The discussions on whether or not NATO would join in the fight can stop.

Watched the vid, most certainly does not stop that discution, at all.

For the past few decades, Russia has been particularly aggressive towards its neighbors as others have pointed out. You don't see the US running beacon-less fighter jets on a direct path to other nation's military centers.

I agree with this. Other nations act like bullies routinely, often with policy and economics. China bullies it's neighbors politically and economically, as does the US, and any other country with the power to push policy with economics. China camps out in the South China sea claiming it their own while the US has military bases around the world. However, neither role-play bombing raids on their neighbors or threaten to nuke them.

Russia has a credibility problem with recent events as well. They claimed that they didn't have troops in Crimea, then later Putin laughingly admitted "yes of course, our troops were there". It seems Russia's main concern is with the opinions of Russians, and they act in a way that makes it obvious that they don't care what anyone else thinks. Great for internal opinion polls (especially with state "influenced" media), but rather bad for international relations.

Unfortunately, Turkey is sliding toward the same mentality with an increasingly autocratic ruler. Shooting down a bogie is a "show of strength", even when it was really never a threat in the first place. It just comes off as paranoia. There was no reason for it other than to spit in Russia's eye.

China camps out in the South China sea claiming it their own while the US has military bases around the world. However, neither role-play bombing raids on their neighbors or threaten to nuke them.

China does. Testing air defenses, I mean. As far as Nukes go, China prefers a more Israeli approach.

China tests Japan's air defenses on average of once or twice a day.

Shooting down a bogie is a "show of strength", even when it was really never a threat in the first place. It just comes off as paranoia. There was no reason for it other than to spit in Russia's eye.

Except that Russia had repeatedly violated their airspace, and was doing so to bomb Turkey's allies, including ethnic turks. Russia gets to annex Crimea just because of some vague theoretical danger to Crimean-based ethnic Russians, but Turkey doesn't get to stop bombers from actually bombing ethnic Turks?

I'm not saying Turkey's in the right, but I'm suggesting Turkey's interests haven't been unharmed by Russia's repeated airspace violations, and are getting annoyed that once again Russia is doing heavy military movements right on Turkey's borders.

The Russian fighters were warned prior to the firing 10 times (and had been warned in the past), however those 10 warnings may have spanned only a few seconds.
The fighters were in Turkish airspace, but possibly only for a few seconds.

I think the "ten warnings" and "only in their airspace for a few seconds" could've just as easily come from issuing the warnings before they entered their airspace. i.e. "You're approaching Turkish airspace, identify yourself." even while they are 100 miles out or more. It's not like they start tracking and contacting approaching aircraft only after the aircrafts are actually over vulnerable targets.

I obviously don't know if that's what actually happened, but I'd think that's more likely than "yourinourairspace yourinourairspace yourinourairspace yourinourairspace yourinourairspace. There, shoot 'em!".

until the nationalist (nazi) thugs who took over the country

Do you really believe that?

Yanukivich deliberately led country towards disaster.

Companies was taken by raids, or by creating conditions that forced them to work with or under family-related companies.

By some magic/accident lists of conscripts in recruitments offices was destroyed in 2013.

Many other events suggests that country was deliberately weakened or led to the point where it couldn't exist other way than under russia.

voted (fairly - no one disputes the validity of the vote)

Voting was performed with foreign military presence, and referendum wasn't all-Ukrainian, as it must be under the law.

There was no other international observers, except for Putin-baked far-right parties, a-la Marine Le Pen's "National Front".

Even Putin's own presidential council published report, obviously telling that referendum was a fake.

http://www.stopfake.org/en/the-russian-presidential-council-questioned-the-results-of-the-crimean-referendum/

Quote: “According to almost all citizens and professionals surveyed: – The vast majority of the people of Sevastopol city voted in a referendum to join Russia (50-80% turnout). According to various sources, in Crimea 50-60% voted for joining Russia, with the total turnout of 30-50 %.

– The people of Crimea voted not so much for joining Russia, as for the termination, in their words, of “corruption and lawlessness of the thieves of domineering Donetsk henchmen”. The people of Sevastopol voted precisely for annexation to Russia . Fears of illegal armed groups in Sevastopol were higher than in other regions of the Crimea”.

They voted not against Ukraine, but against Yanukovich and his clan. And less than 30% of all people (in best case) really wanted to join russia.

Moreover - in voting list there was no even the option to stay with Ukraine. Is it the fair voting?

