I'm not talking about civil law though.

Oh I understand it. Not much to do with communism, just plain nationalism.

The currently interesting question is what happens with the eastern part of the Ukraine over the Winter and beyond and what happens to the Russian economy in the next year?

My impression is that the economical sanctions have some effect. However there are also low oil prices currently due to over production of the US and Saudi Arabia. Maybe they are part of the economical actions?

Russia is in principle so powerful with the huge amount of exported resources and the strong military but still the economy doesn't look very good, especially with the Rubel going down and high inflation. But will Putin give a damn about all this? Maybe he speculates that economic hardships will fuel nationalistic feelings rather than dampen them. And for sure unless the situation goes extreme support will probably hold in the short time. In the long run his days may be counted. On the other hand with all the repressive laws and media control there is a good chance Russia stops being a democracy for the foreseeable future and then anyway everything depends on what this one guy thinks is right or wrong. Due to the restriction of foreign media to only hold max. 20% many foreign news cooperations have withdrawn or will do so soon. Official Russian media is now fully Russian controlled. I personally think dark times are ahead for Russians.

In the last elections the Ukrainians have voted with a big majority towards the West. And actually I wonder how Russia can have any kind of claim towards the old parts of the Soviet Union (Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, ...). These are all independent countries for quite some time and it seems to be pure nationalism to ignore that. It seems natural that none of their neighbours want to be part of Russia again ever. At least Ukraine probably feels very negative towards such an idea, not even in parts. The aggressive behavior of Russia this year surely also drove all potential partners away for a long time. Going on the nationalistic way you usually do not make many friends. Either they think they are stronger than anyone else or they think they have fucked up and anyway nothing to loose. In all other scenarios you would probably not alienate all your neighbours.

My sympathies are much more with the Ukrainians and I want to support them and foremost of all I don't think that appeasement works so if you have an aggressive neighbour the best is to stand your ground. So I guess kind of cold war is inevitable (anyway). So rising number of arms and fear of atomic fallout all over again. The only incentive I can give to end this before it starts is to promise that once Putins changes his mind (unlikely) or the Russians themselves can successfully change course (not very likely soon) I will support this change fully. This is anyway all I can do.

Of course I wonder what would be a fair balancement of all involved parties. How much claim would an impartial observer (which doesn't exist) really give to Russia over Crimea, Eastern Ukraine. But on the other hand this is purely academic. I'm sure that the Russian aims are way off what a fair assessment would give them, so this is all futile anyway. The situation will remain bad until Russia and its neighbours come to peace. And for Eastern Ukraine and the Russian economy in the coming months this will have quite large implications.

You make it sound as if Russia had been a democracy at any point.

Ask yourself how the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union could have had any claims towards these lands in the first place. The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union have been presenting themselves as the "protectors" of all Slavic people many times throughout history. And both their own people as well as many other Slavs actually bought it again and again and right now there are new victims of these lies in Ukraine. The perversion of that ideology and propaganda can be hardly put into words. It's mindblowing how often Russians have been able to convince the very people they have been oppressing and exploiting that it's for their own good - and that it actually keeps happening in this day and age.

Russian policy - oligarchs do everything to get more money, while trying to not cause a riot.
There are shitty taxes, degrading education and medicine. Basically, we are on the road to USA-like state for common folks with crippling student debts and unbearable minimum wage.

Eastern part of Ukraine probably has better chances to survive winter than western - even Africa doesn't want to sell fuel to official Kiev now. They are really, REALLY untrustful companions. Wait for winter gas war like in 2009.

Rouble drop(~25%) = oil drop(~25%) with +-% on speculations.
Drop of prices on oil possibly an attempt of Saudi Arabia to bankrupt expensive types of oil extraction, like shale oil.

*Sheds a tear. Poor Russians, Putin is so eviiiil.
Rouble went down in 98, from 6 to 36 per $, up to 70 in some cities, current events are "meh" at best.
Putin has wide support because from the inside current events look like they are being conducted from outside and Putin's steps are merely answers.
Try to think about simple things:
a)"Occupation" without single shot, millions of people supported it in Crimea. Simple explanation - they tried to return at least three times since division, they see what happens in the areas where there are no Russian military. And as a cherry on the cake - they returned to the country, which has three times higher GDP per capita than Ukraine.
b)"Attack of Russian army"... There are tons of satellites, which can't find anything for 6 months? Ukrainian military hides on Russian territory, gets healing there. Ukrainian people flee to "aggressor's" territory and don't protest. There are literal millions of people with Ukrainian heritage in Russia. Do you see multimillion meetings?

It would be dumb to send an army without air support and heavy weaponry against an army, right? Soldiers should be unbelievable dumb to not flee, when they are sent on these conditions. I remember two cases in Georgia in 2008, and they had better conditions. Still haven't seen anything like that in Ukraine.
I still think that these are actions of something like private military companies, which attempted to gain control over Donbass's property and gathered people around them.
Strange thing to tell to German, but you don't know what's a nationalism, and more so you don't understand geopolitical tendencies.
Ukraine is mostly flat area, which has close border to Moscow - set base in Ukraine, you had 3 hours on tanks till Moscow. Russia would need buffer zone, destroying west-oriented Ukraine would be same thing like for China destroying Taiwan.
Baltic countries in the same position - they block access to Baltic sea. Attempt to get Crimean base for NATO with Ukraine had same intention - block Russia from Black sea.
Ports are keys, you should know what Königsberg is.
You have limited knowledge with dehumanized vision of situation, boiled down to Polandball form "Putin=Russia evil" and "poor victim Ukraine". You don't know people's intentions, wishes and dreams.

