Bharat Rakshak

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Russia is entitled to have troops and naval forces at its bases in the Crimea during his visit to Ukrane. He also said that the crisis in Ukraine is "the biggest crisis in Europe in the 21 century."

Hague said that Russia now had operational control of Ukraine's Crimea region and that while Russia had the legal right to base troops in the region, the Kremlin should order them to return to their barracks. He aslo urged Ukraine and Russia to hold talks.

"Clearly we are very concerned about any possibly of a further move by Russia in other parts of Ukraine but that does not mean the position in the Crimea is stable," Hague told the BBC in an interview.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Thursday, openly admitted the US had encouraged protests in Russia after Vladimir Putin's United Russia party held on to power in the most recent elections.

Clinton didn't deny Putin's accusation that she was stirring up trouble and backing protests in Russia. Instead, she responded by saying her having done so "doesn't justify Russian military counter-measures" taken once the protests erupted.

The secretary added the United States was not alone in "expressing concerns" over voting irregularities.

"Human rights is a part of who we are. And we expressed concerns that we thought were well founded about the conduct of the elections," she said. { What about Saudi and Bahrain citizen Human Right Maam }

"We are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and realize a better future for themselves," Clinton added.

The prime minister had accused the United States of encouraging protests over Russia's parliamentary election. He also asserted hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funds – mostly American – were used to fund the campaigns of opposition parties.

In his first public remarks about daily demonstrations by protesters alleging Sunday's vote was fraudulent and unfair, Putin said the secretary of state "gave a signal" to Kremlin opponents."She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work," he said.

Putin's allegations that the US tried to buy Russia's vote and then moved to spark protests after it failed to achieve victory is not unique – following on the heels of revelations that the State Department routed $200 million in funds through USAID to liberal and pro-western parties in Egypt hoping to influence elections there as well.

Similar reports of US foreign aid dollars finding their way into the coffers of foreign political parties emerged during Kenya’s most recent electoral contest as well.

Political analysts say the Obama administration has established a clear pattern of routing foreign aid earmarked for “infrastructure” and “cultural development” in recipient countries into the coffers of foreign political parties and NGOs as a means of influencing foreign elections and institutions.

In Israel, numerous NGOs receive ostensibly receive USAID funds for “cultural development” while promoting political agendas that support US foreign policy over Israel’s national interests.

Clinton did not comment on whether or not US funding of domestic Russian political parties could be considered "irregular," or might violate the right of Russia's population to determine who will lead them absent foreign influence.

Neela wrote:Colleague of mine from Bosnia also says USAID is a front.

Mary Dejevsky
Sunday 2 March 2014

The Americans, Churchill supposedly said, could be relied upon to do the right thing, but only after they had exhausted all the alternatives.

With Vladimir Putin, you might be tempted to turn that aphorism upside down: after toying with all the better options, he turns around and plumps for the absolute worst.

After appearing to embark on a more cooperative foreign policy - helping the US with transit arrangements for its Afghan withdrawal; facilitating a deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria, and entertaining the world at the Sochi Winter Olympics - Putin now seems to be on the verge of plunging the region if not into World War Three, then into a 21st century re-run of the Crimean War. Is he really prepared to sacrifice the diplomatic gains of the past year to keep Ukraine inside Russia's sphere of influence in what looks very much like a fit of personal pique?

From the Kremlin, the picture, and the options, will look very different. A common view from abroad is that Putin runs Russia single-handed, as a latter-day tsar, and indulges his own caprices. As a footnote, it has been suggested that the success - or at least non-failure - of Sochi might have emboldened him to show (even) more assertiveness in the neighbourhood. Such views disregard both the continuing weakness of central power in Russia and the extent to which any Russian leader now must take account of public opinion.

Within Russia, the popular pressure on Putin will not be for restraint, but for action. His stance reflects a domestic consensus that, while Ukraine may be independent, its natural place is within Russia's orbit and Moscow cannot just stand by while the West conspires to snatch it away. "Who lost Ukraine?" is a question that has real potential to erode Putin's power.

Which is why, more remarkable than Putin's current threat to use force was the relative calm with which he initially responded to the Kiev protests and the collapse of the Ukrainian administration. He even sent an envoy to join the EU foreign ministers brokering a deal between Yanukovych and the opposition, and looked ready to accept the outcome.

