · 03-08-2014 4:48am

darkpagandeath wrote: »

So having the first plane debunked due to it's anti tank role. As it fires 30 mm Depleted uranium or explosive shells the plane now changes ? Mig-29s have a 30 mm cannon as well that fire a number of AP rounds or Explosive. And Tbh none of these planes fit as attacking a passenger jet as they do not fire on planes head to head. Any fighter pilot will tell you that. And the 30 mm rounds are designed to shoot down other armoured fighter jets. Just think of the damage they do to a large pressurised passenger plane there would not be nice 30 mm holes left in it.

Darkpagandeath, nobody is interested in your possible experience regarding high altitude Russian ballistics.
What people are interested in is a healthy doubt in the "official" narrative. Now if you are so analytically inclined as to understand the machinations of aeriel trajectories then you must be critically minded enough to not block out other trains of thought, other hypotheses, even other questions.

"Any fighter pilot will tell you that" ? I don't know a fighter pilot. They're hardly a common breed. How would any fighter pilot tell the rest of us that? Do you meet fighter pilots on a regular basis?

Egginacup · 03-08-2014 4:55am

smurfjed wrote: »

But you will find other comments in this thread about the weather and that the area was covered in cloud.

Do we have any evidence that the MH17 plane was diverted 200km to avoid bad weather?

This thought has been thrown out there so I would like to have it cleared up and either remaining in the discussion or gotten rid of.
The Malaysian flight was diverted 200km from the normal course. Was this because of bad weather or not?
Again, the Kiev ATC communications would let us know but these comms recordings are not being released.

Egginacup · 03-08-2014 5:10am

smurfjed wrote: »

7,000 meters, not close to 10,000 meters. So due to your lack of aerodynamic knowledge you find it bizarre, ok maybe this will help, this guy certainly doesnt sound like a US supporter!

So even allowing for the 10 km ceiling as printed in some places, the aircraft doesn't have the capabilities to go chasing an airliner. BTW, the wikipedia article that i previously linked to, quotes Jane's All The World's Aircraft, which quite literally is world renowned for this sort of information.

So where are we...
1: German specialist debunked
2: Ability of SU-25 to shoot down the aircraft with cannon fire debunked
3: Ability of airliner crew to see the fighter on their radar debunked

Whats next?

I was talking feet, not metres.

Have you ever encountered a passenger vessel that could cruise at 30 kilometres above the Earth's surface?

And please, I'm tiring of your condescesion. I am well aware of the SI units of measurement. I am also well aware that height and depth are still measured in quaint units such as feet, fathoms and even leagues.
So please don't sneer at my aeronautical knowledge. While I'm not a pilot I do understand physics and very well I might add.

To address your three debunked points. I have never once stated that they were proof positive of anything. Why are you even mentioning them and then slamming the "DEBUNKED" after each one?

LizT · 03-08-2014 7:20am

Mod

Egginacup banned for ignoring mod instruction.

Nonamigo · 03-08-2014 9:37am

Egginacup wrote: »

Have there been any missile fragments found anywhere?

Not that I know of.

loughside · 03-08-2014 2:08pm

Excellent article here.. sums Putins evil and brutal empire up to a T

Putin's cold, callous and calculated threat to Ukraine and European security

`The West long harboured illusions about both Putin and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych only to eventually reach the conclusion they were kleptocratic liars, cold and violent thugs.

This was already evident in the case of Putin as soon as he came to power with allegations the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB that he had been an officer in, blowing up apartments to re-ignite the Chechen conflict, in the massive war crimes committed in Grozny and against Chechens and Russian-backed separatism and ethnic cleansing in Georgia.

Yanukovych's two jail sentences and ties to organised crime should have provided a reliable guide to his likely brutal behaviour in asset stripping Ukraine, murdering unarmed Euromaidan protesters and with big brother Putin fomenting Donetsk terrorism.

Putin and Yanukovych are cold through and through without a morsel of human empathy for those who have suffered at their hands, either the 600 Russians blown up in their apartments and innocent passengers on MH17 or the thousands killed, wounded, abducted, tortured and displaced during the EuroMaidan and Donbas separatism.

