Really old one. Byzantine Empire owned part of Crimea and Greece, through Crimea Christianity was imported to Russia, we have common religion.
Also, they made for us writing language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius

OK, somewhat weaker cultural ties != lack of cultural ties. Point taken; I agree.
I have to admit I forgot about the fact that quite a big chunk of those who form our own cultural heritage were under the tuition of Europeans as kids and it did have an effect on them and their works.
Oh, wow. I never bothered to learn any of the elven (or other artificial) languages, but yeah, I can imagine such a situation. That should've been quite a sight.
Well, there are counter-examples to this statement, the most notable being the Gypsies. Who do they have cultural ties with?
Canada has enough Ukrainians to fit here and yet, are Ukraine and Canada tied that closely?
While I admit I was probably too quick to dismiss our cultural ties, it's hardly about how many people live where. Yeah, you are pretty important as a trade partner (and it was kind of sad when you were told to use that fact to help the USA with their goals). As are the BRICS countries and some others. It's kind of natural that countries that can offer each other a lot eventually develop strong economical ties. Basically what Gremlion said. Our alphabet is called Cyrillic for a reason (side note: did you ever pay attention to what the very word "alphabet" consists of? "Alpha"+"Beta", the first two letters of the Greek alphabet).
Then there's that concept that Moscow is the Third Rome.

P.S. In English names of countries and nationalities start with a capital letter. Would it be too much to ask that you apply this norm of the language to all countries, not just Germany, US and EU? :-)

What a freaking shame to visit a random European forum and see Russian putinists spewing their imperialistic BS. Just wonder, do the local vatniks still deny:
1) huge Russian military supplies to the "rebels", including tanks, artillery, MLRS, APCs, AA systems, shells, ATGMs.
2) that Russian regular army was directly involved in the war
3) that Russian army shelled Ukraine from Russian territory
4) MH-17 was shot down by Russian BUK
5) Volnovakha, Kramatorsk, Mariupol were shelled by DNR, it resulted in more than 50 civilian deaths
6) the war would never start without Russian involvement
7) DNR occasionally shell their own cities using mortars to blame Ukraine
8) Russians are involved in terrorist acts outside of Donbass, like bombing in Kharkiv that resulted in deaths of 4 civilians, including 2 teenagers

Woo, "accidentally" finding buried topic on "random forum". I'm so tired of Ukrainian bullshit.
1. http://i.imgur.com/G2lVffo.jpg - 60 years old surveillance photo from Caribbean crisis. I would've thought that CIA now can do better, they even spied on Merkel, right? Still, there are no photos of even worse quality of Russian army in a year.
2. Go, find proofs, get a Pulitzer award.
3. Who knows? Maybe Ukraine should use its 3 anti-mortar radars from US to prove it? At least, there are definitive cases of killed by Ukrainians people in Rostov oblast.
4. There is unclaimed $30M reward for proofs. And no, Bellingcat's investigation is a hoax.
They claim that these are the same truck http://i.imgur.com/EBz6FoE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IvTkxAo.png
And bright spots on the left photo are the traces of photoshopping toy and plate http://i.imgur.com/jI39dCJ.png
5. Volnovakha - round holes from anti-personnel mine, not from bombing; Kramatorsk - http://imgur.com/a/Z5N55 Mariupol - locals said that it was done from controlled by Kiev area, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhfoGs0DoeU
6. People love how oligarchs ruin country to inevitable default and never would've rioted against it. 7 maidans didn't happen, right?
7. What a bunch of masochists. Leave them alone, they would kill themselves.
But OSCE says http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/148151
over 225 mortar shells from 14:40hrs to 17:15hrs. From its position the SMM estimated that the shells were fired from a position of the Ukrainian Armed Forces located in Berdianske.
8. For anyone unaware:
Bombing happened during a day (~12AM). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5qpmHcCot4
3 hours later SBU reports that they captured terrorists and posted a video of loot, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqokPrQjSzE
black night, they use flashlights. Doesn't look like 3PM, 4 hours till sunset, right?
Overall impression - staged by SBU terract, they prepared video day before bombing.

Ah-ha-ha, wow, vatnik's level of delusion is just unbelievable. There are thousands of photographs, videos, witness reports, expert reports, but they would anyway insolently say "where is there the proof? there is not a single one". They would claim that people in Volnovakha's bus were killed by a landmine (landmine on CP pointing to the CP itself!), while there are videos clearly showing Grad attack on the CP, or they will claim that Ukraine shelled their own ATO HQ (just think about it!) in Kramatorsk with Smerch, while all the Smerch booster parts point to DNR-controlled direction and even Strelkov himself confirmed that it was a DNR attack. This denialism would be very funny, if it would not lead to such grave consequences.

*sipping a cup of coffee* Yeah, yeah, we're familiar with this type of behavior in a discussion. Not impressed.
Your previous post: a list of "facts" based on certain mass-media lies and your imagination (you didn't even see fit to support your claims with any kind of proof; but indeed, why bother, everyone should believe you off the bat, otherwise they're all putinists and vatniks).
Gremlion's answer: step-by-step explanation of your opinion's weak spots with links to support his point of view.

