Here's a tip, my Russian friend: if you want to pretend to be a neutral observer on the Ukrainian conflict in an internet forum, then you'd do better to proofread your post again and again until you manage to remove the little telltale signs that your native language is Russian. No informed reader of your post above is going to be convinced you don't have a significant dog in this fight.

You know, maybe some of us should complain to Slashdot about the Obama/Poroshenko-bots that reliably and consistently troll every single story about this conflict? You know, the ones who imply that anyone who even slightly skeptical about the propaganda we're all being fed, must be Russian or a paid Kremlin propagandist?

Suck on this. I'm a native English speaker from the UK, I have never been to Russia, I have been reading Slashdot for about 14-15 years, posting for most of that time too. And the Anonymous Coward tells it like it is. Poroshenko has claimed Ukraine was invaded like ten times already. He claimed he was being "invaded" by a fucking aid convoy, including after Putin's honesty about it's contents had been verified by international journalists and the Red Cross. In fact he asserted he'd shell said convoy, so the Red Cross chickened out, but the crazy Russians just drove right in there and delivered that aid anyway.

So as a native speaker, please heed my call - let's all stop abusing the English language shall we? We know what an invasion looks like. It looks like what the USA did to Iraq. It looks like Russian flags flying above Kiev and Russian tanks rolling down the streets to the parliament building. It does not look like journalists scrabbling around presenting the testimony of a milkmaid in a farcical attempt to find an army, as the Guardian did only a few days ago. Now condemn Putin for militarily supporting the rebels if you like (though the proof of this is wafer thin as well), just be aware that this is something many countries do, including the ones that are currently being most shrill about Ukraine. So such an argument doesn't have much impact, unfortunately, though I wish we lived in a world where it did.

Where does the liability lie when a UPS truck backs over a baby stroller, or a FedEx delivery person loses control of a handtruck full of boxes and breaks someone's ankle? Where's the liability when an aircraft flown by DHL crashes short of the airport and burns a row of houses to the ground?

You make it sound like small plastic/foam flying wings with four battery-powered motors are the first dangerous thing that business has ever considered operating, and that there's no such thing as the liability insurance industry. Which means you're clueless about the real world, or just trolling. Or both.

But we have laws, passed by the legislature, that mandate the FAA publish new rules specifically covering the integration of this sort of thing into the NAS by 2015. The Obama administration has said, though, that they won't comply with the law, and are taking every opportunity to hinder this sort of thing. There's a reason that outfits like Google are now spending money, hiring, and testing in other countries: because those countries are less hostile to ventures like this.

There's absolutely NO reason in the world why the tests that Google is doing in Oz couldn't be done with farmers just like those in the article, but living instead in rural Iowa or Ohio or California. But no, the administration keeps releasing increasingly bizarre, increasingly punitive, increasingly job-killing "interpretation" of the 2012 law, with spin that runs exactly counter to the plain language and intent of congress. Thank you, Mr. Obama, for chasing ever more innovation and growth out of the country.

That's a rather one-sided view of what happened. Yes, the Soviet Union did invade Afghanistan as part of pushing its global ideology, much like the USA invaded Vietnam. But the stone age state of Afghanistan at the time of the US invasion in 2001 was a direct result of America supporting religious fanatics in a proxy war, the mujahideen, who after the war ended and the Soviet's were defeated went on to become the Taliban. That's why bin Laden is so famously a former ally of the US.

The USA is not only building an empire but doing so in plain sight of everyone. To quote Putin directly:

Our partners, especially in the United Sates, always clearly formulate their own geopolitical and state interests and follow them with persistence. Then, using the principle “You’re either with us or against us” they draw the whole world in. And those who do not join in get ‘beaten’ until they do.

This principle is most clearly visible in two acts. One is that the sanctions on Iran are built as a "you're with us or against us" model. Any country that is seen by America to be "undermining" the sanctions i.e. not joining in is itself sanctioned. And the second act is again sanctions based: every financial institution in the world is being taken over by Washington via a system of recursive ("viral" if you like) sanctions that require banks to obey the USA even if that would contradict local laws. The goal is to collect tax from American's abroad. It's called FATCA and it's resulted in many, many nations having to repeal their own privacy laws, in order to allow banks to become agents of the US Government. They were given no choice in the matter.

So the USA has found ways of forcing people in countries all over the world to: (a) engage in economic warfare against America's enemies and (b) pay taxes directly to America, all regardless of what the local government wants or how the local people vote.

Being able to conscript people to their fights and force payment of taxes is the very foundation of empire itself.

Check back in 6 months, compare what they reported on this conflict to what really happened. Because they were reporting the Ukrainian protests as being a bunch of Fascists who, if they had their way, would be building concentration camps for Russian speakers. Of course, the protesters won, got new elections, and turned out to be what they appeared to be; moderate youths who want increased relations with the EU.

Let's set aside the idea that RT is somehow horrendously biased and we can learn what really happened by, er, reading our totally neutral and trustworthy western newspapers.

Let's instead focus on an indisputable fact. This wonderful new parliament put in place by moderate youths who wanted only increased EU relations, on the very next day after the ex-President fled (the one who did actually win an election), voted overwhelmingly to repeal a law that made Russian an official language. Their first act wasn't to improve relations with the EU, or heal the giant rift between east and west Ukraine, their first order of business was to drive an even bigger wedge right between their own citizens.

Is it any wonder that this glorious democratic government our leaders love so much reacted to an independence movement in their country with massive military force, and has been shelling their own citizens ever since?

By the way, here's how RT reported it at the time. Seems pretty accurate to me.

That's sort of like saying the Soviet's didn't invade anywhere during the cold war. They just supported puppet governments and militias in their place, as did America (hence Osama bin Laden being a former employee of the CIA).

