Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 July 2014

Malaysia Airlines MH17 - Shot down by Donetsk Republic separatists



Here's the culprit. Operators already offed as part of coverup


Rebels showing off their hardware before attack


Separatists are trying to cover their tracks by getting the hardware out of Ukraine

Buk being transported back to Russia with two missiles missing




Why did the tragedy occur? system too easy to use


The missiles are straightforward to operate and work as stand-alone weapons — they can function outside of a sophisticated networked air defence system.


The system cannot tell the difference between civilian and military-type aircraft based on their transponder signatures alone. In order to tell the difference between targets, it would need to be interfaced with other weapons systems that can work off of additional information.

"When Proxy Wars go Wrong"


Lot's of blame to go round, depending on your point of view:
  • Ukraine escalating conflict against separatists including airstrikes and armour attacks with tacit American support.
  • Separatists operating advanced hardware without the right training (not trained to visually confirm whether plane is civilian or military)
  • Russia tacitly supporting, providing expertise for operation of Buk, but not the requisite level of training.

What happens now? 

The Russian Separatists are attempting to cover it up, and have probably killed the Buk operators to hide their tracks. It may also give the Ukraine government an opportunity to intensify air attacks against separatists due to reduced air defences.

Thursday, 20 March 2014

Crimea, Ukraine and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The current crisis in Ukraine can easily be explained with historical maps

The pro European area was part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Basically that's all the old Russians (now referred to as Ukrainians) who got conquered by the Poles.


The bits that Poland owned speak Ukrainian, the other bits speak Russian. Ukrainian and Russian were once the same language. They diverged mainly because the people lived in different political entities.


All the protests and pro-EU stuff is from the part of the Country Poland used to own. Next look at the 2010 presidential election results. Yanukovych, pro-Russian president who had to flee for his life during the protests won the bits that speak Russian...


Ukranian land outside of the Polish borders was conquered & settled by Russia from the Ottoman Turks and their Crimean Tatar vassals. 

You get the gist

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Ukrainian protests - Russia vs West

The main cause of the conflict in the Ukraine is a choice it has to make, does it join the European Union, or the Eurasian Union (Russian led customs union). The European union has declared that the Ukraine cannot join both. The protestors on the street want the Ukraine to join the European union.





Russia is worried about the integration of Ukraine into the European union for two reasons:
1) It would effectively kill its Eurasian Union, the Ukraine's membership is pivotal.
2) It could lead to Ukrainian membership in NATO. The US has been pushing for this. This would threaten Russia's security.


For most of its history, the Ukraine was not a country. It was divided among the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, Austrio-Hungarian Empire, Ottomans and Russians.


Crimea, a province of the Ukraine where ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych has fled to, contains a majority Russian population, and was gifted to the Ukraine in 1954. Remember the Ukraine was part of the USSR so this was more of a transfer of territory within sub-states, and no one ever conceived that the USSR would eventually break up, otherwise it would never have been gifted!