Russia - threadbanned users in OP

But it's not a stupid question - separatist and independence movements are recognised all the time.

2.5 million people live in the DPR area

1.5 mil in LPR

Why arent these places allowed to be independent?

In Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea, turnout for Sunday's referendum reached an astonishing 123% of registered voters

Seems legit. 👍️

It's incredible to stand back and watch how quickly the mask has fell off Russia. Putin, up until now was a master manipulator and forged some perceived friendships with the west and evidently had people lobbying Russian interests (Wallace and Daly cough cough)

He kept a tight ship all them years and that has effectively been undone in a week. And now they are in a panic to get the narrative out to get population on their side pushing all sorts of crazy nonsense.

The Russian embassy in Japan ffs attacking their hosts with nonsense Nazi rhetoric. That's what they are going for and evidently The Kremlin is in deep deep panic mode.

I still find it all so hard to comprehend. I've stepped back from watching this story closely but it's all so batshit.

Would be unusual in the extreme for regions of a country not to become independent but instead become part of another one (one could see why the current ruling country would have a problem with this).

Sorry your wrong ,

The most involvement the west had was handing out Cookies to injured Ukrainians that had been shot by Russian s.

Don't waste your time with the leaked call either , Yanukovych was elected off of lies and Russian involvement ,he was a total fraud from the start

What individual countries recognise is irrelevant. The UN recognises Palestine. The UN does not recognise the outcome of the Crimean vote.

Whataboutery. we are talking about regions with millions of people, not houses or villages.

Total BS. Its well documented that western intelligence agencies incl CIA were playing an important role in Euromaidan. There are a variety of leaked documents proving their involvement too. Wikileaks had several exposes on it too.

Euromaidan was a power play to replace a Russia backed puppet with a Western backed puppet.

Airbus & Boeing have essentially shut down all operations within Russia, stopped access to manuals and parts and placed restrictions on maintenance globally so that even if Russia flew a plane to another country, technicians there wouldn't be allowed to work on them. By some reports this means there's basically about 2-3 weeks left for the Russian commercial air industry

About two thirds of the Russian fleets are Boeing and Airbus with the remaining 330 odd planes coming from other manufacturers, so yes it is a massive blow to the Russian airline industry, but there will be limited services still running, how that is arranged will be interesting to see.

Also their new Irkut MC-21 uses a lot of western parts, so that will be put on the back burner too.

No there is not sorry ,

One supposed leaked phone call and cookies adds up to fauq all

Indeed we are so when does a region become eligible for independence?? Is it when they hit 1 million? Or is it 2 Million? Why?

Different interviews that are on Polish webpages with people having private contacts in Russia show that the Kremlin propaganda is working fine internally. Even Russians from big cities like Moscow do believe that Russians are being killed in Ukraine and Putin's army went there to protect them. Obviously all western media are showing fake news. I guess we have to wait for the sanctions to kick it to make them think that maybe it's not a peace keeping operation.