04-15-2014, 10:21 PM
IS A CIVIL WAR BREWING?
![[Image: ukraine-demo_2798084b.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02798/ukraine-demo_2798084b.jpg)
I don't have a good sense as to how much of this is rhetoric vs. a real threat -- is Ukraine stoking the violent protests to vie for more EU and US support and investment? Is Putin really interested in all of the Ukraine, rather than just Crimea, after all?
Snip:
The escalating conflict in Ukraine "essentially puts the nation on the brink of civil war," Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
With pro-Russian militants seizing government and police buildings in as many as 10 towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov told Parliament "an anti-terrorist operation" was under way in the region.
The aim of the military operation is to "stop attempts to tear Ukraine to pieces," he told lawmakers.
There were conflicting reports about casualties, with Russian state-run media citing varying casualty claims supplied by militants. According to the reports, there were either two injured or four killed, claims that CNN cannot independently verify.
Putin's comments followed similar ones hours earlier from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Ukraine was on a violent path.
"Ukraine is on the brink of civil war. It is scary. And I hope that everyone who is responsible for making decisions at the moment -- I mean both, the current Ukrainian authorities, who we can't consider legitimate, but these are the authorities who came to power as result of a coup -- has brains to avoid driving the country to such shocks," he said at a news conference Tuesday in Moscow.
The pro-Russian uprising follows Russia's annexation last month of Ukraine's Crimea region, a move that emboldened other pro-Russian Ukrainians in the country's east to rise up.
Russia has said it reserves the right to intervene to protect the rights of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Full story: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/...?hpt=hp_t1
I don't have a good sense as to how much of this is rhetoric vs. a real threat -- is Ukraine stoking the violent protests to vie for more EU and US support and investment? Is Putin really interested in all of the Ukraine, rather than just Crimea, after all?
Snip:
The escalating conflict in Ukraine "essentially puts the nation on the brink of civil war," Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
With pro-Russian militants seizing government and police buildings in as many as 10 towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov told Parliament "an anti-terrorist operation" was under way in the region.
The aim of the military operation is to "stop attempts to tear Ukraine to pieces," he told lawmakers.
There were conflicting reports about casualties, with Russian state-run media citing varying casualty claims supplied by militants. According to the reports, there were either two injured or four killed, claims that CNN cannot independently verify.
Putin's comments followed similar ones hours earlier from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Ukraine was on a violent path.
"Ukraine is on the brink of civil war. It is scary. And I hope that everyone who is responsible for making decisions at the moment -- I mean both, the current Ukrainian authorities, who we can't consider legitimate, but these are the authorities who came to power as result of a coup -- has brains to avoid driving the country to such shocks," he said at a news conference Tuesday in Moscow.
The pro-Russian uprising follows Russia's annexation last month of Ukraine's Crimea region, a move that emboldened other pro-Russian Ukrainians in the country's east to rise up.
Russia has said it reserves the right to intervene to protect the rights of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Full story: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/...?hpt=hp_t1