Putin's callousness was evident in the aftermath of the downing of the Kursk submarine and after the shooting down of MH17. Russian leaders not only brazenly lied but displayed complete disrespect for the innocent victims that included 80 children. Indeed, lying has always been an integral component of Soviet and post-Soviet leaders repertoire.

Passengers remains were left to rot in the heat, their personal belongings were rifled through, credit cards and mobile phones were used by the terrorists, and Dutch and Australian investigators are still blocked from visiting the crash site.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay reported this week, following Amnesty International's lengthy report issued earlier this month, that the terrorist criminals have abducted, tortured and murdered over a thousand innocent local politicians, public officials and 'employees of the local coalmining industry.' Pillay said 'The majority are ordinary citizens, academics, teachers, journalists, members of the clergy and students.'

Russia unleashed criminals and mercenaries in east Ukraine whose defeat is imminent because they have never been seen as "liberators" by Ukraine's Russian speakers.

Putin's Russian chauvinism has produced a xenophobic and Ukrainophobic that has destroyed tens of thousands of Russian, Chechen and Ukrainian lives and hundreds of innocent MH17 passengers.

Putin is calculated and assumed the EU would continue to talk of 'red lines' that would become meaningless. The same was after all true of the numerous 'red lines' issued and always ignored made towards Yanukovych over the incompatibility of his imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko with European values.

But, on this occasion the EU stood firm when it - and the entire world - became sickened by Putin's coldness and callousness. Without Russian massive military and intelligence support the Donbas terrorists would have long ago been defeated and with Ukrainian forces advancing and his proxies on the run Putin had to either admit defeat or up the ante.

Sending advanced BUK surface to air missiles was meant to deny Ukrainians the air superiority that was proving devastating against the terrorists but ended up instead exposing Putin's real face to the world.
Following the shooting down of MH17, instead of backing down Putin expanded the supply of high-tech military equipment to his proxy forces and launched missile attacks from Russian into Ukrainian territory, as revealed in satellite images released by the Pentagon.

This calculated affront to international order and human decency successfully united the West for the first time in its attitudes to Putin and Russian imperialism.

Yanukovych and his cronies fled to Russia six months ago and they will never renew their political influence in Ukraine. The Party of Regions popularity is in the doldrums, its candidate won only three per cent in the May elections and its oligarch backers are either awaiting deportation in Vienna to stand trial in the US (Dmytro Firtash) or in hiding in Ukraine afraid to travel to Europe (Rinat Akhmetov).

Putin on the other hand remains in power with high levels of support whipped up by nationalist fervour on state controlled television and he remains a threat to European security and the global order. US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said 'Russia had made the conscious decision to use its military force inside of another sovereign nation to achieve its objective for the first time probably since 1939.'

If Czechoslovakia and Poland were the first casualties of Nazism seven decades ago, Ukraine is the first casualty of today's 'Putler,' as Ukrainians describe the Russian President. Europe has finally woken up to the threat of a new fascism in Europe.

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/taras-kuzio-putins-cold-callous-and-calculated-threat-to-ukraine-and-european-security-359126.html

KahBoom · 03-08-2014 2:47pm

loughside wrote: »

This was already evident in the case of Putin as soon as he came to power with allegations the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB that he had been an officer in, blowing up apartments to re-ignite the Chechen conflict, in the massive war crimes committed in Grozny and against Chechens and Russian-backed separatism and ethnic cleansing in Georgia.

Ya - when there is a claim of conspiracy on the part of Russia, without any evidence to back it, it's put forward as indisputably true, yet when a claim of conspiracy is suggested against Ukraine and the western forces backing it, it's a 'conspiracy theory' in the pejorative sense.
Shows up the double standards here - alleged FSB involvement in the apartment bombings is an unproven conspiracy theory.

