and then started a discussion *not with them*, but with agreed upon representatives that could represent the area's interests;
They would likely stand down. And if they did not the people would push them out. But as long as those two things continue a lot of the population will either support or continue to be tolerant of them.

Life, and certainly the situation in Ukraine, are not as simple as our ameri-centric views may think. These guys would never have been able to remain if the population there did not in general support someone between them and Kyiv.

It is Kyiv's issue to solve, but they don't seem interested in any solution that will enfranchise "moscolka" (russians as many of them (and some here) see them.

Previous politicians (that were not involved with the rebels), respected members of the community, etc. There are large cities and like here in the USA people with various reputations.. involved in charities, whatever.

You really don't know much about the country do you? They are a sophisticated and pretty reasonable people.

There are plenty of such options because this is not nearly the way it is portrayed. Amazingly enough the gulf did not exist in anywhere near what it has been since the overthrow.

If you can pull your mind just a little away from the narrative and just for a moment envision that the people are actually fairly reasonably reacting towards what they feel is a complete disenfranchisement and escalated into a genuine threat. Lots of possibilities open up.

That is the trouble with accepting the black and white narrative that has been convenient for Kyiv and us. One of the first lessens of diplomacy and making peace, is to not back yourself into a stance where you portray the opposition as semi-inhuman.

I used to think only the Republicans allowed themselves to get caught up in that way of dealing with events.

no black and white there. Sounds like you might be doing the same thing you accuse others of. Why should only one side stand down? Seems to me the new President has already offered many things to the east and has been turned down by the self appointed leaders from the east.

When the last peacefire broke it was separatists who broke it.

It doesn't really bother me as much as it may you though. I am not posting here because I am expressing my loathing of an ethnic group.
And you see, while bigots may think that if someone implies they favor the culture they themselves hate on, that really is not a slight to someone who doesn't hate them...

Kiev tried to send a transport plane full of combat troops, intent on killing people of the Lugansk Republic, to Lugansk, and the people of Lugansk Republic defended themselves by shooting that transport plane down. Our response is: We're blaming Russia?

if the MANPADS used to down that plane came from Russia.........

Same with the the tanks and APC's that seem to be coming in from there. Not to mention all of the fighters that openly admit they are from Russia.

When the Lugansk self-defense fighters seized arms depots of the Ukrainian army in east Ukraine do you think there were no SAMs to be found in those stockpiles?

There is no evidence whatsoever that Russia has given any arms to the self-defense forces in Lugansk or any other region of Ukraine. Some of their weapons may be of Russian manufacture, but they were sold to Ukraine before last February's coup.

How would I know what he wants?

Sure.

This disaster in the Ukraine may have been caused by an outside power (the United States) but it is now a civil war, not another of our wars on terror.

shelling cities full of innocent people if not by demonizing them and tying them with scaaaaary red Russia? I mean if those people don't want to get attacked by "their" own military they shouldn't be living so close to Putin!

As is the fact that they want to use Russian as their daily language and to watch Russian media on their TVs. All of which are what our State Department seems to view as crimes worthy of wholesale slaughter visited upon the general population.

That nobody threatened to take away.

The only people saying that it was going to be taken away were the natsbols, Zhirinovsky's followers, OFN folk, and members of the openly Russian-supremacist groups like the leader in Slavyanks, Gubarev, belonged to. (Note that Putin founded the OFN, so let's put him in that category.)

Had a student from Vinnitsya. His Russian was better than his Ukrainian. Watched mostly Russian tv and read Russian media before he was adopted here. Vinnitsya is far from the Donbas. He was pro-Ukrainian. His father's job was soldier.

The student wants to go to Slavyansk in July, even though he's likely to be picked up as a spy and beaten and detained. He wants to see where the Russian mercenary Mozhaev's men--which Mozhaev indicates are "locals" even if they were born, raised, and trained in Chechen--shot down his father's chopper a month or two ago.

