The Malaysia Airlines crash is the end of Russia?s fairy tale - The Washington Post
<From the beginning, the Russian government did not send regular soldiers to Ukraine. Instead, it sent Russian mercenaries and security service operatives such as Igor Strelkov — the commander in chief in Donetsk and a Russian secret police colonel who fought in both Chechen wars — and Vladimir Antyufeyev, the Donetsk “deputy prime minister” who led the Latvian KGB’s attempt to overthrow the independent Latvian government in 1991.
Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London. View Archive
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With the help of local thugs, these Russian security men besieged police stations, government offices and other symbols of political authority to delegitimize the Ukrainian state. In this task, they were assisted by the Russian government and by Russia’s state-controlled mass media, both of which still constantly denigrate Ukraine and its “Nazi” government. Just in the past week, Russian reporting on Ukraine reached a new pitch of hysteria, with fake stories about the supposed crucifixion of a child and an extraordinary documentary comparing the Ukrainian army’s defense of its own country with the Rwandan genocide.
Into this ambiguous and unstable situation, the Russians cynically funneled a stream of heavy weapons: machine guns and artillery and, eventually, tanks, armed personnel carriers and anti-aircraft missiles. In recent days, the separatist forces were openly using man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) and boasting of having taken down large Ukrainian transport planes, clearly with Russian specialist assistance. Indeed, Strelkov on Thursday afternoon reportedly boasted online of having taken down another military plane before realizing that the plane in question was MH17. The blog post was removed. In late June, several different Russian media sources published photographs of Buk anti-aircraft missiles that they said had been captured by the separatists — though they were probably outright gifts from Russia. These posts have also been removed.>
Moving on---UN--probably 'not an act of war'--Sanctions for Putin--who will try to weasel out of this--but alas, one way or another he will be held accountable.
--US policy concerning Ukraine--region--should have been changed 20 years ago. Now needs to change. Not clear about the finer points. Not clear either what was being said about Reagan in the middle of this--maybe he developed the existing policies. Anyway--no time to think about what Reagan would have done.
And as far as I am concerned --now is not a particularly good time to criticize the current POTUS---but that is me. Not possible to fight against the entire world--some things are working as well as they can.
Putin--no matter what anyone 'says' to him---he doesn't care. Just doesn't. So--more misery for those who have no control over their lives. Hope Snowden is doing some thinking. Not where I would want to be at this moment.