Force Reduction ?

Despite the recent, significant victory of Ukraine's NaftoGAZ over Gazprom in International courts, much continues in the realm of mis-perception. As USA becomes preoccupied with hyper-partisan debates about gun violence in our schools, people tend to forget that Ukraine has ostensibly been working diligently,  for 22 years now , to keep Nuclear Weapons, and their after-effects from contaminating America's schools:
This DW documentary is well built, yet there's  at least a couple flaws, for one,  the dates, they mis state the Revolution in Ukraine as 2015, and they seem to imply within it,  that the Russian Special forces arrived in Crimea , 3 days after the 2014 Olympics. Believe me, if you wish, the RU special forces started to arrive before New Year 2013. They were deployed in a "ready for action" holding pattern.
https://youtu.be/gtSPkSAgxD0. I was not even familiar with any special forces from any Nation at the time, but you'd know them if you look them in the eye.

it is really totally true,  about Twitter being a platform easily exploited , by chance I chatted a bit with Jack Dorsey of Twitter , we spoke briefly about my telephone account set up within the Sevastopol area code . He asked "Does it still work?" I said, yes, I could access it via WIFI within San Francisco, California. it was a Kiev Star account, still functioning within Ukraine's USA's phone networks at the time. I could go online through the account and do things with it then. I remember getting that phone number, after an incident wherein  a person snatched my phone whilst I was attending the birthday party of the daughter of Simferopol's Chief of Police, it was a lavish affair.  3 or 4 month's salary for a police man/ woman , at the time to cover the cost of the banquet and drinks. If anyone can't be trusted with any information, it's me. I am so un- careful with my stuff , yet Ukraine presents a tough learning curve. Despite that, the same situations can happen in any Western or Eastern Nation.

for some reason,  next day or something, I went into Sevastopol proper, and had to buy a replacement phone and SIM card , to continue some basic functionality of my incredibly vague objectives,
I went into a Tailor's/ Clothing shop to find out if I could affordably update my clothes, while it looked impossible (maybe I bought socks or the least expensive shirt they had) they treated me to drinks and I joined their Holiday celebration replete with Hors Deurves and little sweet cakes and things.
. I don't mean to be disingenuous, but honestly, I am somewhat unafraid to speculate, that the KPHG website's postings about the Destruction of the Crimean Khanante's Palace in Balichessary, it may not be accurate information. The basic information they offer, is that there is a crudely managed "renovation" of the Khan's Palace. Now actually it's pretty easy to play upon stereotypes of ignorant Russian Construction workers doing incredibly bad work on priceless historical Unesco heritage sites. Not hard to imagine. I had heard from a bus boy/ dishwasher  acquaintance  of mine, at one of Simferopol Ukraine's slightly  down scale restaurants,  where the local police catch their meals , that they had apprehended last week or something like that,  what they thought,   were some sketchy local drug dealers perhaps spreading cocaine into the local community,  and thereupon found priceless Khanate era and even possibly Phoenician artifacts in the trunk of their cars and vans, yet such incriminating situations were swept under the rug by FSB special agents saying that they were working on securing items relating to National Security and important police cases. There are also rumors of underwater dive teams surveying the bottom for Phoenician shipwrecks, who are also double tasking by planting sonic and subsonic relay systems to enhance the security protocols and prepare to station that ghastly stealth, long range Nuclear torpedo, which can easily be used to dissuade Mister Erdogan from straying off his permitted range of discourse. Would Russia attack a Nation that may well be on the verge of leaving NATO and the EU, from a staging area, on the Crimean Territory seized from Ukraine an avowed and verified Nuclear Non Proliferation Nation, with a Nuclear Missile, or use that potential to threaten immense damage upon the Turkish State ? Well stranger things have transpired, yet certainly that prescription is possible.