Crimea was mostly apathetic towards the Ukrainian coup, until the nationalist (nazi) thugs who took over the country (with US support, mind you) committed a massacre against Crimeans (not to mention the other massacres against other eastern Ukrainian communities, which sparked a civil war...).

Read your own link, mate.
First result: A page arguing that the event never happened and is just Russian propoganda.
Second link: A fake Russian-made "human rights organization" that never existed until the Crimean situation. This is the organization that released the video in the first place. It repeatedly promotes pro-Russian stories against Ukraine. You seriously believe it's legitimate?

Then you have a bunch of blogs mostly posting anti-US rhetoric and outright conspiracy theories who reblogged it.

Turns out, when recording the fake video, the "Nazi Ukrainian" soldiers may have been carrying modern Russian-issued military equipment, instead of Ukraine's out-dated cold-war-era Russian equipment. Further, at the location this disaster apparently occurred in, was behind the Russian-controlled lines. [linky]

Russia has a slick propaganda machine; but they make enough mistakes that you should be able enough to see through it.

And the bus-burning incident took place on the same day the Russian-backed snipers opened fire on the protesters even before the old president was overthrown. Either the old Russian-backed president ordered the shooting himself, or Russia directly did, since these snipers were almost certainly from the old Ukraine government's Russian-aligned KGB-spinoff.

After that event, Crimea got angry, voted (fairly - no one disputes the validity of the vote) to succeed from Ukraine, and then voted to request membership into the Russian Federation.
[...]
In international law, annexation is the forcible transition of one state's territory by another state -- the word you're looking for is succession, not annexation...

Yea, because voting under armed guard makes for valid votes. It works really well: If you don't vote, then Russia wins. If you do vote, then Russia has an explicit record of who opposes them for future harassment. Fantastic!

And Russia has never been known to manipulate votes before.

Heck, it's not like Russia has never manipulated elections in Ukraine before (and the USA as well).

And it's not like Russia doesn't call everyone they oppose Nazis, even when their fathers were literally in concentration camps.

No one disputes the vote? In what fantasy land? I guess you meant to say, "No Russian allies dispute the vote, but almost everyone else condemns it".

<sarcasm> But, yes, nobody disputes that 96% of all of Crimea wanted to join Russia, with 82% turnout, despite 24% of the population being ethnic Ukrianians and 12% of the population being ethnic Tatars. </sarcasm>

Ofcourse, the Tatars en-bulk boycotted the election because it was illegal under Crimean, Ukrainian, and international law.

TV stations were blocked to the opposition, and TV and pamphlets showed Pro-Russian and Anti-Ukrainian views. Totally fair.

Russian-favorable vote ran by Russia (with Russian flags over government buildings even before the "succession" ), under Russian-armed guards, with non-Crimean Russian-citizens allowed to vote, and Russian soldiers voting by the busload. Hmm, sounds familiar... Because Russia has done this before!

There is a genuine majority in Crimea that in a legitimate vote, would've probably voted 60% pro-secession; but this wouldn't have been enough to secede. Regardless, an illegal seizure of land is an illegal seizure. Some ethnic Ukrainians and some Tartars would've voted to secede, and some ethnic-Russians (a small portion) would've voted to stay. But what a valid portion of civilians might've voted in a legitimate vote (and again, they wouldn't have had enough to secede anyway) doesn't give justification for a fake vote and illegal annexation.

Crimea was annexed because Russia needs it for for their naval bases and didn't want Ukraine to join the European Union.

Oops, sorry, you don't like the term 'annexed'. Let me rephrase that: Russia lied, cheated, broke international law, beat up citizens, murdered civilians, and staged a fake referendum under armed guard to illegally seize land they wanted. Don't like annex? Try 'conquered'. They conquered Crimea militarily, but pretended it wasn't their troops while doing so. And the (ongoing) civilian casualties that has resulted are not insignificant.

The Maiden protests are a direct continuation of the Orange Revolution, which, to some extent, is a continuation of Ukraine breaking from the USSR. Russia wants to maintain control over geography that doesn't belong to them. The majority of the population doesn't want Russia's micro-management of their lives and government. So, since Ukraine was more and more floating away from Russia's domination, Russia repeatedly tried to maintain control through various means, and finally decided to just bite off the chunk of geography where Russia is viewed favorably, rather than lose the entire thing.