They all still have both political sovereignty, and also control of their legal borders.

You can't claim that America deciding unilaterally to engage in "regime change" to use the delightful term is respecting political sovereignty. What happens is the USA evaluates a government and if it's not one they like, sometimes they remove it by force and replace it with a new one they like better. Said country has "control of their borders" only if you ignore that the US military operates within those borders at will.

While people may have been all pissy about Bush, unilateral wars, and Team America World Police, the fact of the matter is that it was better than the alternative.

What alternative is that, exactly? That Iraq invades America? That the Afghans conquer Europe?

I'm trying to figure out how the world would look if Team America had not said "Fuck Yeah" so many times in the past decades. I think it'd probably look much the same as it does now, except quite possibly ISIS would not exist.

Your comment will be down-voted into oblivion after a few hours.

Try 20 minutes. It went up to +5 Interesting almost immediately. Now it's at zero. What's hilarious is the stream of comments on these stories claiming that Russia is manipulating online forums. All I see is that right now anyone questioning the western party line is immediately zerod out so nobody sees it. I don't think that's because of cunning governmental manipulation though. I think people are just desperate for the old days when they could feel like they were the good guys in a fight of "good vs evil". Whacking Muslims in the desert just doesn't feel as awesome as a good old fashioned America vs Russia showdown.

It seems all governments do that at the moment. The USA even does so publicly.

Regardless, if you believe anyone who merely questions the obvious propaganda being bandied about by both sides is a paid employee of The Other Side then you're delusional. I'm hardly anonymous on this forum and my account dates back I'd guess about 13-14 years. The Guardian comment made claims that made me curious and is, at minimum, merely repeating claims made in other news outlets, which is worthy of exploration by itself.

Not sure why you think it's the "other side of the story”. It has nothing to do with the story. Some elements of the Ukraine military may be defecting AND Russia may be invading. These are not mutually exclusive claims.

That's absolutely correct, but if it's true that the Ukrainian army is so shaky then Poroshenko has every incentive to claim that his country is being invaded because he would desperately want western intervention to tip the balance.

The BBC and many other outlets have published NATO confirmations

And NATO is a guaranteed source of truth, because? Western militaries never ever have faulty intelligence? This is a military organisation that has always been in opposition to Russia. I'm not sure that's a "confirmation" any more than something announced by the separatists is. I don't trust either of them and neither should you. Perhaps Russia is invading. If it's a real invasion then we'll see soon enough.

Anyway, my "ludicrous claim" is simply what western media are reporting, including the BBC. Here's their story. It leads with "Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has accused Russia of deploying its troops in the east of his country" ... which is exactly what I said the Slashdot story wasn't claiming but should.

Contrary to the typical libertarian viewpoint not all opinions matter or are worth considering.

Wat?

I assume from your absurd statement that you consider invading Afghanistan and Iraq, then replacing their governments, is not "conquering"? Because ..... ? Because they installed a new government and then left, sorta, except they still routinely fly drones and air-strike anyone in those countries they see fit, which no truly independent country would tolerate.

Even if you use such a stupid definition of "conquer", you're attacking a straw man. I said invade, not conquer. It's indisputable that America has routinely invaded countries far away from their own borders over and over again. Any regime that boils down to "those who use military force against others gets sanctioned" would result in America being entirely cut off from the world economy for years. That clearly won't happen so this is just another case of American (and to some extent European) hypocrisy at work. Either do it consistently or don't do it at all. Preferably not at all - sanctions are based on the idea that punishing huge swathes of ordinary citizens on both sides will somehow bring about political change. How many people really believe the people are in charge of their governments foreign policies in countries like the USA?

If they wish to engage to aggression against other country's sovereignty, they should do it without the rest of the world helping fund them.

Better be careful what you wish for. If the rest of the world applied that standard to the USA and UK they'd have nobody to buy their bonds at all. You don't want China deciding to flex their economic muscles by playing with the bond market next time America invades some random country, do you?

Given that all our leaders in both the west and Russia are pathological liars, I'm always interested to find the other side of the story. Not that our media makes it easy.

This slashdot story reports what's happening as fact. But as far as I can tell what we have is actually only quotes from Kiev, the same people who have been claiming that Russia was invading for weeks. The same people who claimed that a convoy of aid was actually full of soldiers and military equipment, even after it was repeatedly spot checked by journalists and found to contain exactly what Russia claimed it did (food and aid). This is coming just days after Poroshenko dissolved his Parliament, there were apparently rising protests against conscription into the Ukrainian army, and the separatists were able to make progress.

Just to make things even more complicated: simultaneous with the claim that Russian troops are crossing into Ukraine, RT is claiming that Ukrainian troops crossed into Russia, in order to defect, and the Ukranian government admits this.

This comment on the Guardian story (which incidentally is much less biased than this Slashdot article and presents this as an accusation by Kiev) is what got me to look for these stories and I think interesting enough to quote in full:

Nothing really to explain. Ukraine troops, left without leadership and provisions, have been deserting and losing ground all week. Now that people are demonstrating in Kiev calling for Poroshenko's resignation, he's calling invasion.

- Close to 2,000 Ukraine combatants have put down their guns and asked for asylum in Russia.
- In the last 4 or 5 days, the DPR army has encircled and captured more than 7,000 troops, and all the hardware they possessed.
- On the 24th we all saw thousands of these defeated troops marched through Donesk city centre.

Now they have close to 80 tanks, and various other armored vehicles, all acquired from defeated Ukraine troops, and are sweeping over eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko was given billions of dollars, and some how failed to pay pensions, salaries, or to send adequate supplies to the forces. He's losing this war, that's all.