While Ms Sobchak was rebuffed by Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, regarding her request for permission from the Ukraine State apparatus, for her to visit Crimean Territory for the purposes of meeting with , listening to representatives of the Mejli, Tatar people, she seems to have struck a chord perhaps, in the way she gave a retort to question the motivational perspectives of Ukraine's foreign Minister  Klimkin, in effect, who owns  him. This is a recurring issue in contemporary dialog, to the effect of "Who own's you" It is not really like ownership, more like, who most greatly influences your thinking and actions, what person, or people within the ensemble of your experience has the greatest sway upon your personal actions, perspective. Without laying bare this core personal data, one can never explain perhaps illogical and the various random things we do as individuals. Also as divergent societal entities, we are owned by messages and messengers. We can be swift to embrace or kill those messengers, as the tidal shifts of media and random perspectives conflate into often horrendous actions and situations:
http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1520984846
Yet , as we see today with Mister Rex Tillerson being roughly ejected from the US State Department, a mere 24 hours after the joyful announcement that there was no collusion, did Ukraine lose it's chance to be incredibly relevant to the North Korean Nuclear disarmament situation? Has the Mitochondrial DNA of Washington become irreversibly corrupted? It is anybody's guess.  But the last time I checked, Ukraine people still feel fairly friendly feelings for the Russian People, they don't want to hurt themselves in an illogical brawl brought on by propaganda. The entire thing,  is ultimately about the defensive and economic schematic that was deemed unacceptable by the Kremlin. Ukraine's Corruption was engineered and encouraged by the Kremlin, tolerated by the West, which was eager to the point of blindness, deafness,  to understand the risks they incurred on an economically bereft yet sizably advantageous Nation State.

As to this this savaging of UNESCO heritage Architecture  with such purportedly ignorant style, lending  perhaps to the destruction of historical mosaics at the Khan's Palace  , it's more likely in my mind,  they were searching for hidden compartments in the walls , long ago sealed up with bee's wax and mortar. It's an old,  and well known practice to hide priceless artifacts within walls.
maybe my impression to my instinct  that is 60/40, that there is some sort of Archaeological "hit team" working on hitting on likely targets with priceless embedded historical artifacts, Chersoneseus , etc, the Hills , Mountains, caves of Crimea,
much like has been embedded,  in our consciousness of ISIS operations in Syria. My guess , however uninformed it may be, is that "United Russia " is attempting to extract it's revenge upon the Crimean Khanate for the sacking of Moscow , in which case we now see an incredibly illustrative case of the idiom that "Revenge is best served cold and late" There has to be some Russian "Indiana Jones" in the Crimean Mix these days. Or maybe it's like a reinvented Dan Brown Novel .. . down there.And are those exclusive Estates of "United Russian Party members " going to include, in near days, these exclusive artifacts of the "conquered Crimean Territory " as well as some tantalizing Phoenician era sculptures ?

126 million Twitter  users were experiencing 'sharing"  from Russian trolls in the election run up...it's all a lot #strangerthanfiction
or something like,  the Iron curtain rises again ? https://youtu.be/wA85L4Kkf1I

I know, I was therein Crimean territory, staring them in the face, and it really wasn't so bad, almost humorous if you'd call it that. The unaligned,  unsupported, unsponsored ex-professional dishwasher from San Francisco , really in total honesty I was without a clue back then as to what could happen.

I was partying with the front end of the ostensibly massive juggernaut of Russian Special forces just a few weeks before they made their move to upend history. I don't appreciate the return of
A Gulag style , to Ukraine's Sovereign  , MUTUALLY AGREED territory. There are advantages to being a man alone, and great risks. It's really much more risky if nobody can figure out who, if anybody , you are working for.LIKE , could I really be a nobody dishwasher without any University education or any accreditation, just some random guy who knew the local people and places ? At least for myself at the time, I was a somewhat understood entity. I had friends on the ground who'd vouch for me and familiarity with the terrain.

______some historical context :_____________________________________________

The overwhelming vote (301-8) by the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) November 16 (1995) 

to accede to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), only days before President Leonid Kuchma’s visit to Washington, came as a surprise to many observers who had anticipated far stronger opposition or even rejection of the treaty. In an atmosphere of growing competition within Ukraine between the executive branch and parliament over economic reform and political power, there appeared to be little time or inclination for the Rada to act before Kuchma’s departure. 

        

           Further, many analysts believed that if the Rada did act it would likely impose conditions at least as severe as those it attached to its ratification of START I in November 1993, which threatened to stymie momentum toward nuclear disarmament. Not without reason, given Kiev’s long period of vacillation on the issue of NPT accession, there were thus many who expected the struggle with the Rada to spill over into 1995.

