ABC News reported tonight that Putin is putting out that Russian people and churches are being attacked and burned in Ukraine and he is merely protecting them, although there have been no reports of any such thing happening.
What’s next? Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? With their not-insubstantial Russian minorities?
No. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have a big trump card - NATO membership (something a lot of former Soviet Republics are probably wishing they had right now).
When the USSR collapsed, the US government made a pledge not to extend NATO to the Russian Federation’s borders, and promptly reneged.
This thread is another good example of the need to not refer to the government as “us” or “we.”
No, the United States government did not make this pledge. James Baker had raised the possibility in a meeting with Helmut Kohl before their meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. But neither Baker or Bush committed themselves to this policy and they did not make any pledge to Gorbachev. Kohl, on the other hand, did go ahead and pledge to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany.
So Gorbachev had an agreement with Germany but not with the United States or NATO. But he probably figured this was sufficient because the NATO treaty requires all existing members to agree to the admission of any new members. So as long as Germany stuck by its agreement, it could use its veto to prevent the expansion of NATO.
What happened though was that when the United States later pushed for an expansion of NATO (which it had never said it wouldn’t do) Germany agreed. So it was Germany that reneged on its pledge to Russia.
Crimea is important; w/o it Russia has a coast on the Black Sea, but with it they pretty much Own the Black Sea. The rest of the Ukraine is not off the table because of the pipelines which cross it.
Europe depends on Russian NG through those pipelines for their contracts of gas & would prefer for cost alone that this settle peaceably. Russia depends on NG revenues from those exports significantly and would be
in a bad way if Europe got their NG elsewhere. Ukraine and Russia have butted heads periodically over the pipelines over the last 20 years over gas [del]theft[/del] diversion, transport costs, and bills due. I’m willing to bet this
takeover/invasion plan has been formulated and updated quarterly for at least as long.
Its public knowledge that Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons (at Russia’s military insistence) in 1994 and many conservatives on the internet are gleefully pointing out that this is why you never give up your weapons.
While I’ll agree that given this, no other European country will likely give them up any time soon, I’d state that if Ukraine had launched anything, Europe and parts of the US might look a little different this morning.
I’m not as sure as some of you that Putin has thought this all the way through. The timing is horrible for him, so quickly following his Olympics in the area that there is little prospect of a boost in the tourist economy there. He was certainly responding instead to the popular uprising that led to the ouster of his buddy Yanukovych, that would have led to the loss of all of Ukraine from his sphere of influence/control. So I see him reacting to events rather than initiating them, feeling his way as he goes along. The reacquisition of Crimea may not have been in his previous plans, given the lease and his ability to force his own terms there, so the occupation may have been something he felt forced to do in order simply to maintain control.
There may be no end game in his or anybody’s plans. If there’s a way to let him back out with his own sense of honor and political strength domestically intact, well, that’s what diplomats are for. It may not be necessary to remind him of what tends to happen to autocrats who get too repressive in a country wishing for democracy and westernization.
Well, yesterday’s “deadline” has passed, and according to the (totally accurate, naturally) media sources it looks like Putin’s backpedaling a bit. Right now his claim is that he’s only protecting his military installations in Crimea, which is proper for any nation with forward outposts. Dunno if he was bluffing all along, but with Crazy Vlad in charge, who knows?
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall while he & Obama were chatting on the red phone.
Whatthehell, might as well call the local residents the Sudeten Russians.
It would seem that no ultimatum was ever actually issued. The media is nothing more than a politically motivated tissue of lies put out by a gang of intellectual catamites looking to whore themselves to power.
I read a report that the deadline was issued by a local Russian commander but that it never came from Moscow.
Apparently the US has announced it will not send an official delegation to the Paralympics in Sochi, but athletes will be attending.
Apparently, the Crimean parliment has scheduled a referendum for March 16, about whether Crimea should secceed from the Ukraine and ask Russia to annex them. Given that Russians are the majority population there, I’m sure it’ll pass.
Of course, the West can (and probably will) adopt the age-old practice of declaring the vote fraudulent because [del]they’re not happy with the results[/del] unconfirmed reports of intimidation/fraud/etc.
… because Russian troops will be stationed right around the polling places?
58% of the Crimean population is Russian. Ukranians are only about a quarter of the population. Would it really be so hard to believe if they vote to join Russia?
With the plebiscite happening under Russian occupation, we’ll never know.
What happens when Tatars boycott it because it’s illegitimate and they want stronger ties with the West? Just shoot 'em?
When there was a referendum on independence in 1990, the majority of Crimeans joined with the rest of Ukraine in voting for Ukraine to become an independent country.
That said, opinions can change in twenty-four years. Ukraine has had some economic problems and the Ukrainian government has enacted some legislation that the Russian minority doesn’t like. So maybe the majority of Crimeans would now support reunion with Russia.
Another factor is the actual Crimeans, who had been deported by the Soviet government to Uzbekistan. Since Ukraine’s independence, some of these Crimeans have been returning to Crimea and now form a significant minority there.
I honestly don’t think Putin has any goals worked out.
He spent 50 billion dollars buying goodwill with the Olympics. How many times Crimeas GDP is that? And then he more than wasted the whole thing in a day by sending in the tanks.
It was a reaction to a Moscow-friendly president being removed, not any kind of pre-planned move.
This does not look like any kind of organized military operation. Seize a base, let a base go, take another, let the Ukrainians in, take a border post, go away again, find a pretext, try another…its utter dithering!
If this had been a planned military operation, the troops would have moved in, pretexts issued, and the military objectives secured. In a day. This looks nothing like anything with a plan behind it.
I think Putin saw a Moscow-friendly president in eastern europe fall, and reflexivly reverted to type: Send in the tanks. It worked in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
And now he has no plan. He could have had Crimea for far less. Its historically Russian, and has a Russian majority, I think. Bit of bribery, but of subtle intimidation, bit of promises…he could have had that without the cost.
The long-term damage this has done to Russias interest is pretty huge. The eastern europeans have had all their fears vindicated. The EU as a customer is going to start shopping for another energy supplier. Russia cannot match the EUs military budgets as-is. They’re not matching France and the UKs totals even. If this leads to the EU consolidating their military expenditure, their military position is vastly degraded.
The only way Putin can salvage any kind of benefit out of this is if he can keep the whole of Ukraine, but I think he is vacilliating about whether he can get away with that, and it might be Pyrric anyway.