General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOK, I have to say this. I've seen the meme that "Obama backed Putin down"......
several times, both here and on Facebook, all because Vlad called on the Russian Duma to withdraw the authorization to use force over Ukraine.
Quite frankly, Putin had absolutely NO designs on ANY part of Ukraine EXCEPT FOR CRIMEA. When he got Crimea and his warm water port, that was all he wanted. To anybody following the story, this is pretty obvious. He's made all sorts of conciliatory statements since the referendum giving Russia control of Crimea concerning the rest of Ukraine, including support for a cease fire and negotiations. WHY would Putin want to put Russia into the middle of the mess that is Ukraine? There's no logical reason for him to do so, with the single exception of keeping NATO off of his southeastern border.
The rest of it, Syria, et.al., you could make the argument for Obama foreign policy successes, but backing Putin down? Nope, didn't happen. Putin got everything he wanted when Russia annexed Crimea.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)One I don't happen to share.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)His actions since the annexations don't bear that out. After he got what he really wanted (the warm water port), he's done everything he can to betray the anti-fascists in the eastern part of the country, INCLUDING supporting the calls for negotiations and the cease fire.
Got any reasons WHY you think he has designs on any other part of Ukraine?
Alex P Notkeaton
(309 posts)since he can't really restore the USSR.
WhiteTara
(29,730 posts)BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)The prize was Crimea. After he got that, Putin kept the pressure on in Eastern Ukraine to make it look like his ambitions were bigger. Then he maintained his position while the US and Europe made demands. Once things cooled down somewhat, he pulled back and nobody is talking about Crimea anymore, just the fact that Putin is now trying to defuse the situation in Eastern Ukraine.
Strategically, battling for other parts of Ukraine isn't a high reward path.
Until Russia is forced out of Crimea, Putin didn't back down an inch. Putin has played his hand very well.
1000words
(7,051 posts)I agree, Putin achieved all he set out to do. The U.S. blustered, but the sanctions have no teeth because Europe doesn't want to offend the Russian oligarchs. Or freeze, this coming winter.
KG
(28,753 posts)unkrain or any place else. also ukrain's economy is a shambles, not sure he'd want to take on that burden.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)when I said he wanted no part of the mess in Ukraine.
roamer65
(36,748 posts)He's selling planes and equipment to Tehran's toadie Maliki. Putin is a busy man.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)and then France.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)He didn't have that support, so he let it idle down and didn't escalate. There are still idiot Cliven Bundy style terrorists roaming around the DNR but they'll be marginalized eventually.
I think it's wrong to say he didn't have eyes at all on Donbas. In fact after taking Crimea he made a bit of "novorossiya" rhetoric. It was obviously a balloon trial. Then sanctions hit, the DNR didn't grow, popular support never materialized, and Putin undeniably backed down.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)Putin left himself with a bunch of problems by only taking Crimea.
1. There's no direct land link between Crimea and Russia.
2. Crimea is dependent for most of its utilities on Ukraine.
3. Russian arms exports mostly used to go through the port of Odessa, in Ukraine.
4. Many of the parts his military uses are manufactured throughout Ukraine, but there's a pretty heavy concentration of the places that make these over in the east.
Taking the east would solve all except Odessa. Taking the shore and linking up with the Russian enclave in Moldova would solve all of them. Taking Crimea without taking the three eastern provinces makes zero logistical sense and leaves him with a lot of headaches to work around. Nothing really impossible, but who would do that deliberately? It assumes Putin didn't look ahead and think of these problems.
840high
(17,196 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Ukraine and had them remove their insignia so they could pretend to be separatists.
Oh, and Ukraine's energy deposits are in the east.
pampango
(24,692 posts)his security forces and military. If he were still in power consistent with the agreement he signed, Crimea would still be part of Ukraine, IMHO. Convincing Yanukovich to leave and giving him a place to flee to, may have been Putin's wisest move. Reuniting ethnic groups with the "Fatherland" by force may not be a liberal policy but it was certainly effective.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,227 posts)Crimea, and Russia's military invasion of it, was something of a special case. It started less than a week after Yanukovych helicoptered out of Ukraine with his vast oil painting collection in hand. The interim government meant to fill the gap until the May elections had just been formed. Ukraine's military had been left rather disorganized after years of corruption in the ranks. Putin knew Ukraine was in zero shape to fight back.