          But despite the pessimism expressed by most observers, it is possible, especially in retrospect, to see the decision to accede to the NPT as the inevitable result of the strategic deal struck by then-President Leonid Kravchuk and Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in their trilateral statement of January 1994 (in which U.S. and Russian nuclear non-proliferation objectives were linked to Ukraine’s security and economic concerns) and the growing confidence of all parties that this three-party arrangement was not only working, but was quite clearly the best deal Ukraine was likely to get.  (See ACTJanuary/February 1994.)        

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Ukraine-Nuclear-Weapons

https://armscontrolnow.org/2014/03/08/ukraine-russia-and-the-npt/______________________________________________

WHAT Russia and China hope to retain within the North Korean Nuclear regime's vaguely plausible Autonomy, is perhaps the most intricate Geo-Political scheme yet known to Global security structures, so far. With the departure of Joseph Yun, https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/215290.htm

amours , rumors , and mis-information about madame Tymoshenko also got many, many "hits" on the internet in the runup of the election with mister Yanukovych, at the time of his ascension under the tutelage of Mister Manafort. It is a cheesy replay of the tawdry slogan of Mister candidate Trump of "lock her up" and really, rather shamelessly reproduced. She was always a candidate of compromise, nobody argues that factor. Now in Ukraine, more than ever,  people speak of the "Pistol or the noose" choose one or the other. They don't have great political options,  unless the playing field changes quickly, and radically.  It really sounds a lot like USA, if you ask my opinion.

how weird does it feel that Mick Jagger and Mister Yun both attended the London School of Economics? Not too much really, I guess. Mick is rather diplomatic, in his offhanded way and understands economics quite well, yet a diplomatic Rock Star is leaving the fold permanently ? Perhaps I digress. Yet while one can try to ascribe potentially unrelated events to a form of sick synchronicity, Cannot the public ask the question about the death of Kim Jung Nam, North Korean President's brother in the Malaysian Airport, contrasted or compared with with the Nerve agent attack on Skirpal in England ? One has to assume, that the security services have engaged in some forensic cross referencing of the two incidents. Would not,  Mister Skirpal ,  have some sort of a a back door channel to the Russian state, is it not possible that he had some information sources relating to North Korea's Weapons development? Is it a non-casual connecting principle (synchronistic Principle )
enacted within real life, or simply really weird  coincidence ? Did Kim's brother,  who gave money to the grave keepers in Moscow to tend his Mother's grave, have intricate knowledge of the North Korean Weapon's development program, and was he trying to sell it soon to Japan, or some entity like that? Or did he have inside , or close information about MH370? And it's incriminating  potential to destabilize Moscow, and it's position on the World Stage ? I wish to state that I am not Anti-Russian or excessively pro-ukrainian .
there is simply a lot of weird things going down these days : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-russia-total-crash/moscow-airport-workers-plead-guilty-to-causing-total-ceos-death-idUSKCN1081YQ
As China scrabbles for position to host talks with North Korea, don't you wonder if they are trying to defuse Russian Leverage within DPRK's military apparatus? After all, like Ukraine was, it's so decrepit and so apparently facile, that some of the same situations can emerge in contrasted parallels .
As I sense it, there is a classic Russian paradigm at work, the bluntly stated and the subtly effervescent. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2015/03/01/videotape-of-nemtsov-murder-suggests-high-level-assistance/#644111249353 the snow plow thing:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-russia-total-crash/moscow-airport-workers-plead-guilty-to-causing-total-ceos-death-idUSKCN1081YQ
ORCHESTRATING CUTOUTS TO DOSE THE VICTIM WITH  NERVE GAS,  AS IN THE Malaysian airport, and orchestrating cutouts to drive a snow plow across a runway in Moscow, it's simply a variant of the same mode of operations. It is very easy to tell people what they need to do with the snow plow, when there is not nearly any snow, or some snow coming down. But organizing an operation with Nerve Gas , on the territory of a foreign country, that's another thing entirely. Yet when does this ballet with the snow plow extend to Tulsa , Toronto and Timbuktu ? Let's not forget Tashkent.