It could be amusing if people like you weren't the reason the conflict hasn't ended yet. Gullible fools repeating what you've been told and dismissing the very possibility that you are wrong.
By the gods, I am so sick of you...

A protester in Russia was fined for "Nazi propaganda" for posting a (genuine) photo of the separatist mercenary warlord Alexey Milchakov with a swastika, in an article bashing Nazis.
Before the war, Milchakov was e-famous for beheading puppies.

Hello,

The people of donbass are protecting their families and their freedom. Most of the tanks used by the novorussian army were build or repaired in steel workshops on eastern ukraine territory. Eastern Ukraine is the industrial heartland of Ukraine. The western part is the bread basket.

Russia and Europe should unite and dissolve the NATO, because it was a defense union against the UDSSR. The UDSSR does not exist since 1990. And then disarm those genocidal war mongers in US & UK. In 2 centuries the US managed to live 7 years without war. And they have the guts to call Russia an aggressive rogue state. A country that only had a couple of , mostly defensive wars in the same time. I am not talking of ordinary people on the streets but the leeches in District of Cannibals and the super rich investor families that profit of the never-ending war.

It is time to unite humanity and transform those industrial military complex into space colonization industry. We could colonize the solar system instead of fighting endless wars for fun and profit. And there is enough profit to be made by space exploration. The resources in the universe are endless. And this is the only chance to have peace and prosperity for everyone, not only a few chosen people in every country.

Have a nice day.

You clearly had prepared list of "8 Bad things Russia did", something stopped you from posting at least five videos of "hundreds of Russian tanks crossing border" or "thousands of Russians marching over border"?
Expert reports are pretty funny, too. In February NATO said about 5000 dead Russian soldiers, then in March about 500. Be scared of our "X-men Wolverine" squad.
Video of the said explosion: Someone runs into bush, then blow up (on mine).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDmlW11Wco
There are no rocket.

I would quote you.
.
I don't track conflict that deep to know every commander, but IIRC he wasn't in Ukraine for quite a while.
He also said that Poroshenko used to sell weapon to militants, hmm? Oh, there he clearly lied, okay.

Yes, SBU realised how heavily they fucked up and changed their claim in a hour or so.
As for "videoproof" - find a bum, say him "read this on camera" and give $10 later. Undeniable proof ready.

You don't want to see that cars have different doors and lamp near driver(square/round)?
As for editing - it isn't hard to change couple of frames in the video (less than 50). Heck, maybe right photo was edited. But these aren't the same car.

Ukraine clearly lived better with Yanukovich and situation is worse every day.
When drunk soldier on IFV killed girl and sent her aunt into hospital in Konstantinovka, http://i.imgur.com/zYm9z9J.jpg
it resulted in a huge unrest with burning down Ukrainian barracks. http://i.imgur.com/MPfIy6N.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa79Ei4gGvE

The conflict hasn't ended yet, because USA fuels terrorists in Kiev with money, propaganda, military equipment, "volunteers" from mercenary companies like Black Water http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lgr0oB4gQs (caught on camera in Mariupol) and direct US regular army and CIA support.

Netherlands are so important on world political arena, that I wouldn't be able to name any Dutch politic for the sake of my life.
They desperately postpone investigation, we could hear screams of A-320 passengers in 2 days, still know nothing from black boxes of MH-17.

consistent grammar in the internet? crazy talk :p
(you're right though, of course. I shall try to keep that in mind. no offense intended :) )

Great. So having something to prove your words is bad. Cool.
If you have some information that contradicts that of your opponent, why not post it here so everyone could see who is right. Debates are (meant to be) about arguments and counter-arguments, not calling your opponent names. Who's that man? Where was it filmed? Any background? (No, I don't mean the video's description; I'm talking about something that can be checked) You mean on government level? And those volunteers aren't people who decided that they can't just sit and watch and came to defend Donbass from Ukrainian "volunteer battalions"? Don't let me stop you from providing reliable proof to support this claim.
Also don't restrain yourself from spitting and spouting epithets like "vatnik", "moskal" and others; I'm not going to bark back at you anyway. Hmm, it seems that the investigation is underway and far from being over. Just for your reference: the investigation of the incident in which Polish president Kachinsky died ended just recently, and there was much more reliable evidence than in the case of Boeing crash. The investigation is far from being over.
While you're waiting for the investigation results to arrive, have some "propaganda": http://rt.com/news/245141-reuters-witness-misreport-mh17/

Completely off-topic: there's one more thing that might entertain you, a certain test I encourage you to take. You don't have to post your results, just give it a go and give the results some thought. It's purely for your... entertainment. http://www.hr-portal.ru/pages/hu/logika.php
Oh, right, what was I thinking? I don't know what came over me.
(Thank you. :-) )

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house

I think this article might be of interest to some of the people that have been following this thread

Would prove some of my claims:
http://i.imgur.com/LYDtxit.jpg?1
This is my debit card where I get my wage from Gazprom.
https://www.cpj.org/killed/2014/igor-kornelyuk.php My cousin
http://i.imgur.com/crMKOOG.jpg

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/putin-try-to-take-crimea-away-and-i-will-give-you-a-nuclear-war/story-fnb64oi6-1227289725875

yay! I want my radscorpion.