If you watch the Russian media and the Ukrainian media you see two different wars. One difference is the generalization: You read that Bes is putting hostages on buildings to protect them from air strikes. You read that the opolchentsy in Dmitrovka are rounding up male civilians under forced conscription. Or you read that Ukrainian soldiers (without limitations) once they take over a town gun down peaceful locals, or that Ukrainian forces are using Grad systems (with few limitations). In one case, there are bad people. In the other case, a people is bad. If it's all propaganda, one side is saying some people are bad. The other is essentially being racist, with very broad-brush generalizations. And since Ukrainian-speakers typically had to learn Russian, they can see both sides; Russian speakers typically only learned Russian, and feel like they're not in their home country when suddenly surrounded by Ukrainian speakers.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

from wiki
"Nuland is the daughter of Yale bioethics and medicine professor Sherwin B. Nuland, whose original surname was Nudelman. Victoria’s paternal grandfather was Meyer Nudelman from a family of Jewish immigrants who came to New York City from the Russian Empire.[2]

Victoria Nuland graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979 and has a B.A. from Brown University. Nuland speaks Russian, French, and a little Chinese.[citation needed] Nuland has two children.

Nuland’s husband is historian Robert Kagan, Council on Foreign Relations member, and co-founder of the think-tank "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC)."

Please all: READ THAT LAST SENTENCE.
Thank you.

you might want to take the tin foil off once and a while

And it wasn't just that "man", the Republican institute (basically the foreign extension of the Republican party.).

Unlike Democrats, neocons are extremely persistent and they continue on the offensive throughout administrations. The Iraq war was planned from clear back in the first Bush's presidency and they patiently waited and schemed for 12 years until their opportunity came again.

You must not have been reading here for very long. PNAC is well known and ***was*** the architect of the Iraq war as well as Bush policy.
Half the Bush cabinet were signatories.

Frome Sourcewatch : http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century
(Creatrive Commons 3 license)



"established in the spring of 1997" as "a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership."

PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defences," openly advocated for total global military domination. Many PNAC members held highest-level positions in the George W. Bush administration. The Project was an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (501c3). [1]

In 2009 two of PNAC's founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, began what some termed "PNAC 2.0," The Foreign Policy Initiative.

History

The PNAC was co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997[2], with roots in the 1992 Pentagon. PNAC's original 25 signatories were an eclectic mix of academics and neo-conservative politicians, several of whom have subsequently found positions in the presidential administration of George Walker Bush. PNAC is noteworthy for its focus on Iraq, a preoccupation that began before Bush became president and predates the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In 1998, the group wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott (then Senate Majority Leader) and Newt Gingrich (then Speaker of the House of Representatives), demanding a harder line against Iraq. By then, the group had grown in numbers, adding individuals such as former Reagan-era U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and long-time Washington cold warrior/pro-LikudRichard N. Perle.

According to William Rivers Pitt, "Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy."[3]

Several original PNAC members, including Cheney, Khalilzad and the Bush family, have ties to the oil industry. Many other members have been long-time fixtures in the U.S. military establishment or Cold War "strategic studies," including Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald H. Rumsfeld, John R. Bolton, Vin Weber, and Paul Dundes Wolfowitz. It should not be surprising, therefore, that while the group devotes inordinate attention to Iraq, its most general focus has been on a need to "re-arm America." The prospect of mining oil riches may explain part of the group's focus on Iraq, but this motivation has been buried under the rhetoric of national security and the need for strong national defense.

To justify a need to "rearm" the country, however, reasons must be found. In the more peaceable world of the late 1990s, with no rival super-power in sight, Iraq and "ballistic missile defense" against "rogue states" were the main games in town. The group's links to advocacy for ballistic missile defense came through Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1998 chaired a bi-partisan commission on the "US Ballistic Missile Threat" and Vin Weber, a registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and other Fortune 500 companies.

According to a February 27, 2003, editorial by William Rivers Pitt, PNAC

has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad.

PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power in Iraq.

Most recently, PNAC created a new group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education. ...

