Why using an army without insignia is scary and evil

Image from rediff.com Photocredit Baz Ratner/Reuters

Russia has shown in Georgia and Ukraine that it likes to follow American example of Vietnam of fighting wars by creating a pretext. It began two wars this way and it is able to do so because it chooses what to show to its people and since they have no alternative, the uneducated and massively drunk masses, believe it. As example one can simply look up the troves of propaganda on YouTube that Russia created about its war with Georgia, about its hero soldiers and how it saved Ossetia.

In Ukraine, by bringing in forces that it does not acknowledge and by telling its people are not theirs, they can begin a massive attack on civilian population with their own unmarked forces that they can then send to their news channels to show that Russians are dying in Ukraine at the hands of Fascist Maidan Ukrainians. Since the attacking forces are without insignia, no one in Russia think anything is wrong with that picture and demand that Russia uses its own forces just as it did when KGB blew up several apartment buildings in Moskow, blamed it on Chechnya and then followed up with brutal war and ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Caucases. 

The only thing that can stop Russia, is its own people, its own Army and massive economic sanctions to cripple its ability to go to war. Its people, probably won’t do it. The anti-war protests that happened the past week in Russia were not televised and protesters were not only arrested, but nearly beaten up by angry crowds convinced of Nazis in Ukraine.

What’s even more sad is that ethnic Russians in Ukraine, watch Russian TV so they have also been convinced by Russia that eminent threat from Kiev is coming for them. The ethnic Russians in Crimea have it even worse since they have virtually no way to get information other than from Russia as the troops have taken over all TV channels and have ended all non-Russian broadcasts putting an information isolation on the peninsula which has very sparse internet availability. 

It all comes down to the madness of Putin.. How much does he want Ukraine and at what cost will he hold on to power and what kind of carrot would make him go away from a path of war?