It was when that deal collapsed, violence broke out, and the conflict spread, that Putin started to play hardball. And he did so in a way, it is worth noting, that carefully mirrored certain Western practice: a limited and deniable show of force (in Crimea); a vote in Parliament, and reference to a "responsibility to protect" an endangered population.

It is too simple to cite age-old cultural and religious ties as a reason for war over Ukraine, though they count for much, and Putin has a fierce sense of Russia's dignity. Nor is it because of fears that, one day, Ukraine might join the European Union, (though this might be because Putin knows better than Kiev how tough the entry conditions are). I have heard him say categorically that he accepts Ukraine as a sovereign independent state and, equally categorically, that it is up to post-Soviet states to determine their own economic course if - and it is a big if - they can afford the cost of loosening economic ties with Russia.

The appeal of the EU is not itself a problem. There are, though, two other reasons that may dictate Putin's current actions. The first derives from the 1990s and concerns the West's betrayal - as Russia sees it - of its pledge not to expand Nato to Russia's borders. One view is that this promise, given to then President Gorbachev, lost its validity when he lost power. This is not the view subsequent Russian leaders have taken. Putin, and even his usually mild-mannered prime minister and defence minister, become utterly incensed when they talk about it. They see it as a prelude to humiliation and "encirclement".

The all-or-nothing, now-or- never, east-or-west language used by EU leaders, when they tried to persuade Ukraine to sign up to the EU association agreement before the Brussels-imposed November deadline only strengthened Russia's suspicion. Those Western officials - John Kerry and William Hague among them - now saying that any solution for Ukraine must recognise its position between East and West and involve Russia were singing a very different tune late last year.

The other reason for Putin's threat is the gulf that has opened up between the way in which recent events in Ukraine are seen in Russia (and in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea) and the way they are seen in the West. Putin might still sacrifice Yanukovych - a leader who cannot keep order is no good as an ally anyway - but the fact that he was democratically elected, the way in which he was toppled (by street protests), and the far-right elements in the crowd (presented in Russia as a majority) all combine to foreshadow a new regime that could, in Moscow's view, indeed imperil Ukraine's Russian-speakers.

This may not be the truth of the situation, but it is one that many Russians, including Putin, who were educated in Soviet times, find credible - more credible, at least, than the Western version of enlightened protesters removing a despot in the national interest. So long as these two versions of recent events persist, so too will the prospect of armed conflict.

Russia continued to defy calls from the West to withdraw from Ukraine’s Crimea region as relations between East and West plummeted in the worst diplomatic crisis since the Cold War.

On Monday, reports from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry that Russian Fighter jets had "violated" the country's airspace over the Black Sea overnight came as Russian border ships moved around the port city of Sevastopol, where the Black Sea Fleet is based.

The take over of the ferry terminal on the eastern tip of Crimea by Russian troops has exacerbated fears that Moscow is planning to bring even more troops into the strategic Black Sea region. There was no immediate comment from the Russian Defence Ministry.

In a series of interviews last night the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said the Obama administration was looking at what sanctions to impose if Russia didn’t “step back” from its military incursion. “There could even be, ultimately, asset freezes, visa bans” and disruption of trade, Kerry said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

Unidentified fighter jets at Belbek Airport in the Crimea region on 1 March 2014
During a visit to Kiev today, the Foreign Secretary William Hague described the situation as "certainly the biggest crisis in Europe in the 21st century”, adding that there was "no justification" for the actions in Crimea, where Russia had "in effect taken control".

Echoing US President Obama's speech on Friday, the Foreign Secretary said Moscow should be in no doubt that it faced "significant costs" for its move into the Ukrainian region.

President Vladimir Putin has defended Russia’s actions, blaming “ultra-nationalist forces” for seizing power in Kiev. A Kremlin statement posted online said Putin told the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Sunday that measures taken by Russia so far were "fully adequate” and in response to the unrelenting threat of violence" to "Russian citizens and the whole Russian-speaking population".

