Russia declares NATO a major threat

[bemildred]

Source: AFP

MOSCOW —

Russia declared NATO a major “threat” on Tuesday after the Western military alliance announced plans to reinforce defenses in eastern Europe because of the Kremlin’s perceived stoking of war in Ukraine.

Moscow’s surprise declaration of a shift in its military doctrine came just ahead of a NATO summit in Wales on Thursday at which beleaguered Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will lobby US President Barack Obama for military support.

Obama will deliver a message of firm NATO support for its newest members from the former Soviet empire when he visits the tiny Baltic state of Estonia on Wednesday.

The Russian national security council’s deputy secretary Mikhail Popov said NATO’s plan for new fast-response units in eastern Europe was “evidence of the desire of US and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia”.

Read more: http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/russia-declares-nato-a-major-threat

[bemildred]

1. Russia rejects Budapest Memorandum meeting on Ukraine sovereignty

KIEV, Ukraine, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Russia has reportedly declined an invitation by Ukraine to join a meeting of the signatories to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum -- signed by Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and the U.K. -- Ukraine is assured of protection from threats or use of force against its territorial integrity or political independence in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons.

"On the order of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has appealed to the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum to hold consultations in connection with the intervention by the regular Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis on Tuesday.

The request comes as the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council released an estimate that there are between 10,000 to 15,000 Russian troops and rebels inside Ukraine.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/09/02/Russia-rejects-Budapest-Memorandum-meeting-on-Ukraine-sovereignty/5701409698840/

[Duckhunter935]

7. surprise

they are the ones that broke the signed agreement between the two countries

[ballyhoo]

15. Baloney. It was Ukraine and the agent procateurs in

Kieve from the US that took down Viktor Yanukovych. You can say this a million times but everyone knows what happened.

[amandabeech]

19. You can insinuate the Ukraine is part of the Russian Federation a million times

but everyone knows that's not true.

[ballyhoo]

20. Ukraine and the US broke the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.I have never insinuated

what you said even ONCE! Or even mentioned it.

Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum -- signed by Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and the U.K. -- Ukraine is assured of protection from threats or use of force against its territorial integrity or political independence in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons.

This is where Victoria Nuland fell on her face and took Ukraine with her.

[amandabeech]

24. Did Victoria Nuland change the borders of Ukraine?

No, she did not, and you know it.

Ukraine's territorial integrity was intact until Putin invaded Crimea. And yes, after the fact, Putin admitted that those little green men were Russian soldiers sent directly to Crimea from Russia for the purpose of destroying Ukrainian territorial integrity.

Thus, it was Russia that broke the 1994 Budapest Memorandum as well as the 1997 agreement between Russia and NATO.

Good-bye.

[ballyhoo]

25. She aborted their political independence AND

broke Ukraine's sovereignty by driving a president out of power doing the will of the United States. Do some reading. It's on page after page of articles NOT RT. Here do some reading here from Ray McGovern of the CIA.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/06/28/who-violated-ukraines-sovereignty/

[pampango]

34. This Nuland is one powerful woman. She "broke Ukraine's sovereignty by driving a president out of

power". And she did this with cookies.

Of course, one could argue that the pro-Russian Crimean leader was in Moscow on February 20 when he announced that, if there were a change in power in Kiev, Crimea would seek to secede from Ukraine. That seemed like a pretty unlikely scenario at the time since Yanukovich still controlled the military and security services while the demonstrators more-or-less controlled one plaza in Kiev.

Within 24 hours Yanukovich had signed an agreement with the protesters, decided he would not live up to it and disappeared into Russia. The aforementioned 'change in power' had happened. Within a month Crimea was part of Russia. Which country benefitted from the aftermath of the cookie-inspired "coup"? The answer seems obvious.

[ballyhoo]

41. Which country benefited or,

which country DID NOT benefit? The country with strategic designs on the gas lines running through Ukraine, which a puppet leader could be forced to shut down. This ain't my first ball game, and I have watched the US do this time and time again, from Vietnam to Libya. Right "cookies"? Cookies is a metaphor for the simplistic actions of this woman. Look at the pictures on the faces of the people as they were being handed their cookies. And your first paragraph is hilarious. Yanukovich may have been a megalomanical asshole but he was a politico and new a foreign snake was pushing him out the door. And occasionally assholes have a moment of patriotism, honest evaluation, understanding...take your pick...and reverse a hastily made decision.

For you, none of this is about right and wrong, or that a perceptive leader seeing a rogue nation checker-bordering all over the globe crushing civilizations, the result of which has created an Islamic monster after free people wherever they are... No, for you it is about the US is always right no matter what they do and if a million more people get killed due its hegemonic belligerence than that's okay. Take a look at what the US has become and the decisions that have guided its course. Where it is now is its own fault entirely.