Unsurprisingly, more claims without evidence being put forward in the thread, and by reading it, you'd nearly forget that Yanukovych was democratically elected - and that western backers are documented as having funded the campaign that ousted him - as well as the fact that the only fascists/neo-fascists in Ukraine are being backed by the west - the article is utter garbage.

aloyisious · 03-08-2014 2:49pm

KahBoom wrote: »

There is no evidence full stop. Evidence with impartial third-party verification, that's not much to ask for, if it's really so obvious to everyone - certainly, it needs to be evidence of a high standard, to justify sanctions against Russia - given that that can lead to escalations, on a path to war (not to mention economic consequences for Europe as well).

When one state (Russia) uses it's military forces to destabilize a neigbouring state (Ukraine) from WITHIN that neighbour's borders, that's generally seen as an unfriendly act, a bellicose act, an act of war. This whole thing began when one state (Russia) refused to accept the fact that a neighbouring state (Ukraine) was making a geopolitical deal with the EU, it got the President of the second state to renege on HIS deal and when that president was deposed by his fellow citizenry, used proxy forces trained and armed by itself to annex territory (The Crimea) belonging to the second state (Ukraine). The first state (Russia) has followed that up with furthering trouble within the neighbour's borders for which the Russian Parliament has been asked to award Vlad with the "Hero Of Russia" award. I guess it's the new version of "Hero Of The Soviet Union" award.

RandomName2 · 03-08-2014 2:52pm

gandalf wrote: »

Now lets examine a number of reports and articles about the Eastern Ukraine region under the rule of the Pro-Russian Terrorists.

Russian Nazi's on the side of the Pro-Russian Terrorists, hmmm can some one say hypocrites

Hmmmm it seems that the so called "separatists" are not popular with all the residents of Donetsk.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28583147

Mass grave uncovered after the town of Slovyansk was liberated by the Ukrainian forces. Executions of this type would be considered as actions of terrorists by a large proportion of right thinking people.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/24/grave-mass-slovyansk.html

So there you go from my perspective I am quite entitled to call the people illegally fighting the government in the Ukraine as terrorists. The leaders are Russians with links to Russian intelligence. A number of the terrorist are actually mercenaries from outside the Ukraine with a large number of Chechans involved.

Now I have backed up my assertion that Pro-Russian TERRORISTS are operating against the legitimate forces of the sovereign state of Ukraine. Can you now provide proof that they aren't and can you now respond and provide proof that the TERRORISTS didn't have a BUK system as per my earlier post which included multiple links from multiple sources.

They're rebels, not terrorists

In much the same way that the 1916 rising organisers in Ireland were rebels.

Never knew that NSDAP ran for election in Russia... who knew?

KahBoom · 03-08-2014 2:57pm

aloyisious wrote: »

When one state (Russia) uses it's military forces to destabilize a neigbouring state (Ukraine) from WITHIN that neighbour's borders, that's generally seen as an unfriendly act, a bellicose act, an act of war. This whole thing began when one state (Russia) refused to accept the fact that a neighbouring state (Ukraine) was making a geopolitical deal with the EU, it got the President of the second state to renege on HIS deal and when that president was deposed by his fellow citizenry, used proxy forces trained and armed by itself to annex territory (The Crimea) belonging to the second state (Ukraine). The first state (Russia) has followed that up with furthering trouble within the neighbour's borders for which the Russian Parliament has been asked to award Vlad with the "Hero Of Russia" award. I guess it's the new version of "Hero Of The Soviet Union" award.

You're trying to provide a post-hoc justification for the sanctions: The downing of MH-17 was used as as one of the primary reasons for pushing increased sanctions against Russia, as I have shown quoted in a previous post, and the evidence is not there to support the claim that Russia had anything to do with that - so the stated justification for increasing sanctions on this scale, is not proven, making the scale of increased sanctions greatly irresponsible, seeing as it could lead to escalations on a path towards greater conflict.

If they want to justify sanctions on terms unrelated to the downing of the plane, fine - but they didn't.

Western nations/funders are also well documented, as having funded the groups that ousted the president - a president they were pretty friendly with until he decided Russia was offering him a better deal!

smurfjed · 03-08-2014 7:15pm

Some of the comments stated that people on the ground saw a 2nd aircraft flying close to the B777. This is the weather chart showing cloud coverage at the time.....