Ukrainians make up a majority (62 percent) of Odessa's inhabitants, and there is also a large and well established ethnic Russian minority (29 percent),[14] with a strong diaspora thriving in the colony of New Russia that was established at the end of the 18th century. Despite the increasing status of the Ukrainian language, the primary language spoken in the city continues to be Russian.

Kiev had asked its forces in Crimea, numbering around 3,500 and facing up to 30,000 better-armed Russians, not to "react to provocation". It had denied suggestions that some senior officers welcomed Moscow's intervention. But just hours later, Rear Admiral Denys Berezovsky, appointed in his post as head of the navy on Saturday, defected and pledged allegiance to the new pro-Russian administration in Crimea. The Ukrainian government announced that he would be tried for treason; but it was a humiliating blow.

Ukraine's acting Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, hit out at what he called "a declaration of war by Vladimir Putin", and asked for international help. The United States and Britain, along with Russia, are co-signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which guarantees the security of Ukraine against external aggression, although legal interpretation differs on whether the threat has to involve nuclear weapons.

The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Facebook on Sunday night that Ukraine's leaders had seized power illegally, and he predicted their rule would end with "a new revolution".

"Russia is ready to develop multi-faceted, respectful relations with brotherly Ukraine - mutually beneficial and effective relations," he said.

"But Ukraine for us is not a group of people who, pouring blood on the Maidan [Kiev's main square], seized power in violation of the constitution and other state laws."

The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, landed in Kiev on Sunday to hold talks with the administration formed after the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych.

During a 90-minute telephone conversation a day earlier, Barack Obama had warned Mr Putin that "continued violation of international law in regards to Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity will lead to greater political and economic isolation". Mr Kerry threatened to boycott the G8 summit in Sochi, and said he had discussed an array of punitive measures, including visa bans, asset freezes and trade and investment restrictions, with allied states to "go to the hilt" in isolating Russia.

Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, said planning for the G8 summit should be put on hold and Moscow must be made to understand that the "military escalation must have costs".

But Moscow's march into Crimea - whose ethnic Russian majority population is expected to vote in a referendum for secession from Ukraine in a prelude to fulfilling the wish of many to be ruled by Moscow - has continued remorselessly. The main port, Sevastopol, and the capital, Simferopol, as well as main airports and transport and communications centres have been taken over by Russian forces.

Armed men in military fatigues stand near a painted Ukrainian coat of arms symbol as they block access to a Ukrainian border guards base Armed men in military fatigues stand near a painted Ukrainian coat of arms symbol as they block access to a Ukrainian border guards base (Getty Images)
The Kiev government has insisted that 10 naval ships remained armed and loyal at Sevastopol. But that was before Admiral Berezovsky appeared alongside Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of the newly established separatist Crimean administration, to say he would disregard any orders from the "self-proclaimed" government. Admiral Berezovsky had countermanded instructions to carry out a strategic withdrawal to Odessa. Two Russian warships, from the Baltic fleet, appeared offshore, in breach of bilateral agreements on military movements, as a warning to any ship captain who had decided to strike out on his own.

Meanwhile a number of military installations, including an anti-aircraft missile base, have been taken over - seemingly without significant resistance - in the last few days. But the Ukrainian forces at Perevalne were not prepared to hand over their complement of light artillery and armour, after their adversaries arrived in four armoured carriers and 13 trucks.

As had been the case hitherto, there were no insignias on the combat outfits of the force, faces were hidden behind balaclavas. Previously the vehicles the forces had been travelling in had no number plates; now some of them bore Russian ones.

A man holds a Russian flag as armed men in military fatigues block access to a Ukrainian border guards base not far from the village of Perevalne near Simferopol A man holds a Russian flag as armed men in military fatigues block access to a Ukrainian border guards base (Getty Images)
The Ukrainians pulled up a row of tanks behind the gates to the entrance. A little later an officer, a lieutenant colonel, stepped out to hold talks with a group of Russians. On his way back to the base, he curtly said that he was "returning from negotiating with the Russian Federation".

Soon afterwards two black four-wheel-drive vehicles arrived flying flags of the Russian Unity party which has just become the governing body in Crimea. Six members of the riot police, the Berkut, who had been disbanded by the government in Kiev for their part in the killing of protesters in the capital, emerged and walked into the base.