[Adrahil]

37. So Nuland toppled Yanukovych?

Whatever your smoking, pass it around.

That's nuts.

Yanukovych was doomed because he sold out. Ukraine to Putin and his kleptocracy.

What the hell is it with the nuts here supporting the imperial ambitions of Vladimir Putin?

And if this Nuland fairy tale were true, why wouldn't Russia, ya know, make an issue of it in talks instead of invading and annexing part of another country? And they go and facilitate an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine that will cost tens of thousands of lives, including 300 people in a civilian airliner.

That's quite a diplomatic reaction there.

Putin's apologists just blow my mind!

[ballyhoo]

40. Whether Yanukovych sold out or not, it was NOT

the responsibility of an right-wing American hack to get rid of him. End of story right there-- Yeah, right, Ray McGovern of the CIA is a Putin apologist. Putin saw the steps ahead with what the US could make happen with the new puppet. Didn't work, and won't work. In retrospect, history will record that the return of the SU and those thrilling days of yesteryear were caused by one woman and her strident, vicious neocon husband.

[TwilightGardener]

2. LOL, even putting NATO troops in a NATO country in response to his

invasion threatens L'il Pootie?

[Bragi]

5. LOL? /nt

[TwilightGardener]

26. Or "Bwah!", if you prefer.

[Iliyah]

3. This was what they wanted . . .

[Sopkoviak]

4. The time to take Hitler out was before he invaded Poland

But Europe dithered and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared "Peace for Our Time" after negotiating the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi Germany to keep the portions of Czechoslovakia that it already had annexed.

Appeasement of a megalomaniac doesn't work. Give an inch he'll take a continent.

The parallels are striking.

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
Dublin, Ireland 1729

[Benton D Struckcheon]

6. It would be better, and more accurate, to use Napoleon as the analogy.

Especially given that Napoleon alleged that he was spreading the ideals of the French Revolution, only to put his family and close friends in charge as kings and whatnot once he conquered a place.
Very similar to Putin, who enjoys support from some deluded folks who think Russia still falls on the left of the political spectrum. I can't imagine a Depardieu running to the USSR to escape being taxed on his millions.

[newthinking]

13. So who played the country that created regime change using neo-nazi..... oh wait

Let's see,, I must be able to distort history to make it fit!

OK, I see, the UK must have secretly spent millions and 2 efforts to overthrow Czechoslovakia with nazi... scratch the nazi's, ok... Hmm...

It is impossible to compare them because they are very different situations,

[Sopkoviak]

28. Sorry, I have absolutely no idea WTF you're babbling about.

Maybe someone here can translate.

[Marrah_G]

8. ugh- wtf

[polly7]

9. I just want to add this, because I think it's important to realize the

implications of broken agreements and the former invasions that have killed not thousands, but millions in a country that's been lied to and about over and over. (And no ..... I'm not a 'Putie-poot lover'.)

Ukraine: An Analysis

By David McReynolds

March 9, 2014

Russia has no natural barrier – no river, no mountain range – to guard it on its Western border. It has suffered invasion from the West three times in recent memory – under Napoleon and then twice under the Germans. In the last invasion, under Hitler, between 25 and 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives. All the factories, dams, railroads. towns and cities West of a line from Leningrad in the North to Moscow to Stalingrad in the South were destroyed. Americans make much of 9.11 (and I don’t make light of it) but for Russia it was not just a handful of buildings in one city which were destroyed – it was entire cities, leveled. And then with the wounded to care for, the orphans, the widows.

Americans have never understood what the war meant to Russia and why, after the war, the Soviets sought to build a “protective band” of territory between itself and Germany. This was Eastern Europe, which under the iron boot of Stalin became “people’s democracies” or “presently existing socialism”.

Something Americans (perhaps including our President and the Secretary of State) have forgotten was that Russia wanted to make a deal with the West. It had made peace with Finland, which (again, memories are short and we have forgotten this) fought on the side of the Nazis. The Soviets withdrew from Austria after the West agreed that Austria, like Finland, would be neutral.The Soviets very much wanted a Germany united, disarmed, and neutral. Stalin did not integrate the East Germany into the Eastern European economic plans for some time, hoping he could strike that deal. But the West wanted West Germany as part of NATO, and so the division of Germany lasted until Gorbachev came to power.

I would have urged radical actions by the West in 1956 when the Hungarian Revolution broke out – it was obvious that if the Soviets could not rule Eastern Europe without sending in tanks (as they had already had to do in East Germany in 1953), they posed no real threat of a military strike at the West.

What if we had said to Moscow, withdraw your tanks from Hungary, and we will dissolve NATO, while you dissolve the Warsaw Pact.

But of course the West didn’t do that. The US in particular (but I would not exempt the Europeans from a share of the blame) wanted to edge their military bases to the East. When the USSR gave up control of Eastern Europe, the US pressed for pushing NATO farther East, into Poland and up to the borders of Ukraine.