Oligarchs sucked Ukraine dry to African level country, and one of them is current president.They are squeezing last drops by taking huge credits and this would lead to really sad end. Ukraine has no future.

"Fair" balancement is easy - you can google translate this article:
http://users.livejournal.com/_devol_/878447.html
Division of voters on president elections, right - pro-russian, left - pro-western regions

Democracy is about people, not about saving lines on the paper, right?

Heh, i assume you've lived in US for at least few years at least to see how common folks live ? Or, you know, just at least few weeks ? 'cause otherwise you have no idea how it looks like, just like US guys have no clue how life in ukraine/russia looks like.

i just love when you're talking about stuff you have zero clue about)

with no reliable water supply, no reliable electricity supply and no tourists. And extreme prices for everything without any increase in salaries.That's a fact, just read sevastopols forums.

Last time something was provided to you, your point is was that it's not HD enough. No one is going even to bother this time, especially since you don't really care if what you're posting is even remotely close to truth.

With weaponry that only russian army has. OK, sound legit:)

and that's just offensive. Bad move.

Neither do you, but that doesn't prevent you from posting nonsense, does it ?:)

To non-russian speaking folks - that's a blogpost from a dude that doesn't even consider Ukraine being a separate country and dividing world into great Russia and some mystical "the West" which is against "the great Russia". Tbh, that's enough for me to stop reading after first paragraph.

Yeah, USA bombs Russia, and it is impossible to get visa. Or even if we get, prices became so unbearable, that we are forced to eat snow instead of travelling. And we have same internet censorship as in China and can't access US sites. Dream on, brainwashed ukrainian boy.
http://imgur.com/search?q=student+debt
http://imgur.com/search?q=minimum+wage
Can't disprove - use personal attack?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-12/steel-mont-cancels-ukraine-coal-supply-contract.html
These are solvable problems. Like living in the country, which riots against every president.
If there was at least ONE undeniable photo, believe me, Putin's approve rating would've been dropped to ~20% or less.
But your censor.net posts screenshots from computer games instead. http://russian.rt.com/article/43294#ixzz3936uHPKJ
Haven't seen any proof of this - what they use is on the level which Ukraine had after 1991.
Though I have seen report that Ukraine purchased some exported Russian tanks in South America as scrapmetal, and possibly use it for photosessions.
Same as with satellite photos, tbh.

One of killed on Ukraine journalists is my relative. There are more than 1k refugees in my city. My 4 coworkers are from Donbass, moved deeper into USSR in 70-th. They still have relatives and friends on Donbass. They say that this is civil war.

Which perfectly predicted name of current Ukrainian president and scenario by which he got it(excluding east Ukraine, 20% of population from voting pool). Deny other people deductions, it is so helpful.
Look at % of voters then, if Cyrillic letters fill you with hatred.

imgur is undeniably best place to study economy;) Living even on minimum wage in US is extremely different with trying to survive on minimum wage in Russia or Ukraine. You can always find entitled people living even in most stable (economically) countries with highest living standards and those are usually most vocal on internets, but that doesn't change statistic. It's like judging on Russia only by Moscow. And yeah, you're on the way to China-like censorship as far as i know :)

That doesn't mean that ukraine won't survive winter on existing supplies:)

Uhum. Crimea is a peninsula which means that solving those problems is extremely expensive for case of water and electricity and impossible to solve for tourists - as no one recognizes Crimea as Russian territory it would be impossible to arrange flights not from Russia. And russian tourists are not so eager to visit Crimea either - it's cheaper to get to Egypt or Turkey still and a lot easier to travel there.

There were quite a lot of them. Whole world is talking about it actually, so any sane person by now would consider that maybe, only maybe that may be true and whole world is not against Russia.

yep. Like AK100, tanks, rocket launchers. Those appeared from thin air i think, right ?:)

And i have a lot of friends from there that are willing to confirm russias regular army presense. I trust them more than you as you may imagine.

woot ?:) Emotions aside, any idiot that is at least remotely aware of situation in post-USSR for last 10 years could "predict"
this.

Hehe:) And that's a person who was blaming everyone else on being nazis just a few posts ago:)

Whatever you think of the recent decline in oil prices one thing that struck me as particularly nonsense was the recent statement of Russian Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukaev that the low oil price is okay for the Russian economy because of the drop in currency rate.

His idea: “The budget will be run, and run well, it will even get surplus,” the minister said. “Generally, the financial system will be quite comfortable.” According to the minister, not only will the government fulfill its social obligations, it will even have a budget surplus under the new circumstances. All expenditures in the Russian budget are calculated in rubles. (see for example http://rt.com/business/210075-russia-minister-economy-interview/)

Now this is very funny. How can it be that the well-being of the economy is completely independent of the oil price?