Some among the crowd who have gathered outside were of the opinion that they had gone in to try to persuade the troops to give up. The Russian troops were professional and thorough as they secured the perimeter of the base. Those lining the route in had their Kalashnikov assault rifles loaded. Those nearer the base had unloaded the magazines into the pockets of their combat jackets.

As in other public deployments so far, they refused to answer questions, and, among themselves, the only words spoken were by non-commissioned officers repositioning some of their men.

Five top military, security commanders take oath to Crimea
Published time: March 02, 2014 21:57

A number of high ranking Ukrainian military and security officials in Crimea have sworn their allegiance to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as Simferopol pushes for its autonomy from the self-imposed government in Kiev.

The head of the Security Service of Crimea Petyor Zima, Chief of Department of Internal Affairs in the Crimea Sergey Abisov, the head of Service for Emergency Situations Sergei Shakhov and acting Chief of the Border Guards of Crimea Victor Melnichenko all took an oath of allegiance to the people of Crimea.

Earlier rear admiral Denis Berezovsky swore allegiance to the people of Crimea taking control over Crimea's newly formed Navy.

The ceremony took place in the Council of Ministers chamber in the presence of regional government officials, mayors of different cities and regions.

Those who took the oath promised “to respect and strictly observe the Constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” and to “promote the preservation of interethnic accord and civil peace” on the peninsula.

"I believe that this day will go down in history of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as the day that all law enforcement agencies were established in the autonomy,” The region's Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov announced. “We will prove that the Crimeans are capable of protecting themselves and ensure the safety and freedom of our citizens.”

Aksyonov also added that other authority figures are willing to swear allegiance to the people of the Crimea in the near future. “Up to now, 90 per cent of all law enforcement agencies in the territory of the autonomy are subordinated to the Supreme Council of Crimea. And this work will be completed by us tonight,” Aksyonov told the regional parliament.

Aksyonov also said that a new Defense Ministry will soon be created for the autonomous Crimea

“In the near future, as part of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a new ministry – the Ministry of Defence will be created. I am sure that such a ministry will be vital for us, based on the principle of ‘If you want peace - prepare for war.’”

The Prime Minister of Crimea also noted that self-defense squads are guarding the Crimean prosecutor's office, where a new acting prosecutor will be presented for the regional parliament for approval on Monday. The issue with the Court of Appeal will also be discussed on Monday.

Chief of the Border Guards of Crimea Victor Melnichenko

Chief of the Border Guards of Crimea Victor Melnichenko

“Today the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is formed as an independent, integral public authority,” said Aksyonov. "I am sure that all of us will prove that we did not just come into power and that we can give Crimeans what they expect from us”

The prime minister admitted that a number of outstanding issues must be dealt with in the Crimea and the development of a common strategy is to take place at the next Council of Ministers of Crimea meeting scheduled for March 4.

In an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta Aksyonov promised to create a stable state in Crimea by May.

“We will never see ‘Maidan’ with their black smoke and burned tires here,” the Crimean leader said. "I responsibly promise that Crimea by May will be calm, quiet, friendly. People of all nationalities will live here happily.”

Facts you need to know about Crimea and why it is in turmoil

Crimeans began protesting after the new self-imposed government in Kiev introduced a law abolishing the use of other languages for official documents in Ukraine. More than half the Crimean population are Russian and use only this language for their communication. The residents have announced they are going to hold a referendum on March 30 to determine the fate of the Ukrainian autonomous region.

Feeling a threat from the new central government of questionable legitimacy, a number of regions stood up against it. Thousands of people across eastern and southern Ukraine are flooding the streets of major cities, urging local authorities to disobey Kiev’s orders. The local population is calling the government in Kiev illegitimate and demanding that their local governments refuse to take orders from it.

Nearly a hundred pro-Russian protesters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk have seized two floors of the regional government building, after the self-imposed Kiev government appointed a local oligarch as a Donetsk Region governor.

In the building there are currently over 20 journalists and deputies of the local parliament, according to ITAR-TASS.

Earlier on Monday morning thousands of anti-Maidan activists came to the building of local administration. They were chanting "Taruta - out!" and carrying Russian flags and banners reading “Russians are our brothers.”

