General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I [View all]amandabeech
(9,893 posts)and avoid being sent to the gulag for criticizing the corrupt?
I've been watching this on that right-wing rag Al Jazeera for some time. The Ukrainians are pissed, and I don't blame them.
The US and EU are not magicians. Things don't get this far unless there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of pissed off locals.
Putin is paranoid over his military bases, true. He should have put money into building a new base at one of the Russian ports to the east of the Crimea instead of building that monument to himself at Socchi. Now, he won't even admit that those are Russian troops running around Crimea. What a stand-up guy!
But what he's really scared about is the thought that he might have a Maidan in Red Square and that it would cost him and his friends those billions that they managed to extract from the Russian economy.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking real money and a ticket to Lichtenstein.