Russia's strategy to take over more of Ukraine

Bill Gertz:
U.S. intelligence officials say Russia plans to force Ukraine to adopt a scheme to federalize and turn its southern neighbor into a quasi-province of the Russian Federation.

Additionally, recent assessments of Moscow’s motives indicate that a large-scale military intervention to take over Ukraine is a possible plan of action.

The push for a federalized Ukraine began shortly after the March 16 vote in Crimea declaring the peninsula part of Russia. The next day, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling for a new constitution in Ukraine to create a “democratic federal state” that would have a politically-neutral military. The Russians want regional entities with broad powers that would boost the power of ethnic Russians and Russian-language speaking Ukrainians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 18 said he did not want Ukraine divided up, but questioned its current borders, which were established after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that incorporated Russian areas in the south and east.

A leaked Russian document developed by Moscow’s National Security Council and posted on a Ukrainian website Monday revealed that Russia plans to “integrate” all Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, including the capital, Kiev.
...
This is an invasion on the cheap.  The counter offer would be to have Russia offer the same deal to Chechnya and other reluctant members of its empire.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more