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/?switch=geographic&products=baselayers,MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,!MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor~overlays,Aqua_Orbit_Asc,Terra_Orbit_Dsc,sedac_bound&time=2014-07-17&map=24.411133,38.305664,45.135742,53.334961

I guess that why were using x-ray vision glasses

I don't know a fighter pilot. They're hardly a common breed. How would any fighter pilot tell the rest of us that? Do you meet fighter pilots on a regular basis?

Yep and ex-fighter pilots on a daily basis !

Fig of Fallacy · 03-08-2014 8:55pm

loughside wrote: »

Excellent article here.. sums Putins evil and brutal empire up to a T

Putin's cold, callous and calculated threat to Ukraine and European security

`The West long harboured illusions about both Putin and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych only to eventually reach the conclusion they were kleptocratic liars, cold and violent thugs.

This was already evident in the case of Putin as soon as he came to power with allegations the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB that he had been an officer in, blowing up apartments to re-ignite the Chechen conflict, in the massive war crimes committed in Grozny and against Chechens and Russian-backed separatism and ethnic cleansing in Georgia.

Yanukovych's two jail sentences and ties to organised crime should have provided a reliable guide to his likely brutal behaviour in asset stripping Ukraine, murdering unarmed Euromaidan protesters and with big brother Putin fomenting Donetsk terrorism.

Putin and Yanukovych are cold through and through without a morsel of human empathy for those who have suffered at their hands, either the 600 Russians blown up in their apartments and innocent passengers on MH17 or the thousands killed, wounded, abducted, tortured and displaced during the EuroMaidan and Donbas separatism.

Putin's callousness was evident in the aftermath of the downing of the Kursk submarine and after the shooting down of MH17. Russian leaders not only brazenly lied but displayed complete disrespect for the innocent victims that included 80 children. Indeed, lying has always been an integral component of Soviet and post-Soviet leaders repertoire.

Passengers remains were left to rot in the heat, their personal belongings were rifled through, credit cards and mobile phones were used by the terrorists, and Dutch and Australian investigators are still blocked from visiting the crash site.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay reported this week, following Amnesty International's lengthy report issued earlier this month, that the terrorist criminals have abducted, tortured and murdered over a thousand innocent local politicians, public officials and 'employees of the local coalmining industry.' Pillay said 'The majority are ordinary citizens, academics, teachers, journalists, members of the clergy and students.'

Russia unleashed criminals and mercenaries in east Ukraine whose defeat is imminent because they have never been seen as "liberators" by Ukraine's Russian speakers.

Putin's Russian chauvinism has produced a xenophobic and Ukrainophobic that has destroyed tens of thousands of Russian, Chechen and Ukrainian lives and hundreds of innocent MH17 passengers.

Putin is calculated and assumed the EU would continue to talk of 'red lines' that would become meaningless. The same was after all true of the numerous 'red lines' issued and always ignored made towards Yanukovych over the incompatibility of his imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko with European values.

But, on this occasion the EU stood firm when it - and the entire world - became sickened by Putin's coldness and callousness. Without Russian massive military and intelligence support the Donbas terrorists would have long ago been defeated and with Ukrainian forces advancing and his proxies on the run Putin had to either admit defeat or up the ante.

Sending advanced BUK surface to air missiles was meant to deny Ukrainians the air superiority that was proving devastating against the terrorists but ended up instead exposing Putin's real face to the world.
Following the shooting down of MH17, instead of backing down Putin expanded the supply of high-tech military equipment to his proxy forces and launched missile attacks from Russian into Ukrainian territory, as revealed in satellite images released by the Pentagon.

This calculated affront to international order and human decency successfully united the West for the first time in its attitudes to Putin and Russian imperialism.

Yanukovych and his cronies fled to Russia six months ago and they will never renew their political influence in Ukraine. The Party of Regions popularity is in the doldrums, its candidate won only three per cent in the May elections and its oligarch backers are either awaiting deportation in Vienna to stand trial in the US (Dmytro Firtash) or in hiding in Ukraine afraid to travel to Europe (Rinat Akhmetov).

