SHOCK! Ukraine WarToday 2014Column of tanks and military equipment are moved to Lugansk 30 08 2014
SHOCK! Ukraine WarToday 2014Column of tanks and military equipment are moved to Lugansk 30 08 2014 30.08.2014 ...
By: meleki aslan
Read the original:
SHOCK! Ukraine WarToday 2014Column of tanks and military equipment are moved to Lugansk 30 08 2014 - Video
One is a throwback to nationalist wars of the past. The other is a worrying harbinger of the future. But for Ukraine the future is now.
Now is the time for the West -- whether NATO, the United States, or individual European states --to provide or sell the high-tech weaponry Ukraine needs to defend itself effectively. The argument against such a move -- that it would provoke a Russian escalation--is no longer valid, now that Russia has escalated. A well-armed Ukraine could stop Putin from embarking on any of these more alarming scenarios.
I was at the gym, minding my own business, when the President took over all of the televisions in the room to make his big announcement: The plan is...that there is no plan.
It's not quite 1914, but troops are on the move again around the world. Find out what's happening by taking the Week to Week news quiz. Here are som...
John Zipperer
Vice president of media & editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California
The long-term solution everyone's been talking about -- including Merkel and her Foreign Minister, Walter Steinmeier --is "federalization." For Russia, long a champion of federalization in the Donbas (and long a foe of federalization at home), federalization means near-independence. Presumably after having been briefed by Ukrainian officials about why the term is unacceptable, Merkel emphasized that what she really meant was "decentralization."
Continue reading here:
Ukraine: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News - The Huffington Post
Will for war?
Even if the will for war with Russia was there, there are problems facing the Western powers.
Defense budgets have dwindled in the Western powerhouses. Members of NATO made up most of the top 20 declining defence budgets between 2012 and 2014, according to research from IHS.
At the same time, Russian defense spending has overtaken the UK, making it the third highest military spender globally. And this pace is set to continue as the Russian military replaces old equipment and bolsters its defenses - in 2016, it is forecast to spend $98 billion on defence, up from $78 billion this year.
So Russia itself is a much more formidable opponent than a decade ago. Its relationship with China, which has so far stayed on the sidelines of the dispute, also complicates the picture, and makes the increasingly China-dependent Western powers more likely to pursue a soft power approach.
The fly in the appeasement ointment may be the Ukrainians themselves.
"Ukrainians seem willing to fight in defense of their country and, if this is added to Russia's determination to keep a tight grip on Ukraine, this all bodes ill still for the future," Ash pointed out.
- By CNBC's Catherine Boyle
Read the original:
Ukraine: The struggle between hard and soft power
World leaders, diplomats and experts have often fretted about the future of NATO and whether the end of its mission in Afghanistan would also be the end of its relevance.
But as 60 leaders, including President Obama, converge on Cardiff, Wales, this week for a NATO summit, the uncertainty seems more than a little premature. The politicians and diplomats have no shortage of world crises crowding their agenda, so many that the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, once a top priority, has slipped down the list of most pressing.
Instead, the 28-nation alliance is being called upon to counter Russia's renewed incursion in Ukraine, a jolting reminder that threats to sovereignty in Europe are not necessarily a thing of the past. While the leaders will be looking for new ways to punish Russia, they'll also be repositioning troops, pledging more money for military spending and recommitting to collective defense.
"In some ways, NATO should thank Vladimir Putin. It was really searching for its purpose and it was having a fairly significant identity crisis," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "And it has now not only been repurposed, it's been reinvigorated."
Obama has also added another task to the agenda. The president says he will try to corral leaders to work toward a strategy to defeat the rapidly rising Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
The president faces considerable challenges in rallying his war-weary allies to sign on to a military response, particularly one that crosses the border from Iraq into Syria, officials acknowledge. But the president, who inartfully declared "we have no strategy" for defeating the extremists, is under pressure to show he is leading the world toward finding one.
Western officials have set modest expectations for breakthroughs on either Ukraine or Islamic State discussions at the summit.
The chief punishment in the pipeline for what Ukraine labeled a Russian invasion is additional economic sanctions. European Union officials took up the issue over the weekend, but put off a decision on any new penalties.
And U.S. officials noted that Obama's key targets for cooperation on Islamic State were not necessarily NATO members.
The lineup of concerns could not have been anticipated two years ago, when the last North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit was held in Chicago and dominated by talk of the Afghanistan drawdown.
See more here:
Ukraine crisis may solve NATO's 'identity crisis'
Ukraine #39;s National Defense and Security Council: Russian troops are using Chechen tactics in Ukraine
The spokesman for Ukraine #39;s National Defense and Security Council Andriy Lysenko has said that Russia is continuing to send military equipment and "mercenaries" into eastern Ukraine. Lysenko...
By: UKRAINE TODAY