While much meat has been ground in the media about Hope Hicks is leaving the White House,  Mister Yun's departure has the most serious real implications, in my humble opinion. China , Koreas North and South , the "Stans" Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, they all have people working in Ukraine, doing things. It's normal. The Russian Federation has created a very difficult and complicated situation in Ukraine. It's of course a situation that can lead to their own regime change. Yet they seem Hell bent for leather to create a more and more intensified crisis in Ukraine. Via economic factors, and social media perceptions. Manipulation of those elements creates a difficult variable for Ukraine's leadership to contend with, yet they also have many advantages at their disposal.

from the State Department's negotiating team leaving Dennis Rodman as the "Point Man" in negotiating any potential de-escalation of armed conflict is rather flabbergasting. North Korea and China have studied and probed Ukraine, investigated how they can win points for their objectives, or lose points.

The Nation of  Ukraine , that I remember before the Euro-Maidan was a place where the police didn't carry guns, I never saw guns, except in some really weird interpersonal disputes in shady backwaters, yet now it's become a more seriously armed Nation. The official versus actual statistics of personal fire arms have to be vastly contrasted. No media outlets that I know of, are publishing statistics about personal fire arms availability within Ukraine . 

In the old days, the military mostly kept their weapons at staging bases (including Crimea) when they travelled with friends, family, nobody had weapons on the trains, buses (that I could see ) Maybe It is all like some weird joke about the chicken crossing the road, and these Chickens , if they cross that bridge can enter Russian Territory. These Border guards manning their tiny shack an the West end of the Bridge respect that line, it's protocols, and realities. They allow traffic on foot, crossings, and commerce (Ukraine's Vodka is cheaper and maybe better )

. Police prior to EuroMaidan time
seldom seemed , or appeared  to have weapons. Ukraine was a sleepy, yet often tendentious place. The Expats often wanted to trash President Obama, it was a very frequently overheard trash talking point. Ukrainians often trashed the corrupt politicians and their commonly difficult personal situations at the time. Things have not changed, except it's now a Nation with many more personal fire arms. Mister Manafort, and Mister Gates may well have been involved in trading these nuggets of information about Ukraine, How many weapons registered per Oblast, how many weapons per police station. These were easily bought on the cheap in 2012, early 2013. If they did potentially trade in such items of weapons availability information, could they as ostensibly private citizens be vulnerable for extradition to Ukraine to face prosecution ? Perhaps Mister Gate's Plea agreement has hidden exemptions from extradition ? Once coupled with the variant aspects of the last vestiges of Nuclear weapons grade material being extracted in 2011/ 2012, yes of course , it can become exculpated from the public records of what really happened in Ukraine. 
It has to be an unenviable situation for Mister Manfort, and a situation where he continues to hold several key, hidden playing cards to hope for his freedom (given his inside knowledge of the Yanukovych regime) 
and allows for his potential exoneration from ALL charges of grand theft, larceny , mayhem and mass murder of a distinctively unique Geo-Political spectrum.   If the Yanukovych clan was leaking this information,  for money,  to Russian GRU sources, with the tacit participation of Mister Manafort's small team, 
wasn't there some kind of an "Oh Shit " moment , somewhere within the CIA  group that was unequivocally handling, or trying to handle Mister Manafort ? After all, can't Russia define some victory in declaring the betrayal of the USA in the Handling of Ukraine's National Security, if they can generate a perception of betrayal ? I see that Russian Trolls have rebranded, reconfigured in their strategy. Now it seems to be a mandate that "less is more" it's actually sort of a cool way to go about it. Ukraine is still caught in the "Big state" apparatus ,  chiming in,  on their positions, while that is normal,  it's maybe not the most adept configuration within the information warfare conditions they are faced with.

 They are still a predominantly poor country,  wherein the cream was siphoned off from the top. We still need to keep in mind giving  them some assistance to continue stabilizing their economy and security. America's security was greatly improved , made safer  from the elimination of Ukraine's Nuclear weapons . It has been a quarter century. They were given many promises. Russian Federation had a Trojan Horse within the Crimean Territory, yet they never had a sufficient mechanism to expel the Trojan Horse, if push came to shove .