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/ukraine-an-analysis/


....."When President Gorbachev accepted the unification of Germany as part of NATO—an astonishing concession in the light of history—there was a quid pro quo. Washington agreed that NATO would not move “one inch eastward,” referring to East Germany.

The promise was immediately broken, and when Gorbachev complained, he was instructed that it was only a verbal promise, so without force.

President Clinton proceeded to expand NATO much farther to the east, to Russia's borders. Today there are calls to extend NATO even to Ukraine, deep into the historic Russian “neighborhood.” But it “doesn't involve” the Russians, because its responsibility to “uphold peace and stability” requires that American red lines are at Russia's borders."

http://www.alternet.org/putins-takeover-crimea-scares-us-leaders-because-it-challenges-americas-global-dominance?page=0%2C1&akid=11793.44541.Ck7lmV&rd=1&src=newsletter990910&t=3


Excerpts: In February of this year, US State Department officials, undiplomatically, joined anti-government protesters in the capital city of Kiev, handing out encouragement and food, from which emanated the infamous leaked audio tape between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, former US ambassador to NATO and former State Department spokesperson for Hillary Clinton. Their conversation dealt with who should be running the new Ukraine government after the government of Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown; their most favored for this position being one Arseniy Yatsenuk.

My dear, and recently departed, Washington friend, John Judge, liked to say that if you want to call him a “conspiracy theorist” you have to call others “coincidence theorists”. Thus it was by the most remarkable of coincidences that Arseniy Yatsenuk did indeed become the new prime minister. He could very soon be found in private meetings and public press conferences with the president of the United States and the Secretary-General of NATO, as well as meeting with the soon-to-be new owners of Ukraine, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, preparing to impose their standard financial shock therapy. The current protestors in Ukraine don’t need PHDs in economics to know what this portends. They know about the impoverishment of Greece, Spain, et al. They also despise the new regime for its overthrow of their democratically-elected government, whatever its shortcomings. But the American media obscures these motivations by almost always referring to them simply as “pro-Russian”.

An exception, albeit rather unemphasized, was the April 17 Washington Post which reported from Donetsk that many of the eastern Ukrainians whom the author interviewed said the unrest in their region was driven by fear of “economic hardship” and the IMF austerity plan that will make their lives even harder: “At a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund.”

Arseniy Yatsenuk, it should be noted, has something called the Arseniy Yatsenuk Foundation. If you go to the foundation’s website you will see the logos of the foundation’s “partners”. Among these partners we find NATO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the US State Department, Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK), the German Marshall Fund (a think tank founded by the German government in honor of the US Marshall Plan), as well as a couple of international banks. Is any comment needed?

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/128

Also validated are the fears of many of the 'pro-Russian' people of Ukraine.

He could very soon be found in private meetings and public press conferences with the president of the United States and the Secretary-General of NATO, as well as meeting with the soon-to-be new owners of Ukraine, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, preparing to impose their standard financial shock therapy. The current protestors in Ukraine don’t need PHDs in economics to know what this portends. They know about the impoverishment of Greece, Spain, et al. They also despise the new regime for its overthrow of their democratically-elected government, whatever its shortcomings.

[Igel]

12. It wasn't like the USSR decided to dissolve the Warsaw pact.

Or Russia said to the Central European governments, "Be free, my children."

The USSR had serious internal problems. It could have fostered bloody repressions, but the outcome would have been unclear and the various central and eastern European countries would have, in the meantime, broken away. The vast majority of the educated citizenry had no great love for Russia. Those who loved it depended on pensions, subsidized wages, etc. Those funding sources were pretty much gone, even in Russia proper. Had the socialist government attempted to retain control in Russia, it's likely that it would have experienced a civil war. It very nearly had that, with some of the indigenous peoples pushing and even declaring control over their own resources. (No, most of the Putin supporters don't like the talk of "indigenous peoples" because it makes clear that Russia is still an empire. Note that many of the Ukrainian Russian-speakers that have sought refuge and asylum in Russia are being shipped to Angarsk, Magadan, and other places that aren't popular for Russians but have ethnic populations in need of dilution. Having a few hundred or a thousand stalwart pro-Russians there can only help thwart any feared federalization movement.)

The Warsaw Pact fell apart. So did the USSR and its quasi-empire outside of its actual borders. It mostly did so for internal reasons--many have been offered, and it's likely all played their part. In some ways the West nudged it at just the right pressure points. It fostered economic dissatisfaction by encouraging people-to-people contacts; it relaxed some paranoia, through detente; it pushed the economic distortions of the C&C economy by requiring a large military build up and outlay; and it increased dissatisfaction with empire by helping to up the price in Afghanistan.

[roamer65]

10. The winds of war are blowing.

It's starting to have a late 1938, early 1939 smell in the air....I hate to say.

