After a Coma

Sometimes, I feel like a man who was in a coma, woke up one day, and everything around him was exactly like he left it 10 years before.  I was reminded of this kind of thing by an article in the Wall Street Journal which focused on the trouble in the Ukraine and the Russians continued support of pro-Russian separatists in the South-East.  It seems they have not stopped trying to overthrow the Ukraine and would take it all if they could.  They would try to make it look like an internal uprising, but they have more problems doing that today than when I first went to sleep.   When I went to sleep, there were more heavy weapons there.

The typical solution to this kind of thing seems to be negotiations and sanctions.  That was pretty much the way we did it too.  Bristled egos were more prevalent back then, though 6 years ago a lot of those were showing among the rebel leaders who were exposed with press and inspection groups all over the country.  The Russians have done their best to control both.  That is proving harder to do than they thought.  There is a graphic photo of artillery fire in the lead section of this article an it shows that this is not just a political war;  they shoot real bullets and big shells at one another.  The cellphone video of the mobile missile launcher going back to Russia after the shooting down of a civilian airliner is proof of it.   I think sleeping through that was probably a good thing, since it should have been over long ago.

The Russians have said they were withdrawing their troops (like they didn’t do in Syria).  They have said they have no troops there.  They have said they would negotiate, though I do remember that the Russian word for negotiation translates as “What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is negotiable.”  That part has never changed.   They continue to put troops into the region, while denying they have none there.  You know the Russians - once they put troops somewhere, they never bring them back. Well, there was Afganistan, I guess.  The Syrians will figure this out one day.  In the meantime, NATO is not doing very much for the Ukraine, though they are not in NATO so that makes it acceptable to the rest of Europe.  Does anyone remember Crimea?  I was asleep during that part.