Pro-Russian activists demonstrate in front of riot policemen standing guard in front of the regional administration in Donetsk on March 3, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexander Khudoteply)

Pro-Russian activists demonstrate in front of riot policemen standing guard in front of the regional administration in Donetsk on March 3, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexander Khudoteply)

On Sunday the self-proclaimed government in Kiev dismissed Donetsk Governor Andrey Shishatsky and appointed one of Ukraine’s richest men, Sergey Taruta, in his place. Taruta heads ISD, one of the biggest mining and smelting companies in the world, and also owns the Donetsk-based Metallurg Football Club.

The appointment in Donetsk is among 18 made on Sunday by the self-appointed regime Kiev, which is struggling to consolidate power after the coup that ousted President Yanukovich 10 days ago. The defiant regions seek greater autonomy from the central authorities. Having the right to elect their own governors as opposed to have them appointed in Kiev, is one of the demands regularly voiced at the protest rallies in eastern and southern Ukraine.

However, on Monday, the deputies of the regional parliament have secretly voted to appoint Shishatsky a parliament’s head which also outraged the protesters.

On Saturday, the Donetsk City Council refused to recognize Ukraine’s self-imposed government and called for a referendum on the region’s status. In addition, the members of the city council have voted to set up self-defense squads.

Also, the Russian language has been re-introduced as an official language along with Ukrainian in the area, where a plurality of its residents are ethnic Russians (48.15 percent) and Russian-speaking Ukrainians (46.65 percent). This decision came after the new power in Kiev abolished the minority languages law.

Riot policemen stand guard in front of the regional administration in Donetsk on March 3, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexander Khudoteply)

Riot policemen stand guard in front of the regional administration in Donetsk on March 3, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexander Khudoteply)

On Monday, the regional parliament announced they were ready to hold the referendum.

Donetsk is the capital of the coal-rich Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Besides Donetsk, a major economic, industrial and scientific center, Donbass includes the Lugansk and Dnepropetrovsk regions.

Feeling a threat from the new central government of questionable legitimacy, a number of regions stood up against it. Thousands of people across eastern and southern Ukraine are flooding the streets of major cities, urging local authorities to disobey Kiev’s orders. The local population is calling the government in Kiev illegitimate and demanding that their local governments refuse to take orders from it.

In Kharkov, the largest city in eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian protesters managed to break through the cordon of Maidan supporters and captured the government building on Monday.

Around 5,000 people have demonstrated with Russian and Soviet flags over the weekend in Odessa, the third-largest city in the country.

Protests were also held in Lugansk, Melitopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch and Mariupol.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said “unacceptable threats” delivered by US Secretary of State John Kerry regarding the situation in Crimea has failed to take into account the violent power seizure in Kiev carried out by radicals.

In the statement released Monday, the ministry said Kerry’s “Cold War” rhetoric would do nothing to punish “radical extremists” who carried out the coup, but rather sought to put the focus on the Russian Federation. It was further critical of the G7’s decision to suspend preparations for the upcoming G8 Summit in Sochi, saying the move has no grounds.

The foreign ministry accused Washington and its allies of turning a blind eye to the excesses of what it called militant, Russophobic and anti-Semitic forces operating on Kiev’s central Independence Square which pushed for the ouster of Ukraine’s embattled President Viktor Yanukovych last month.

“Not bothering to make any effort to understand the complex processes occurring within Ukrainian society or make an objective assessment of the environment, which is furthering the degradation following the forceful seizure of power in Kiev by radical extremists, [Secretary of State John Kerry] operates with a ‘Cold War’ stamp, offering not to punish those who carried out the government overthrow, but the Russian Federation,” it read.

"And while glossing over this, the USA and its allies have closed their eyes to the excesses of the radical fighters on Maidan, their bullying of political opponents and ordinary citizens, as well as their anti-Semitism and militant Russophobia.”

Moscow further accused European powers of standing idly by while the “newly born Kiev regime” trampled on the EU mediated agreement of February 21, in which Yanukovich reached a deal with the opposition to settle the crisis. The ministry noted the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland had signed off on the document which was thrown out the window when opposition forces seized power the next day. In the process, the West has effectively allied itself with neo-Nazis who are smashing Orthodox churches and synagogues while “declaring war on the Russian language.”

