The situation along the Ukraine-Crimea frontier remains tense but relatively calm, as Russian troops shore up the defenses of the breakaway region pending a vote on secession, and Ukrainian officials claim a massive “invasion” of 16,000 troops.
US officials are throwing out threats, demanding an immediate pullout, but Russia says their troops are in the Crimea to stay, and won’t leave until the situation is “normalized.”
Last week, pro-West protesters in Kiev ousted the government, sparking pro-secession calls from the Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and is opposed to the new “interim” government.
Crimea has long existed as an “autonomous region” within the Ukraine, and has now scheduled a referendum on secession. They have suggested that they might also seek reaccession into the Russian Federation.
Western officials are opposed to the secession, though interestingly they were nowhere near so averse to the idea when Ukraine had a pro-Russian government and the secession was in the pro-West city of Lviv.
Though Ukraine’s interim government has dubbed Russia’s involvement a “declaration of war,” they appear not to have the ability to retake the Crimea militarily, and Russia seems content to simply hold the line until the referendum affirms Crimea’s division from the Ukraine.
The cold weather in D.C. has numbed what little brains
the neocon warmongers are given credit to possess. Kerry
and the Right-wing peanut gallery in Congress sound
foolish in their attempt to (threaten) Putin into pulling
out of the Crimea. Interesting how the Right-wing brings
up Hitler whenever it wishes to demonize a head of state.
Saddam, and Assad were called Hitler. Russia is (not) Iraq
or Syria. If these neocons idiots want a war with Russia,
they better dig in for a long fight. Instead of acting like
a bunch of cowboys on the range, sit down and work out a
peacful agreement to settle what's happening in the Ukraine.
Putin denies that any Russian troops ahve ever been in Crimea or anywhere else in Ukraine. That rings true for several reasons. The only way fro Russia to Crimea without passing through Eastern Ukraine is the ferry to Kerch. Russian troops were sent to the ferry port in full view of the whole world but the people in Ukraine managed to slip through that bottleneck without anyone seeing them. And who are the similarly dressed peopel seen In Donetsk? It all sounds like Nuland`s Dragoons! And isn`t it odd that the supposedly "fascist" rioters in Lvov and Kiev have just melted into thin air? Why didnt they go to the east to defend the Fatherland against the "pro-Russian" traitors? Isn`t that what "fascists" do? It`s all starting to sound like a classic neocon stampede: hustle everybody into an irreversible confrontation before they have time to think the thing through.
I agee that this is what neocons do — hustle not everyone, but American feeble establishment with THEIR media, to rustle up American cowboys, and then just sit back and enjoy the profits. But do not put any "fascist' in quotes, because in Ukraine they are real. It has not been hard to follow them on internet, as for years they are openly working in Lvov region of Galicia. Openly. Unashamedly. Russia now controls both sides of Kerch, one is on Russian side, and the other by Crimean forces that are by now quite good. Ukraine's newly appointed Rear Admiral Berezovsky defected to Crimean forces, and ordered navy into Sea of Azov. Fascist did not melt in the air — they are IN THE NEW GOVERNMENT.
whats good for the goose is good for the gander; Kosovo anyone? If Kosovo can violently secede from Serbia because the majority of the population there wanted to even though Kosovo was a province of Serbia, then by all means Crimea can secede from the Ukraine because the majority of the population wants to. Get over it Gangsters of America's politics.