Putin on the other hand remains in power with high levels of support whipped up by nationalist fervour on state controlled television and he remains a threat to European security and the global order. US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said 'Russia had made the conscious decision to use its military force inside of another sovereign nation to achieve its objective for the first time probably since 1939.'

If Czechoslovakia and Poland were the first casualties of Nazism seven decades ago, Ukraine is the first casualty of today's 'Putler,' as Ukrainians describe the Russian President. Europe has finally woken up to the threat of a new fascism in Europe.

And not only that, but did you hear that Communists burnt down the Reichstag?

aloyisious · 03-08-2014 11:06pm

KahBoom wrote: »

You're trying to provide a post-hoc justification for the sanctions: The downing of MH-17 was used as as one of the primary reasons for pushing increased sanctions against Russia, as I have shown quoted in a previous post, and the evidence is not there to support the claim that Russia had anything to do with that - so the stated justification for increasing sanctions on this scale, is not proven, making the scale of increased sanctions greatly irresponsible, seeing as it could lead to escalations on a path towards greater conflict.

If they want to justify sanctions on terms unrelated to the downing of the plane, fine - but they didn't.

Western nations/funders are also well documented, as having funded the groups that ousted the president - a president they were pretty friendly with until he decided Russia was offering him a better deal!

...............................................................................................

I agree that the justification for the increased sanctions on Russia was the downing of MH-17. However I believe the Russians precipitated both actions by their initial actions over Crimea and Sevastopol in the Ukraine. Maybe you might agree with the extra sanctions if they were declared to be in response to the actions of Russia's proxy forces in Donetsk. It's hardly worth denying that the separatists in Donetsk are playing Moscow's hand for it in it's geopolitical poker-game with the EU and other Western nations over Ukraine. Unlike Russia, the EU and western countries supporting Ukraine have NOT supported proxy armed factions within Ukraine. It isn't just the West who believe that Russia is responsible for initiating the actual physical action in Ukraine.

Op/Ed

West is Russia's adversary again
Editorial: The Statesman (India)
VLADIMIR Putin's contrived emphasis on self-reliance is at best an attempt to put up a brave face before the world, an academic response to the stringent cache of sanctions on Russia imposed by the USA and the European Union. The apparent nonchalance can scarcely camouflage the severity of the economic reprisal in the aftermath of the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner, suspected to be the handiwork of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The latest round of sanctions is far more punitive than the initial curbs at the individual level. The West has seemingly shed its diplomatic impotence, but the turning of the screw after eight months of turmoil cannot dispel the impression that the package amounts to too much, too late. It has been unveiled after considerable dithering since last November; considering the escalation of the crisis and Putin's expansionist intent, the sanctions ought to have been clamped ahead of the annexation of Crimea in March. However belatedly, Russia has now been reduced to a position of unsplendid isolation on both sides of the Atlantic. The sanctions are bound to have a two-pronged impact—diplomatic as much as economic. They will doubtless impinge on Moscow's dealings with the West. From the economic perspective, they will have a damaging impact, of a kind that might be felt by ordinary Russians, most particularly the post-Soviet generation that over the years has been accustomed to chic consumerism.

The punitive action does suggest that Putin's strategy in Ukraine has backfired, though on the face of it he did maintain a distance from the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. There was little doubt over the past few months that the Kremlin was encouraging and aiding the insurgency in eastern Ukraine, without leaving distinct fingerprints ... till the conflagration extended from the ground to the skies. The strategy also involved coming to terms with Kiev without causing a rupture in Russia's relations with Europe. That diplomatic construct is now crumbling.

Historically, sanctions cannot readily bring a regime to its knees, but they do serve as an economic blockade. And it shall not be easy for Russia's international trade, the vital transmission of gas, and the buoyancy of its financial markets to thrive without the economic cooperation of the West. That cooperation in matters of trade has now floundered on the rock of assertion by Europe and America. International power-play has entered a new phase. More than two decades after the eclipse of Communism, the West is Russia's adversary again.