All of the ministries and mechanisms of the Post Soviet State were so easily manipulated and ripe for corruption, it was easy enough to install a corrupt egomaniacal dictatorial lout like Yanukovych. I am sure many of the investigations of his mafia style business model were squelched over the years, prevented from being talked about in the press. 
As Russian influence extended into Ukraine through the rise of the Petroleum State, GAZPROM, etc., Ukraine became akin to a vassal state. I'd suspect the plan to weaken Ukraine's military by encouraging corruption was quietly initiated at the very start of Yanukovych's Presidency, and well under way at the early part of 2013. Mister Manafort had to have been well aware of the inability to offset the military differential. I had heard that it was 85:1 in scale.  The quiet preparations for Information war had to have been slowly ramping up in 2009.

What lessons this retrospect in reality has for Ukraine's education system will be emerging in the group think of the Nation. As we American's struggle to come to grips with the occasional chaos emerging from our school classrooms, we simply could not transpose what has happened since the start of 2104 to Ukraine's internal security into our present situation of debating "Trade Wars"  I myself admit to a sense of jealousy, that I hadn't gotten that type of interpersonal environment in my education, I could have done better honestly. As they seem to promote cohesion class unity and interaction as a group, where barriers are made inconsequential and individual differences are understood completely.

My own opinions of fire arms have changed, not so much by our things in USA, more so about what transpired in Ukraine: Areas of their Nation was over-run by cheaply hired thugs, who ostensibly appeared nearly like casual tourists, to break into police stations and appear to steal  the petty, yet not insubstantial , small armory . Vice News has an excellent documentary piece about the forced entry into a police Station in Eastern Ukraine by Simon Ostrovsky . Yet the reality being,  that imported trouble makers were staging demonstrations at public buildings who were then backed up by Russian Special forces and ultimately hired mercenaries who were paid bounties for taking cities and areas under their control. It was a well organized, systematic, heavily scheduled and coordinated event by the Russian Federation. Yet the West of Europe, the USA, we also screwed it up, in failing to negotiate and sufficiently anticipate such events.  All of this infiltration  started ramping up in early 2013, yet our heads were in the sand, and we got  a president elected by the minority outcome,  in 2016/2017 via the election campaign quarterbacking of Mister Manafort who used the exact same playbook as he did in Ukraine. The operations manual hardly had gotten enough time on the shelf to collect dust...It was all too easy

when you analyze Russian costs in destabilizing Ukraine, implementing force measures to secure their hold in the situation, versus the land and strategic value, they have to have succeeded in a 10 or 100 to 1$ investment. Yet those cost allocations creep off their back side as their economy struggles for positioning, mainly China will win through this, as I sense it.

,While pundits in the media and military seem to concur, that the Crimean territory is lost perhaps indefinitely , that is not a foregone conclusion. I personally have an emotional investment in the Crimea, and for me, it is difficult to let go of it. I know people there  (or who were living there) as friends I like ,and appreciate.   My interests in Mariculture, the arts, the environment. My individual connections with the people of Crimea, let alone the horrors imported into the Donbas, as I have friends , experiences (many) from that region. Is there a way towards Peace and reconciliation without regime change ? Probably not, yet many options can arise if clever thinkers work to together to find win/win scenarios. Those parties who created the circumstances and atmosphere of embroiled perceptions, and who brought needless aggression ought to admit that, and move on from there.

I predict that this awkward, difficult, violent situation to continue for years.There is perhaps,  no hope,  of voters in the Russian Federation electing Ms Ksenia Sobchak. While she could offer potentially favorable economic options, the forces aligned against her are far too immense. I only hope that she can make it to the other side. Few people are aware, that Mister Nemtsov was connected to secret arrangements to assist heavily wounded Ukrainian war veterans, and it was perhaps that fact, more than anything that led to his murder. It was not something he or his supporters ,  wanted made public.

Navalny, as a Nationalist could create an even more complex from of re-analysis of Western agenda's as they relate to Ukraine and the Russian Federation's Global interests.

Indeed, as a Crimean Friend once told me: "Time Will Tell" for now those  Masters of War will get  their way.  Will there be be some indirectly worded, cool , popular song asking about why Mister Manafort isn't facing an extradition request  from Ukraine for Crimes against the State? He was aiding and abetting Grand theft on a massive scale.

After all , he was virtually living there, said to be running government policy on the International level for several years.... Or does Russia wish to continue to promote individuals like Kim and Paul who have  outrageously pompous hair do's ? And will Dennis Rodman come out of retirement, to go back into the NBA ? #Diamondsandrust