Well the answer is it simply isn't. A drop in the conversion rate means imported inflation. You just cannot buy that much and have to pay more for importing all the goods. If the inflation rate is only 5-10% higher it means you can buy 5-10% less. It's true that the government is not the only one that gets poorer, it's everybody that gets poorer at the same time.

But still there are positive effects of a devaluation of the currency. The labor market will remain stable, imports will go down, exports of other products not energy will be supported. Substitution with local products might be in order. And if the low oil price phase does not continue too long, Russia will not lose too much money and the economy won't be harmed too much.

But if it does the shit will hit the fan inevitably at some point. You will see it not so much by higher prices but by less products in the shops.

Oil and gas are 10% of Russian GDP. Is it critical to lose 10% of wealth? And loss is even less, because gas price haven't changed.
Southern America replaces European share of Russian food market - worse quality, probably, but nothing remotely close to eating hedgehogs like ukrainian news show.

While media shows that "everyone against evil Russia", things are:
GDP of countries which didn't implement sanctions = 70% of world GDP.
Poland implemented visas against Ukrainians(Beforehand people from western regions didn't need them), but leaved open border with Russia.
New Moldavian government announced decision to integrate into ECU instead of EU
Czech president, which was expelled from communist party, due to his disagreement with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, supports Putin.

you just gained my respect

Igor Dodon said that his party plans to start the referendum about this.

Yesterday in the news: Natalya Poklonskaya, the cute Crimean attorney, allegedly got hitched. What has it to do with war? Well, the place where she allegedly got hitched is notable: Ekaterinburg, the spot where the Holy Royal Family was "martyred" (executed). Meanwhile, those Western news sites that haven't yet switched to other clickbait trends keep scaring their audience with the specter of Communism.

Look, radical left-wing Communists (aka neo-Leninists such as myself) and moderate right-wing Communists (aka neo-Stalinists) disagree on quite a lot of internal- and foreign-policy points. When people deride the Communist political movements as being socially regressive racist sexist homophobic fucksticks, I see where they're coming from. It's disingenuously reductive, strawmanny and annoying on the part of a news source, but yeah, I own up to the fact that quite a lot of people who want political power to further my cause are also assholes who should never be trusted with political power.

However, if there's anything besides communal ownership of the means of production that unites all stripes of Russian Communists, it's the absolute contempt for the Russian monarchy and at the very least (neo-Leninists hate belief in gods in general) the official Orthodox church which sainted the last tzar. Communists recognize that the monarchy was destructive, exploitative and generally terrible so much that even killing kids was a small price to pay to ensure it never gets restored.

So praying to the tzar is not a thing a Communist, or a Communist sympathizer, or someone who wants to appeal to Communists, would ever do. If a news source tells you to dig a nuclear shelter because zomg USSR is back, you should take the news with a couple pounds of salt. (Well, maybe not the dig a shelter thing, it might come in handy.) The "New USSR" red scare is a telltale sign that a report on modern Russia is bullshit, on par with plural GULags in the historical USSR.

not true, as usual :) as non-EU citizens Ukrainians always needed visa to Poland since it joined EU (with exception of people that live in 30 (or 50) km area near the border). The only thing that changed recently was that requirements for so called "shopping" visa has been changed but that one was weird in the first place and made sense only in very specific cases.

and half of country hates him now. Great deal:)

If you want to read a nice example of propaganda pravda.ru is a very good source for it. However it's also enlightning. http://english.pravda.ru/world/ussr/12-11-2014/129014-ukraine_nato-0/

In there Vladimir Karasev from Luhansk explains his view of the world which can be summed up like this: Use of deadly violence is okay if I do it and wrong if anyone else is doing it. Expansion of the war towards other regions in Ukraine is inevitable. The people living there are on our side.

Because of such people more civilians will die and that makes them so dangerous. If you ever approve of violence to achieve your goals other than self defense than you willingly accept dead civilians and you inevitably start a war. Also acting in the name of the people has a long and bloody tradition. But it also tells us what is probably going to happen. The war will not only continue it may even be extended to larger areas and may become even worse.

Another very funny article in pravda is the article: "Will Germany attack Russia again?" (http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/27-11-2014/129151-germany_russia-0/) whereas in the article it says that Germany ruled out any military intervention. The article is actually one of the better ones (because only things that actually happened are stated) but the headline is just crazy. Somebody must have taken drugs while writing it.

Another thing is that while the shooting down of the airplane MH-17 will probably never be clarified completely and anyway not everyone would believe in it whatever the outcome, there is now a report on different video material from these days. Sure, it could all be a big lie, but with the usage of different materials from different people (french reporters for example) there should be at least a bit of credibility. A summary can be found here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2014/11/08/origin-of-the-separatists-buk-a-bellingcat-investigation/

What seems to be clear is that at least one Russian military Buk system crossed the border to Ukraine at this time and also crossed back a few days later. Most probably it lost a missile during these days. The rest can probably be disputed. To me this is a strong hint that this was always a war of Russia against Ukraine and less of a civil war within Ukraine.