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.[4]

Key positions

Among the key conclusions of PNAC's defense strategy document (Rebuilding America's Defenses) were the following [4]:

"Develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world."
"Control the new 'international commons' of space and 'cyberspace,' and pave the way for the creation of a new military service--U.S. Space Forces--with the mission of space control."
"Increase defense spending, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually."
"Exploit the 'revolution in military affairs' [transformation to high-tech, unmanned weaponry] to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces."
"Need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements" complaining that the U.S. has "virtually ceased development of safer and more effective nuclear weapons."
"Facing up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions that will require a permanent allocation of U.S. forces."
"America must defend its homeland" by "reconfiguring its nuclear force" and by missile defense systems that "counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction."
"Need for a larger U.S. security perimeter" and the U.S. "should seek to establish a network of 'deployment bases' or 'forward operating bases' to increase the reach of current and future forces," citing the need to move beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia to increased permanent military presence in Southeast Asia and "other regions of East Asia." Necessary "to cope with the rise of China to great-power status."
Redirecting the U.S. Air Force to move "toward a global first-strike force."
End the Clinton administration's "devotion" to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
"North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or similar states [should not be allowed] to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies, or threaten the American homeland itself."
"Main military missions" necessary to "preserve Pax Americana" and a "unipolar 21st century" are the following: "secure and expand zones of democratic peace, deter rise of new great-power competitor, defend key regions (Europe, East Asia, Middle East), and exploit transformation of war."

According to the PNAC report, "The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time: even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself." To preserve this "American peace" through the 21st century, the PNAC report concludes that the global order "must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence." The report struck a prescient note when it observed that "the process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."

Many of PNAC's conclusions and recommendations were reflected in the White House's National Security Strategy document of September 2002, which reflects the "peace through strength" credo that shapes PNAC strategic thinking.
Personnel
Original 25 signatories were:

