Bij de BBC is vanochtend een artikel wat op behoorlijk wat punten van verschillen in denken & terminologie ingaat.
Ukraine: Vladimir Putin's military action reveals a wider plan.
Zo slaagt de auteur er in om een verschil te verduidelijken wat de diplomatieke vertegenwoordigingen van de meeste EU lidstaten zelfs na maanden van analyse nog niet doorhebben:
Last week it was reported that Russia had "created the formation of a 5,000-strong peacekeeping force", based on units from the Airborne Assault Forces, the same arm of the Russian military to which the paratroopers killed and captured in Ukraine belong.
However, translating the new designation of these front-line troops as "peacekeeping" can be misleading.
The Russian word "mirotvorcheskiy" is closer to the word "peacemaking", quite far from the Western idea of peacekeepers as those who step in once the conflict is effectively over.
Enfin,
Keir Giles is dan ook verbonden aan het
Chatham House, enige kwaliteit mag dan ook verwacht worden. Wat dat aangaat,
dit artikel is ten aanzien van de relatie EU / Rusland interessant om eens door te nemen. Opiniestuk, let daar op, maar interessant. Nog interessanter van de recente publicaties is dit stuk:
Merkel Wants a Stable World and Is Willing to Pay a Price.
Ondertussen zit de Russische munt in de problemen, al is er enige waarde verbonden aan concurrentiepositie ervan vanuit lage wisselkoers, we zijn nu toch wel het punt gepasseerd waarop het problematisch begint te worden. Rusland zal moeten kiezen om de koers te gaan bufferen, of meer overschakelen.
A propos, voor de mensen die zich afvragen hoe het toch zit met het instrumentele nut van Russische beeldvorming, dit artikel is een must-read:
Hot Issue – Lies, Damned Lies and Russian Disinformation. De titel is wat minder gelukkig, aangezien het al snel een idee van kleur geeft, toch is de inhoud neutraal en constructief.
Executive Summary
The Russian Federation uses extensive propaganda, outright lies, and—most importantly—disinformation as part of the hybrid warfare it is waging against Ukraine and the West. Disinformation combines truth, what people want to be true, and cleverly disguised outright falsehoods. Moscow has been actively using such disinformation as part of a conscious broader policy on Ukraine, and it readily changes or rejects elements of the false narrative it has been spinning as political events on the ground shift.
Russian disinformation has landed on fertile soil domestically because it plays on Russians’ deep rooted emotions and serves to turn people’s attention away from more immediate political and economic concerns.
Abroad, Moscow’s message is given undue exposure and lack of questioning due to some Western journalists’ misunderstanding between balance and true objectivity, as well as the existence of a large constituency whose jobs rely on the West maintaining strong relations with Russia.
In order to limit the spread and impact of disinformation, Western governments will need to recognize the difference between simple lies and actual disinformation, acquire expertise to identify disinformation and parse the truths and falsehoods within it, as well as develop methods to answer and counteract such disinformation both at home and abroad. The policy changes necessary to achieve this will require political will and some costs, but the costs of doing nothing may be even greater.
De moeite waard.
Edit. Ook vanuit Jamestown, voor diegenen die wat meer inzicht zoeken in de militaire capaciteit en inzetbaarheid van Russische strijdkrachten vanuit modernisering en lessen geleerd in vorige "frozen conflicts",
dit is een erg interessant stuk (PDF) vanuit het eerder genoemde Finse perspectief.
As a full-fledged war between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed irregulars rages on in
Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, Western defense experts are only now beginning to
thoroughly assess the military lessons of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Meanwhile, the
Russian military again looks poised to intervene in eastern Ukraine as it launches yet
another major military buildup of its forces along the Ukrainian border. Understanding the
array of forces the Russian military might use in a potential full-scale intervention of
eastern Ukraine in a major conventional war requires that Western experts revisit the
strategic dimensions of last year’s Zapad-2013 Russian military exercises. This report by
Dr. Pauli Järvenpää closely analyzes the Zapad exercise and offers a Finnish perspective on
the modernization gains achieved by the Russian armed forces in recent years, as well as
the respective areas where these forces are trying to make improvements to their strategic
shortcomings.
At this writing, the precarious situation in and around Ukraine continues. The very same
troops that took part in the Zapad-2013 exercise just a few months before—according to
Russian sources, roughly 150,000 of them—were put on a high alert in a “snap combat
exercise” while the Ukrainian crisis was first developing. Russia’s annexation of Crimea
earlier this year and the forces Moscow used in its operations across southeastern Ukraine
possessed the same sets of capabilities and skills practiced in the Zapad-2013 exercises.
This was brought unmistakably home in March 2014, by the highly publicized and
televised appearance of President Vladimir Putin, who was observing a massive live-fire
demonstration at the Kirilovski training site on the Karelian Isthmus west of St.
Petersburg—all while Russian troops were infiltrating Crimea. As these exercises
demonstrated, in many ways Zapad-2013 and the operations in Crimea were part of the
same thread in Russian military thinking and operations. This fact must not be forgotten
should Russia opt to launch a full-scale conventional war against Ukraine in the near
future
Edit. Iets wat hier al vaker voorbij gekomen is, betreft het idee dat de Ukraïne altijd een natuurlijke bondgenoot is geweest van Rusland. Leuk idee, echter geen realiteit - of we dan terugkijken naar de tijd voor het Tsarisme, of die tijd zelf. Het volgende artikel neemt een specifieke periode op de loep om parallellen te vergelijken. Er vallen al snel patronen van belang op. En zoals altijd, de geschiedenis herhaalt zichzelf.
A Brief Look at the Historical Parallels Between Ukraine’s Situation in 1918 and 2014.
Perhaps most importantly for the future of the country, Ukrainians have come to a vital conclusion—they must work and sacrifice to defend their country and their freedom (bubblic.net, March 17). If they succeed in defending their independence, history could enter a new cycle marked by the final collapse Russian imperialism.
En daar zit een probleem voor Putin, een probleem met een potentie waar hij geen risico's mee kan nemen. De vraag is of Rusland überhaupt een imperium zou moeten zijn. Het valt juist op dat de Russische bevolking meer mogelijkheden heeft kunnen scheppen in de jaren waarin het dat juist niet was.
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Voor 32% gewijzigd door
Virtuozzo op 29-08-2014 13:06
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Populisme: de weigering van complexiteit en de poging om simplistische antwoorden te formuleren op ingewikkelde vraagstukken middels gebruik van elke mogelijke prikkel van gedrag - i.p.v. moeite te doen voor gezonde participatie.