“You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” John Kerry said during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It’s really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century.”

Kerry has also threatened to isolate Russia economically and politically and warned of potential asset freezes and visa bans, adding to media and political hype that followed Russia authorization of sending a stabilization force in Crimea on official request from the authorities.

“There could be certainly disruption of any of the normal trade routine, there could be business drawback on investment in the country,” he said. “There could even be ultimately asset freezes, visa bans.”

Although Kerry was never challenged by the interviewer to comment in terms of that statement on Washington’s own constant threats to use force and military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who watched the interview immediately smelled the hypocrisy.

“Since when does the United States government genuinely subscribe and defend the concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity? They certainly are not doing that at the moment in Syria,” Marcus Papadopoulos, commentator for ‘Politics First’ told RT. “They certainly did not do that when they attacked Libya. They certainly didn’t do that when they invaded Iraq. They certainly didn’t do that when they attacked Serbia over Kosovo and then later on recognized Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. The United States government merely pays lip service to sovereignty and territorial integrity, it picks and choses.”

Since the crisis in Ukraine escalated to a point where the lives of the Russian speaking population of Ukraine has become threatened, Kerry’s reaction comes, some believe, as the most ridiculous thus far, taking into account US own history of military actions all over the globe.

The Interpreter ‏@Interpreter_Mag
Ukraine Liveblog: Russian forces give Ukraine military in Crimea until 3 AM GMT (10 PM ET) to surrender.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers Sunday said the naivete of President Obama's national security advisers about Russian President Vladimir Putin's motivations is allowing Russia to outmaneuver the U.S. in Ukraine and other hot spots around the globe.

“Putin is playing chess and we're playing marbles,” Rogers, R-Mich., said on “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.”

“As you move down the list in Syria and the Ukraine and other areas,” he said, "they've been running circles around us.”

President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obama’s timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration.

The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.

Though I’m told the Ukraine crisis caught both Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program.

Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war.

American neocons – along with Israel and Saudi Arabia – had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran that could open the door to more “regime change” across the Middle East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the 1990s.

This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S. high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.

The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S. neocons simply pressed for “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.

U.S. neocons working on Netanyahu’s campaign team in 1996, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, even formalized their bold new plan, which they outlined in a strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The paper argued that only “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton refused to go along. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush took office and after the 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, the neocons had a Commander in Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq’s Saddam Hussein — and a stunned and angry U.S. public could be easily persuaded. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

So, Bush invaded Iraq, ousting Hussein but failing to subdue the country. The U.S. death toll of nearly 4,500 soldiers and the staggering costs, estimated to exceed $1 trillion, made the American people and even Bush unwilling to fulfill the full-scale neocon vision, which was expressed in one of their favorite jokes of 2003 about where to attack next, Iran or Syria, with the punch line: “Real men go to Tehran!”

Though hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the neocon/Israeli case for having the U.S. military bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities – with the hope that the attacks also might spark a “regime change” in Tehran – Bush decided that he couldn’t risk the move, especially after the U.S. intelligence community assessed in 2007 that Iran had stopped work on a bomb four years earlier.

The Rise of Obama

The neocons were dealt another setback in 2008 when Barack Obama defeated a neocon favorite, Sen. John McCain. But Obama then made one of the fateful decisions of his presidency, deciding to staff key foreign-policy positions with “a team of rivals,” i.e. keeping Republican operative Robert Gates at the Defense Department and recruiting Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite, to head the State Department.

Obama also retained Bush’s high command, most significantly the media-darling Gen. David Petraeus. That meant that Obama didn’t take control over his own foreign policy.

Gates and Petraeus were themselves deeply influenced by the neocons, particularly Frederick Kagan, who had been a major advocate for the 2007 “surge” escalation in Iraq, which was hailed by the U.S. mainstream media as a great “success” but never achieved its principal goal of a unified Iraq. At the cost of nearly 1,000 U.S. dead, it only bought time for an orderly withdrawal that spared Bush and the neocons the embarrassment of an obvious defeat.

So, instead of a major personnel shakeup in the wake of the catastrophic Iraq War, Obama presided over what looked more like continuity with the Bush war policies, albeit with a firmer commitment to draw down troops in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan.