Source

Elliott Abrams, a former Reagan-era Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. During the Iran/Contra scandal, Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress but was later pardoned by the first Bush administration. He subsequently became president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is currently a member of Bush's National Security Council.
Gary Bauer, a Republican presidential candidate in 2000, who currently is president of an organization named American Values.
William J. Bennett, who served during the Reagan and first Bush administrations as U.S. Secretary of Education and Drug Czar. Upon leaving government office, Bennett became a "distinguished fellow" at the conservative Heritage Foundation, co-founded Empower America, and established himself as a self-proclaimed expert on morality with his authorship of The Book of Virtues.
Jeb Bush, the son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and brother of current President George W. Bush. At the time of PNAC's founding, Jeb Bush was a candidate for the Florida governor's seat, a position which he currently holds.
Dick Cheney, the former White House Chief of Staff to Gerald R. Ford, six-term Congressman, and Secretary of Defense to the first President Bush, was serving as president of the oil-services giant Halliburton Company at the time of PNAC's founding. He subsequently became U.S. vice president under George W. Bush.
Eliot A. Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at John Hopkins University
Paula Dobriansky, vice president and director of the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently Dobriansky serves in the Bush administration as Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs.
Steve Forbes, publisher, billionaire, and Republican presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000. Forbes has also campaigned actively on behalf of the "flat tax," which would reduce the federal tax burden for wealthy individuals like himself.
Aaron Friedberg, professor of politics and international affairs; Director, Center of International Studies; Director, Research Program in International Security, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.
Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man; Dean of the Faculty and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Appointed to the President's Council on Bioethics by George W. Bush, January 2002.
Frank Gaffney - conservative columnist; founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Web-site: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/
Fred C. Ikle, "distinguished scholar" at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
Donald Kagan, professor of history and classics at Yale University and the author of books including While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today; A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990; and The Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. Kagan is also a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard and a Washington Post columnist, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Alexander Hamilton fellow in American diplomatic history at American University. Past experience includes: Deputy for Policy in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (1985-1988); State Department's Policy Planning Staff member (1984-1985); speechwriter to Secretary of State George P. Shultz (1984-1985); foreign policy advisor to Congressman Jack Kemp (1983); Special Assistant to the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency (1983); Assistant Editor at the Public Interest (1981).
Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American who was the only Muslim among the group's original signatories and the only signatory who was not a native-born U.S. citizen. Khalilzad has became the Bush administration's special envoy to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban as well as is special envoy to the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein. Khalilzad has written about information warfare, and in 1996 (in pre-Taliban days), he served as a consultant to the oil company Unocal Corporation (UNOCAL) regarding a "risk analysis" for its proposed pipeline project through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
William Kristol, PNAC's chairman, is also editor of the Weekly Standard, a Washington-based political magazine. His past involvements have included: lead of the Project for the Republican Future, chief of staff to Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, chief of staff to Secretary of Education William J. Bennett under the Reagan administration, taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
I. Lewis Scooter Libby, who later became chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.
Norman Podhoretz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of works such as Patriotism and its Enemies.
J. Danforth Quayle, former vice president under President George Herbert Walker Bush and a presidential candidate himself in 1996.
Peter W. Rodman, who served in the State Department and the National Security Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, became the current Bush administration's Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security affairs in 2001.
Stephen P. Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University.
Henry S. Rowen was president of the RAND Corporation from 1967-1972. He served under former presidents Reagan and Bush as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (1981-83) and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1989-91). He currently holds the title of "senior fellow" at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
Donald H. Rumsfeld served former President Gerald R. Ford as chief of transition after Richard M. Nixon's resignation, later becoming Ford's chief of staff and secretary of defense from 1974-75. He subsequently served from 1990-93 as CEO of General Instrument Corporation and later as Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company. In 1998 he served as chairman of the bi-partisan US Ballistic Missile Threat Commission. Under President George W. Bush, he once again assumed the post of Secretary of Defense.
Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, is now a well-connected lobbyist who has represented such firms as AT&T, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft. Weber is also vice chairman of Empower America and a former fellow of the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
George Weigel, a Roman Catholic religious and political commentator, is a "senior fellow" at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, formerly Dean and Professor of International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, became Undersecretary of Defense for President George W. Bush in 2001.

Leadership

Top leadership from their about page as of June 2007:[5]

Project directors:

William Kristol, Chairman
Robert Kagan, Co-founder
Bruce P. Jackson, bio President of the Project on Transitional Democracies. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He was on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Security Policy. He is the President of the U.S. Committee on NATO. Past experience includes: US Army intelligence (1979-1990), Office of the Secretary of Defense (1986-1990), chief strategist of proprietary trade operations at Lehman Brothers (1990-1993), high level management positions at Martin Marietta and Lockheed Corporation (1993-1999?).
Mark Gerson, bio
Randy Scheunemann, bio, founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001.

Other leaders:

Ellen Bork, Deputy Director
Gary Schmitt, Senior Fellow
Thomas Donnelly, Senior Fellow
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Senior Fellow, Director of the Middle East Initiative
Timothy Lehmann, Assistant Director
Michael Goldfarb, Research Associate

Other PNAC members (Updated June 2007)

John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush administration.
Daniel McKivergan, Deputy Director.
Christopher Maletz, former Assistant Director.
Richard N. Perle, an AEI associate, former Reagan administration official, and member (and former chairman) of the Defense Policy Board.

Non-overlapping signatories to a January 28, 2005, letter to Congress

Source: Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces, PNAC, January 28, 2005.

Peter Beinart
Jeffrey Bergner
Daniel Blumenthal
Max Boot
Ivo H. Daalder
Michele Flournoy
Buster C. Glosson
Frederick Kagan
Craig Kennedy
Paul Kennedy
Robert Killebrew
Will Marshall
Clifford D. May
Barry R. McCaffrey
Joshua Muravchik
Steven J. Nider
Michael O'Hanlon
Mackubin Thomas Owens
Ralph Peters
Danielle Pletka
Stephen P. Rosen
Robert H. Scales
Walter Slocombe
James B. Steinberg

See the Right Web Profile.
Funding

MediaTransparency.org has documented $600,000 in donations to PNAC since 1997 from conservative foundations.[6] Funders include:

Bradley Foundation ($500,000)
John M. Olin Foundation ($50,000)
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation ($50,000)

Contact information

in Ukraine all happened with President Obama in charge too. The power of those cookies is indeed impressive.

