Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
I am beginning to dislike Putin's role in this, but why is there no official direct evidence for Russia's involvement ? I mean if they are engaged there MUST be some provable intelligence about it ?
In that case maybe some geste like the Truman doctrine back then would put a stop to it ?
|
The problem is you have no one on the ground who can independently verify what is going on, so you have a lot of circumstancial evidence and conjecture.
What we can glean so far:
-Russia has been supplying the Rebels with weapons, at first they were careful to only provide weapons that could plausibly be captured from the Ukrainians, but that has pretty much gone out the window, since the Rebels seem to have latest gen AT weapons, Tanks, including T-72s, artillery, BMPs;
-Many Russian "volonteers" have shown up, although whether they constitute a majority or minority of fighters among the Rebels is debatable. No direct link to the Kremlin has been shown, but there is indirect evidence they are financed by nationalist Russian Oligarchs. To me it is doubtful this could happen without the green light from Putin;
What is less clear:
-Whether Russian SAM systems/artillery were/are present in Ukraine and/or being used from Russian territory. To me the evidence is pretty clear, but again no direct "smoking gun", AFAIK;
-The number/types of Russian units in Ukraine. It seems pretty clear the special forces have been involved since the beginning and that the appearance of regular Russian units is a more recent phenomenon. A friend of mine who follows this very closely says he has indentified 4 different Russian units in Ukraine. The capture of the 10 Russian paratroopers, funerals in Pskov and the fact that the military situation has reversed so quickly against the Ukrainians would seem to indicate that Russian troops have arrived in sizable numbers, but again no clear "smoking gun";
However, to a large extent, whether proof is there or not is academic, the real question is what will the US/NATO/EU do about it. So far, we see a lot of talk, but not much action.