From the start, however, Obama was opposed by key elements of his own administration, especially at State and Defense, and by the still-influential neocons of Official Washington. According to various accounts, including Gates’s new memoir Duty, Obama was maneuvered into supporting a troop “surge” in Afghanistan, as advocated by neocon Frederick Kagan and pushed by Gates, Petraeus and Clinton.

Gates wrote that Kagan persuaded him to recommend the Afghan “surge” and that Obama grudgingly went along although Gates concluded that Obama didn’t believe in the “mission” and wanted to reverse course more quickly than Gates, Petraeus and their side wanted.

Faced with this resistance from his own bureaucracy, Obama began to rely on a small inner circle built around Vice President Joe Biden and a few White House advisers with the analytical support of some CIA officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Obama also found a surprising ally in Putin after he regained the Russian presidency in 2012. A Putin adviser told me that the Russian president personally liked Obama and genuinely wanted to help him resolve dangerous disputes, especially crises with Iran and Syria.

In other words, what evolved out of Obama’s early “team of rivals” misjudgment was an extraordinary presidential foreign policy style, in which Obama developed and implemented much of his approach to the world outside the view of his secretaries of State and Defense (except when Panetta moved briefly to the Pentagon).

Even after the eventual departures of Gates in 2011, Petraeus as CIA director after a sex scandal in late 2012, and Clinton in early 2013, Obama’s peculiar approach didn’t particularly change. I’m told that he has a distant relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry, who never joined Obama’s inner foreign policy circle.

Though Obama’s taciturn protectiveness of his “real” foreign policy may be understandable given the continued neocon “tough-guy-ism” that dominates Official Washington, Obama’s freelancing approach gave space to hawkish elements of his own administration.

For instance, Secretary of State Kerry came close to announcing a U.S. war against Syria in a bellicose speech on Aug. 30, 2013, only to see Obama pull the rug out from under him as the President worked with Putin to defuse the crisis sparked by a disputed chemical weapons attack outside Damascus. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How War on Syria Lost Its Way.”]

Similarly, Obama and Putin hammered out the structure for an interim deal with Iran on how to constrain its nuclear program. But when Kerry was sent to seal that agreement in Geneva, he instead inserted new demands from the French (who were carrying water for the Saudis) and nearly screwed it all up. After getting called on the carpet by the White House, Kerry returned to Geneva and finalized the arrangements.[See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Saudi-Israel Defeat on Iran Deal.”]

Unorthodox Foreign Policy

Obama’s unorthodox foreign policy – essentially working in tandem with the Russian president and sometimes at odds with his own foreign policy bureaucracy – has forced Obama into faux outrage when he’s faced with some perceived affront from Russia, such as its agreement to give temporary asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

For the record, Obama had to express strong disapproval of Snowden’s asylum, though in many ways Putin was doing Obama a favor by sparing Obama from having to prosecute Snowden with the attendant complications for U.S. national security and the damaging political repercussions from Obama’s liberal base.

Putin’s unforced errors also complicated the relationship, such as when he defended Russian hostility toward gays and cracked down on dissent before the Sochi Olympics. Putin became an easy target for U.S. commentators and comedians.

But Obama’s hesitancy to explain the degree of his strategic cooperation with Putin has enabled Official Washington’s still influential neocons, including holdovers within the State Department bureaucracy, to drive more substantive wedges between Obama and Putin. The neocons came to recognize that the Obama-Putin tandem had become a major impediment to their strategic vision.

Without doubt, the neocons’ most dramatic – and potentially most dangerous – counter-move has been Ukraine, where they have lent their political and financial support to opposition forces who sought to break Ukraine away from its Russian neighbor.

Though this crisis also stems from the historical division of Ukraine – between its more European-oriented west and the Russian-ethnic east and south – neocon operatives, with financing from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. sources, played key roles in destabilizing and overthrowing the democratically elected president.

NED, a $100 million-a-year agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against targeted states, lists 65 projects that it supports financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting “journalists” and promoting business groups, effectively creating a full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government in the name of promoting “democracy.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow US Foreign Policy.”]