Copyright © 2014 The Statesman Limited. All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Asia News Network.

https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEEQqQIoADAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Famerica.aljazeera.com%2Farticles%2F2014%2F7%2F29%2Fus-russia-sanctions.html&ei=KKveU93EGKfb7AbRpYCYBA&usg=AFQjCNFHKfpQIVXfLce48DtnORMB7BVk_w

InTheTrees · 04-08-2014 12:41am

Comments about Russia from Obama today, I think he was actually being interviewed about China:

"Obama downplayed Moscow's role in the world, dismissing President Vladimir Putin as a leader causing short-term trouble for political gain that will hurt Russia in the long term.
"I do think it's important to keep perspective. Russia doesn't make anything," Obama said in the interview.
"Immigrants aren't rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking," he said."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/03/us-ukraine-crisis-obama-idUSKBN0G30Q920140803

aloyisious · 04-08-2014 1:18am

@InTheTrees: when I "googled" on the sanctions, one news source listed in the results stated that ASIA was NOT TOO anxious to join in the sanctions imposed on Russia. It seem's the west has approached Asian Govt's to come on board with the sanctions without success as yet, possibly to avoid getting on the "Back Of The Tiger" as yet until "things become clearer".

InTheTrees · 04-08-2014 1:23am

It makes sense really. Apart from Malaysia being involved, it has little to do with Asia.

China just recently signed a massive oil deal with russia too.

KahBoom · 04-08-2014 2:30am

aloyisious wrote: »

...............................................................................................

I agree that the justification for the increased sanctions on Russia was the downing of MH-17. However I believe the Russians precipitated both actions by their initial actions over Crimea and Sevastopol in the Ukraine. Maybe you might agree with the extra sanctions if they were declared to be in response to the actions of Russia's proxy forces in Donetsk. It's hardly worth denying that the separatists in Donetsk are playing Moscow's hand for it in it's geopolitical poker-game with the EU and other Western nations over Ukraine. Unlike Russia, the EU and western countries supporting Ukraine have NOT supported proxy armed factions within Ukraine. It isn't just the West who believe that Russia is responsible for initiating the actual physical action in Ukraine.

These sanctions are US-led, and it is western funding particularly from the US, that was used to contribute funding to groups that ousted the Ukrainian president, which caused this whole mess - and the US has no place being a moral arbiter of any kind when it comes to sanctions, given its recent history of illegally invading another country, and engaging in a swathe of other illegal military actions all around the middle east, as well as directly backing Israel and regularly shipping over the bombs being dropped on Gaza (it might as well be the US bombing them).

If there's any country that deserves sanctions placed against it, for breaking international law and engaging in aggressive military action, it's the US - and we have direct proof of that, not just alleged backing of separatists like with Russia (not that I doubt that, I don't).
The sanctions against Russia, are about the US and western nations, engaging in economic warfare with Russia, it's nothing about rights/wrongs/morals - something that is going to sour relations, possibly on the path towards a new Cold War if things keep going this way.

The EU needs Russia (particularly for gas), and the EU shouldn't let the US stir shít among ex-Soviet nations, and drag the EU into economic sanctions that pit the EU and Russia against each other - in a way that is harmful to both, economically and otherwise.

darkpagandeath · 04-08-2014 2:37am

Ukraine is not part of Russia, People wanted rid of the guy in power. Is there proof the US paid for his removal ?

KahBoom · 04-08-2014 2:41am

Nobody said they paid for his removal, but the Euromaidan funding is well documented from the west:
http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/

It's no secret that he got on bad terms with the US quickly, when he started rejecting IMF loans tied to austerity plans for Ukraine, and decided to take up Russia's loan offer instead - the Russian deal was not much better mind, Ukraine were stuck between vultures on both sides.

grols · 04-08-2014 4:54pm

KahBoom wrote: »

... Ukraine were stuck between vultures on both sides.

I agree with you.
Only when Ukraine will be able to protect itself, Ukraine will be strong and independent from both the West and Russia

steddyeddy · 04-08-2014 4:56pm

I'll be flying with them 4 times from now until January

grols · 04-08-2014 5:01pm

I think they will fall down from East Ukraine.
And all other unstable regions.