[ballyhoo]

16. In many ways. A year or three from lock and load.

[EEO]

11. Now that's some escalation right there...

[Fred Sanders]

22. Read the article from Japan please. It is not. You are supposed to think it is. It is nada.

[Historic NY]

14. Inching to war...careful Putin.

[ballyhoo]

18. Careful Putin....No. Careful Obama. Putin

has basically one foe right now and is doing rather well with its energy business and now its association with BRICS. Obama is fighting a band of bloodthirsty kooks who blame America for killing Islamics in what six or seven countries. He has domestic problems and south of the border problems.

[Shivering Jemmy]

38. Mr Labrov? Is that you?

[ballyhoo]

39. You mean Lavrov....

[SummerSnow]

17. So all the individual countries that were part of the former Soviet Union

and are now part of NATO, does he see them as a threat?

[amandabeech]

23. I'm sure that he does.

In fact, it seems like Putin sees all of the former Warsaw Pact countries as a threat, the Western European countries as a threat, as well as all former British and French colonies, and the neutral Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Finland.

I'm not joking about Sweden and Finland. The Russian Air Force has taken runs at both those countries within the last few months and they are beginning to talk about joining NATO as a result.

I actually have some sympathy for the Russian fear of invasion based on history, and until Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, I thought that it would be best for all if Ukraine remained neutral and pursued freely its economic ties. At this point, I think that Putin has whipped himself and his country into a warlike frenzy completely disproportionate to whatever disadvantages that Yanukovych's removal from power presented to Russia. There must be a balance point between refusing to give in to a bully and further provoking the bully's paranoia, but where that point is, I don't know.

[davidpdx]

30. I have a friend in Sweden

He has commented to me that both Sweden and Finland are being pushed toward NATO by what Putin is doing. I suppose that will cause Putin to say that they are threatening Russia if they agree to join NATO.

I've also seen false claims made by people on DU about where these supposed NATO bases are. It's a bunch of conspiracy crap.

[amandabeech]

31. I'm partly of Swedish descent and I visited Sweden about 20 years ago.

It was a lovely country and I felt more comfortable there than I do in some parts of the US.

It is just so hard to understand a leader who acts aggressively toward countries that are minding their own business and who then cannot understand why those same countries look for protection elsewhere. I know that there are cultural and historical differences between the US and Russia, but at this point I've given up trying to understand.

Sometimes on DU, a reader has to consider the poster and the source. I am in complete agreement with your assessment.

[davidpdx]

33. I also have quite a bit of Swedish blood

I visited 13 years ago for 2 weeks. My mom lived there for 2 1/2 years. I too was impressed by the beauty of the country. I unfortunately didn't get to interact with many Swedes. I'd love to go back someday. I hardly got to see much of Europe (the only other country I had a chance to visit is The Netherlands).

[amandabeech]

35. Best wishes in going back!

I spent some time in a small town in southern Sweden that was the home of my Swedish great-grandmother. Quite a few people had some English, and they were all helpful and friendly. Apparently they have not received very many Americans looking for their ancestral home, but many Canadians had come.

In Stockholm, people were a little more "big city," although not nearly like New Yorkers.

I actually had an interesting conversation with someone working with Ericson in Hungary and his friend, who was trying to get a job with Ericson so he could leave Serbia. He didn't like the Serbian government at the time, and wanted to become a European.

I've been a couple of other places, but I have a couple more on my bucket list.

[davidpdx]

36. I didn't get to go to Stockholm!

That's one reason why I want to go back. My buddy lives there. He's an older chap who is a lawyer. Really a nice guy.

[amandabeech]

43. I didn't have enough time to see all of it,

but I thought that it was beautiful. I love cities on the water, and Stockholm is surrounded by water.

[Fred Sanders]

21. The Japanese article is twisting the language of a deputy minister into a false fire alarm.

"Popov said he had “no doubt that the question of the approach of NATO members’ military infrastructure to our border” will be taken into consideration as “one of the foreign military threats to Russia” when the country’s defense doctrine is updated later this year."

How is that newly declaring NATO a "major military threat"?

As if it ever is not.

And "later this year...."???

Do not trust broken quotes.

More batons on the war drum, Japanese/Associated Press style.

[Major Hogwash]

27. Putin is just begging to get his ass kicked.

I think he is acting like an election provocateur for the upcoming mid-term elections here in the US.

[ballyhoo]

29. It ain't Putin that's gonna get his ass kicked. Count

on it. He's been right every step of the way and made the West look like a bunch of fools.

[Monk06]

32. NATO should have been dissolved in 1991. Now it is just a cover for US interference in Europe,

the Caucasus and the middle east. Anywhere it can convince it's colonial allies to go along with 'regime change' and 'nation building'

[ballyhoo]

42. Exactamundo