Allegedly this is the heavy stuff coming into Belarus: I’m not sure of what the extent of the build up was prior to Crimea but it would be useful as reference if anyone has good info on that.
Pretty sure Joe just confirmed Russia is going into Ukraine. I don't think he meant to say it, but he is definitely lucid as he talks today. I'm sure the news outlets will pick it up the remark. More to follow.
I am not proud of getting into side trivia given the importance of the issues today, but he flopped out some comment about teaching constitutional law for 20 years on Saturday mornings and my bullshiite meter cranked up a couple notches. Sounds like Corn Pop and "I was in jail with Nelson Mandela" stuff to me. No doubt they will fact check that and he did a couple times in 1976 or something. Think back to when he crowed about visiting a synagogue a few years back and consoling the people there. Then the rabbi said he was never there. He just pulls stuff out of his arse. It is noticeable that cnn and some of the other networks are leaning on him hard in a couple areas. That's the canary in the coal mine that gets my attention. They are his support group. Without them he is nothing.
Just as a quickie statement, I would say there has been very little parallel betwee the take over of the Crimea and the Ukraine build-up of now. Other than the fact that Putin was/is orchestrating everything. But unlike now, Russia did not overtly position troops in advance and pretended that they were not even involved. I mean everyone knew what was going on. I am just saying he made a lame attempt to pretend he wasn't. Nothing summarizes that scenario quite like "the little green men," references of those days. Wherein, the locals and the press referred to all the "little green men" running around which were russian soldiers with uniforms but the uniforms had no insignias. Then once the little green men entered the Crimea parliament and removed certain leaders and pro-russian protesters- also russians many of them- allegedly called for Russia to enter to uphold "the will of the people." As background, all of the Ukraine was in turmoil over a presidential election in the Urkaine and Putin exploited it in the Crimea to make his move. Unlike today's scenario. I definitely don't think we had heavy troop and equipment moving an overt, aggressive, in-your-face way, even though everyone knew they were maneuvering around. Same Putin but a different ground game depending on what the local situation was. If he did position any troops that were admitted to, it would be in the context of some bullshiite about wanting to protect Russia from unrest in the Ukraine spill over. But today, he is just saying: "Hellooooo, yup, we are ruskies, those troops and tanks are definitely ours and we may be coming to your neighborhood soon." Yeh. Little green men. Watch out for them.