Yes, the USA and Europe also want to influence Ukraine, but this influence is far more "we'll give you aid and advice", and far less of the "we'll murder political leaders, journalists, and protesters" that is Russia's signature.

Historically, under Russian governments, you have far lower quality of life, worse human rights violations, and less freedom. Russia tries to maintain control through force and manipulation.

Again, this doesn't make the USA perfect or above reproach. Criticizing one does not prevent me from criticizing the other. But when I compare the two, Russia comes off far worse in almost every category - and I am very critical of the US government, in general. The USA has a huge list of crimes that it needs to answer for. That doesn't give Russia's crimes a free pass.

The ethnic turks that we're supposed to be sympathizing with here

No, see, I can fairly criticize both sides. The Turks are practically doing ethnic cleansing against the Kurds; I'm not pro-Turkey. If anything, I'm implicitly biased against Turkey, in favor of the Kurds.

This is really important: Opposition to one group does not automatically mean I approve of the actions of the other group. In the USA at least, everyone seems to be so polarized that you can't criticize one group (in any conflict, whether political or geographical) without automatically being seen as a supporter of everything the other group does. And you can't compliment one group without being seen as supporting everything they do. That's not critical thinking.

The Turkey government can be flawed in a hundred different ways, but that doesn't mean Russia's repeated violation of their airspace is automatically altruistic. But in the same breath, I can also acknowledge that Russia's repeated violation of their airspace doesn't automatically mean shooting down their jet was a smart move.

Further, me trying to look at it from Turkey's point of view doesn't mean I can't also look at it from other points of view. Looking at situations like these from multiple angles is necessary to get a more complete picture.
So when I'm looking at Turkey, who I'm biased against because of their anti-Kurd actions, I'm trying to understand things from their perspective as well. Russia is flying jets near, and occasionally into, their airspace to attack Turkey's proxy-soldiers (Turkey-sponsored rebels) in defense of Turkey's enemy (Assad).

One of the problems we have nowadays is many nations, including the USA and Russia and Turkey and dozens of others, like to fight wars without actually calling them wars.
For example, the Russian annexation of Crimea, that yes, everyone knew Russia's soldiers were fighting but Russia repeatedly claimed they weren't, until finally Russia admitted it after the fact with a, "lol, yea it was us! kekekeke", and then repeatedly denies they are in East Ukraine in the exact same way.

Russia heavily uses propaganda. You are believing most of it, without questioning it critically. (And, before you automatically switch targets by claiming the USA uses propaganda too, I'll repeat myself: Just because I'm criticizing Russia, doesn't mean I automatically approve of the USA.

Russia also suppresses freedom of the press. Note that even in the "Ukraine" section, it's Russian abuse (or Russian-controlled pre-IronMaiden Ukraine abuse, or Russian-controlled Crimean abuse). Russia censors freedom of press, and heavily uses propaganda. When the USA government issues propaganda, there is still freedom of press for other news organizations to counter it. The Snowden docs, for example, where heavily spread in Western Media, despite overwhelming reasons for the USA to suppress that.

Russia kills freedom of press through a variety of means, making the way open for their propaganda to go unchallenged within the regions they control.

Human Rights in Russia is one of the worst of first-world countries. During the period where Russia-backed Yanukovych was controlling Ukraine before the Maiden protests, Ukraine dramatically dropped in human rights. Prior to that, Ukraine was one of the best.

On a side note, the whole Sunni extremist uprising in Syria was planned out by America as long as ten years ago.

America's plan was to overthrow Iraq's Sunni government, replace it with a Shiite government, and then overthrow the Shiite government, and replace it with a Sunni government?

It was entirely stupid for us to get into Iraq in 2003. Had we wanted to, we had opportunity and international support to do so in the Gulf War, but Bush Sr intelligently decided not to, understanding the geopolitical benefit of leaving Saddam in charge (who maintained stability and some degrees of freedom for the masses). Bush Jr wanted to one-up his dad out of ego, and killed tens of thousands and displaced millions as a result.

We hand out guns to practically anyone who asks, and then they get pointed back at us. We're kinda stupid like that. I don't think we planned ISIS in specific. We may have planned to overthrow Syria using rebels, in general. (Because it's worked so well for us in the past. )

I try not to attribute to maliciousness what I can attribute to clumsiness or incompetence. In the Crimea situation, the annexation was a last-ditch effort after a series of bad missteps by the Russian government trying to maintain control. In my mind, most of the world is flying by the seat of the pants, trying to react on the go to changing dynamics.