If there was ever a time for Putin to move into Crimea and reclaim what he believed Russia was historically entitled to, this was going to be it. And it was a fairly overt move on Russia's part. Column after column of Russian troops moved off the naval bases and into civilian portions of Crimea. The only thing that was missing was the Russian insignias on their uniforms. Putin rather laughably denied these were Russian troops at the onset of the invasion; however, after the dubious March 16th plebiscite and the subsequent absorption of Crimea into the Russian Federation, Putin went right out and said it: those were Russian troops.
Putin's interest in Crimea goes far beyond NATO and issue of Black Sea ports. Russia already had its naval bases in Crimea, for which the Budapest memorandum allowed. Besides, Russia already had hundreds of miles of coastline along the Black Sea. Just for example, Sochi--the 2014 Winter Olympic host city--was itself a Black Sea port. No, Crimea was most definitely about Putin's imperial worldview: taking back land that the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union once controlled at the height of its power but subsequently lost after 1991.
Putin's view towards Eastern Ukraine is no different than Crimea. In his infamous April 17th remarks, he referred to the region as "Novorossiya", or "New Russia" and claimed that the land was historically Russian. It is widely reported that in 2008, Putin once told Dubya that Ukraine "isn't even a country", with half of it originally belonging to Russia and the rest belonging to other European countries.
Of course, while Putin's view on Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are pretty much the same, circumstances demanded that he approach the two regions differently. In Crimea, Russia was aided by the fact that a majority (although not as overwhelming a majority as Russia implied) of citizens considered themselves to be ethnically Russian. (This was thanks in significant part to decades of policies of Russification of the region, as well as mass deportation of the pre-existing non-Russian populace.) In Eastern Ukraine, while the ethnic Russian population is significant, it is still quite the minority. The majority of persons in eastern Ukraine clearly wanted to remain a part of Ukraine, regardless of any misgivings they might have had about the central government.
Also, the situation in Kyiv had stabilized since late February, meaning that Ukraine might be slightly better equipped to respond to a military invasion (although arguably they'd still be far outmatched.)
So an overt Russian military invasion of Eastern Ukraine like we saw in Crimea wouldn't likely go over as smoothly in Eastern Ukraine. Instead, what we saw was an attempt to transfer the separatist ideology in Crimea over into Eastern Ukraine. One purported Russian FSB agent, Alexander Borodai, actually helped arrange for the Crimean annexation "vote". Once that was done, he immediately went over to Eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists quickly declared him to be the "People's Prime Minister of Donetsk" (without any vote, of course.)
And what you saw develop in Eastern Ukraine was an undoubtedly pro-Russian separatist movement (they were waiving the Russian tri-colors and chanting Russia's name) fought under the guise of plausible deniability. Many of these armed separatists were locals (mainly those considering themselves as ethnic Russians), but there are likely Russian agents mixed in and giving material support. Consider that the head military leader of the pro-Russian armed separatists is an individual named Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, a former Russian GRU and FSB officer. And considering that the GRU and FSB are the successors to the old KGB, and Putin himself said there is no such thing as a "former" KGB agent, then....well, you draw the line.
Consider also the extremely well armed Vostok Battalion that came waltzing into Eastern Ukraine to fight on the side of the separatists. This force just so coincidentally shares the same name as an infamous force that was fighting on behalf of the Russians to put down the rebellion in Chechnya. When numerous members of the Vostok Battalion were killed in action in Eastern Ukraine, their bodies were all shipped back to Russia.
I think Russia's goal in Eastern Ukraine is to keep the separatists well armed enough with enough covert oversight in the hopes that the Ukrainian army will be worn down and simply gives up its military operation. Leaving Donetsk and Lughansk in enough limbo that eventually they will petition to join the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, during the interim Russia will maintain a level of plausible deniability in its involvement with the separatists. This way, they can avoid the brunt of the much harsher sanctions that would likely be imposed in the event of a formal Russian invasion with the regular Russian army, and avoid the cost of a long, drawn out war to boot.