Her cupcake power is beyond anything imaginable. She hands them out to this day. Causing the rebels much problems.

I hear that you aren't a right-winger, so your support for Kagan and co. goes without saying.

It is amazing to see people who call themselves liberal PNAC connections. I have no idea how the Kagen family was able to get back in and stir trouble under Obama's watch. I am more concerned about what it all is doing to the country. The point is PNAC strategy, which this is part of, is all the same pattern of failed approaches and part of the same Republican/neocon crap that half this site fights with.

Honestly, I don't know any liberal who would defend Kagen. It has to make me wonder why you are so comfortable doing so?

She doesn't have a mind of her own?

Seriously, do I have to explain this to a liberal?

You know, I understand disagreements between liberals on events because things are not always black and white, but it is really difficult to understand how a liberal can be disgusted at right wing policies and people who implement them one day and then be looking to excuse others dependent on which party they appear to be aligned with at the moment.
Maybe you can explain to me, as a liberal (I assume if since you and I are on this site) why this should not give you a little pause:

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:white"][blockquote style="background-color:white"]Victoria Nuland was sworn in as the 18th United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on July 13, 2005.

A career Foreign Service Officer, she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney from July 2003 until May 2005 where she worked on the full range of global issues, including the promotion of democracy and security in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Lebanon, and the broader Middle East.

Ambassador Nuland was United States Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO in Brussels, Belgium from July 2000 to July 2003. There she was instrumental in NATO’s historic invocation of Article 5 of its charter – "an attack on one ally is an attack on all" – in support of the U.S. after September 11, 2001. Ambassador Nuland also worked intensively on the enlargement of the Alliance to include 7 new members, the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, NATO’s first deployment "out of area" to Afghanistan and its defense of Turkey during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I think such thinking is an intentional distraction from real issues.

Something else is going on with our friend.

But then, like usual you're just aiming below the belt.

Those in Syria have been dreaming for years about having a way to shoot down government jets and helicopters to prevent the bombing of cities. Thankfully, they still do not have such missiles.

Ukraine will soon understand, if it doesn't already, that it is much easier to "punish" rebels who don't have access to tanks and missiles. If Syrian rebels were shooting down "barrel bomb"-dropping helicopters, Mr. Assad would find it much harder to "punish" them, too. I think we are all glad they don't have that capability.

From January through May, six helicopters were shot down and 60 were damaged in battle, an administration official said.

In the same period, 28 M-1 tanks were damaged and five tanks sustained full armor penetration by antitank guided missiles. ISIS, the administration official added, appears to have acquired Russian antitank weapons in Syria. A significant number of M-1 tanks have been hobbled by maintenance issues, the official said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/world/middleeast/american-intelligence-officials-said-iraqi-military-had-been-in-decline.html?_r=0

NARRATOR:  But in recent weeks, they have been receiving more sophisticated weapons.  It appears the Obama administration is now allowing select groups of rebels like them to receive U.S.-made anti-tank missiles, known as TOWs.  Many of the fighters have filmed themselves firing the missiles.  In addition to receiving weapons, the commander says he and his men were taken on a long journey to a secret training camp.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/syria-arming-the-rebels/transcript-63/

Also, We tend to think of Russia as being much more organized and "in control" of their population than they really are.

They truly still are a little bit more like "the wild west". And especially given the situation I can definitely see Russians acting on their own against the commands from Moscow and finding ways to move things to Ukraine. This situation is truly much more complicated than the narrative.

Why are they just now being used? Maybe because they are getting more volunteers that have experience with the equiptment than when they started out? Maybe they are getting more organized over time?