Yeah, propaganda is depressingly powerful. But partially it doesn't even take major brainwash, just whatever pride and patriotism an individual can develop on its own. My brother knows this too well. He has many friends in Russia, all of them well-educated people, academics or people associating with academics. Sadly even among those good-hearted and intelligent people there are some Putin supporters and people who are convinced that pretty much everything the Russian government does is for the well-being not only of the Russian people but also people suffering elsewhere in the world. And obviously most people clever enough to see through all the lies are also clever enough to keep their mouths shut.

My sense is that a lot of the propaganda in Russia is exploiting a sense of national pride and patriotism, and indeed, a lot of propaganda in history has done that.

Nazi propaganda in WW2 focused on pride for the fatherland and so on, American propaganda (at least that disseminated by the military) has also focused on patriotism and pride about America's supposed track record in spreading democracy.

The decision to shoot is what makes it seem like the work of inexperienced and undisciplined militiamen, no matter if they had enough training to actually get a lock and fire the missile. Maybe the decision was even made by one of the crewmen as opposed to asking higher command for orders (which I assume the separatists have, but they don't necessarily have enough recon options to make an informed decision). Real soldiers working within a proper military hierarchy do not wing it and hope for the best firing at will without proper intel on the target. They could not have mistaken the plane for an active and immediate threat, they must have understood it was only a target of opportunity.

I think this is the work of undisciplined separatist fighters not knowing what they were shooting at, not a Kiev or Moscow conspiracy. I am not ruling out that the Russian military may have educated the separatists on how to use the weapon system, but I don't think it goes much further than that.

Personally it's wise for sure but for the future of the country it's probably a bad sign. If all the critical voices are missing then probably bad decisions will be made and all except the very privileged ones will suffer. I reckon Russia may end up in history as tragic figure. Being a country of riches beyond dreams in terms of resources but somehow managing to waste most/all of it and achieve nothing.

The best for them would probably to be happy that they got Crimea for a bargain, inviting separatists in Eastern Ukraine to move a tiny bit East or South and otherwise closing the border for real and stop the support and start investing their money in their people and keep sending gas bills to others. But instead they make their hands dirty by supporting violent uprisings. As if they have nothing more important to do. Ukraine is already a big loser but obviously this is not enough.

Svoboda was part of the coalition that formed the Yatsenyuk government, but only holds 36 out of 450 seats in parliament. It's also rather disingenuous to claim that that the coalition was "by Svoboda and some other parties", as the main party behind the coalition was the Batkivshchyna party (88 seats), while the other members were the UDAR party (42 seats), the Sovereign European Ukraine group (37 seats), and the Economic Development group (32 seats). So out of the five groups that made up the coalition Svoboda was actually the second smallest. To be fair they did manage to land a few government posts (one of two Vice Prime Ministers, Minister of Agriculture, and Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources), although that's only three of around 20 key offices in the current government.

But as numbers in government don't always reflect the full reality of the political situation, I'd be quite interested to hear if you have anything to present suggesting that Svoboda (or any other far-right groups) have more meaningful political power than a look at government composition would suggest. Namely, can you point to any legislation or government policies enacted since the new government took power that advance a far-right nationalist agenda? That's ultimately the test of whether these groups have any meaningful power; so far I haven't seen anything of the like to suggest they have power (based upon multiple news sources from around the world, as well as reading comments from numerous Ukrainians for a ground-level view), but I'm always open to being shown otherwise.

I did not say anything about the plane. Just mentioned Svoboda, obviously a hot button issue.

Exactly, you said no power at no point. You made it sound like its a russian lie that there were far right elements in the government. When it is in fact the state department in their "5 Putin lies" article that lied by saying there were none. A lie probhably much parroted by the obedient media.

Nope, just want to make it clear that these nazis were part of the government and that it is not just a russian talking point.

Let's go check my original statement, shall we? Seems pretty consistent with the far more drawn-out version we just covered. You seem to be the one trying to twist both my words and the reality of the situation to insinuate that it's something it's not. If you want to have an honest discussion and educate me about events that I'm not currently aware of then I'd welcome that, but I'm getting the impression you don't have much of an interest in doing such.

Today on tv, one of the mineworkers who "volunteered" to help covering the bodies, he found a child's drawing/painting which he found sad so he took it with him, rather then say to the reporter here have it (and get it to family) the reporter could buy it for 2 beers.

Well, someone obviously uses the word "nazis" too much and out of place.

If I think about the tactlessness of this english reporter from Sky News my blood pressure develops into very unhealthy levels. But then there is a lot of chance for that lately. Tomorrow is three years of the killing spree of Breivik.

True for sure, although I'd never expect anyone to risk their lives or their freedom unless it was a cause they really believed in. We in the West may expect the people of Russia to collectively rise up against the oppression, but people tend to forget that not everyone is a born freedom fighter and that, when push comes to shove, not everyone has the strength and the will to see something like this through. Rebellion for freedom is an individual decision.

More like the land of missed opportunities. I cannot think of a country that has had so many wonderful things happen to it, only for them to piss it all away again. They had Leninism, and then that went down the pipes and became Stalinism. They finally managed to get rid of the Soviet system, and replaced it with an equally corrupt capitalist system.

I do reckon that Ukraine may come out a stronger country at the end of this. One of Ukraine's biggest problems of the past 24 years is that it has always been something of a half-way house between the West and East, never really belonging to either side but also never really being able to stand on its own. The West has always viewed it as some kind of post-Soviet relic, full of gopniks, rural poverty and corruption. Russia has always viewed it as some kind of post-Soviet Western wannabe along with the rest of the Eastern Bloc. But where countries like Poland and the Czech Republic have become full-blooded members of the European community, Ukraine has always been treated in a somewhat "stepmotherly" fashion (if anyone can find a proper English word for "stiefmütterlich behandeln"; I'd be gratefui).

European politicians will no doubt take Ukraine a lot more seriously in the future, not least because of the role the country plays in border security.

What, you mean aside from being a perfect base of operations from which to attack Australia? Because in the event of a world war, it's almost certain that Australia will not remain neutral. If you don't believe me, look at what the Japanese did in World War II.

0 gain? You obviously don't understand the scope of religious wars, and if someone has a grudge with Islam, your country will be the most targeted out of them all. Good luck over there with no organization whatsoever. As for Europe, I don't live there for the moment, but trust me, I would join the army in case of war, just to kill idiots who thinks wars among ourselves are beneficial for this species. Sounds familiar?
Also, you got to be really dense not to realize what's possible with the manpower provided by a subjugated population of 200+ million people. And I'm fairly certain there are some useful resources around there as well, otherwise the Netherlands wouldn't have bothered to colonize you or Japan to conquer you. Not to mention a great strategic point against Australia or to guard the Pacific. Like you said, what would be the point? But the fact is there is one. You're just too ignorant to see it in an ignorantly racist type of way. "I need a few countries annihilated." Sounds to me like every fail dictator out there. Or fail human being.

Keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night, but as others have pointed out, Indonesia has been a major battlefield in previous global conflicts (e.g. in WW 2, or the at least 500,000 Indonesian "Communists" massacred with Western support in the Cold War climate two decades on), and having grown a much stronger economy since (e.g. shown in it being one of the four 'MINT' countries), it's naive to think that it -- or any country, really -- could be untouched by a 21st century global war.

I found the follogwing synonyms for stepmotherly:
- cold-blooded
- hard-hearted
- harsh
- merciless
- pitiless