State Department neocons also put their shoulders into shoving Ukraine away from Russia. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan and the sister-in-law of the Gates-Petraeus adviser Frederick Kagan, advocated strenuously for Ukraine’s reorientation toward Europe.

Last December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve “its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion.” She said the U.S. goal was to take “Ukraine into the future that it deserves,” by which she meant into the West’s orbit and away from Russia’s.

But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished Ukraine. He accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has propped up Ukraine’s economy with discounted natural gas. Yanukovych’s decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev, located in the country’s western and more pro-European region.

Nuland was soon at work planning for “regime change,” encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn’t seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square had hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles.

By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new government.

“Yats is the guy,” Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was intercepted and posted online. “He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know.” By “Yats,” Nuland was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister — and who was committed to harsh austerity.

As Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. McCain cheered the demonstrators on, the street protests turned violent. Police clashed with neo-Nazi bands, the ideological descendants of Bandera’s anti-Russian Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi SS during World War II.

With the crisis escalating and scores of people killed in the street fighting, Yanukovych agreed to a E.U.-brokered deal that called for moving up scheduled elections and having the police stand down. The neo-Nazi storm troopers then seized the opening to occupy government buildings and force Yanukovych and many of his aides to flee for their lives.

With these neo-Nazis providing “security,” the remaining parliamentarians agreed in a series of unanimous or near unanimous votes to establish a new government and seek Yanukovych’s arrest for mass murder. Nuland’s choice, Yatsenyuk, emerged as interim prime minister.

Yet, the violent ouster of Yanukovych provoked popular resistance to the coup from the Russian-ethnic south and east. After seeking refuge in Russia, Yanukovych appealed to Putin for help. Putin then dispatched Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea. [For more on this history, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine.”]

Separating Obama from Putin

The Ukraine crisis has given Official Washington’s neocons another wedge to drive between Obama and Putin. For instance, the neocon flagship Washington Post editorialized on Saturday that Obama was responding “with phone calls” when something much more threatening than “condemnation” was needed.

It’s always stunning when the Post, which so energetically lobbied for the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of eliminating its (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, gets its ire up about another country acting in response to a genuine security threat on its own borders, not half a world away.

But the Post’s editors have never been deterred by their own hypocrisy. They wrote, “Mr. Putin’s likely objective was not difficult to figure. He appears to be responding to Ukraine’s overthrow of a pro-Kremlin government last week with an old and ugly Russian tactic: provoking a separatist rebellion in a neighboring state, using its own troops when necessary.”

The reality, however, appears to have been that neocon elements from within the U.S. government encouraged the overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine via a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi storm troopers who then terrorized lawmakers as the parliament passed draconian laws, including some intended to punish the Russian-oriented regions which favor Yanukovych.

Yet, besides baiting Obama over his tempered words about the crisis, the Post declared that “Mr. Obama and European leaders must act quickly to prevent Ukraine’s dismemberment. Missing from the president’s statement was a necessary first step: a demand that all Russian forces – regular and irregular – be withdrawn … and that Moscow recognize the authority of the new Kiev government. … If Mr. Putin does not comply, Western leaders should make clear that Russia will pay a heavy price.”

The Post editors are fond of calling for ultimatums against various countries, especially Syria and Iran, with the implication that if they don’t comply with some U.S. demand that harsh actions, including military reprisals, will follow.

But now the neocons, in their single-minded pursuit of endless “regime change” in countries that get in their way, have taken their ambitions to a dangerous new level, confronting nuclear-armed Russia with ultimatums.

By Sunday, the Post’s neocon editors were “spelling out the consequences” for Putin and Russia, essentially proposing a new Cold War. The Post mocked Obama for alleged softness toward Russia and suggested that the next “regime change” must come in Moscow.

“Many in the West did not believe Mr. Putin would dare attempt a military intervention in Ukraine because of the steep potential consequences,” the Post wrote. “That the Russian ruler plunged ahead shows that he doubts Western leaders will respond forcefully. If he does not quickly retreat, the United States must prove him wrong.”

The madness of the neocons has long been indicated by their extraordinary arrogance and their contempt for other nations’ interests. They assume that U.S. military might and other coercive means must be brought to bear on any nation that doesn’t bow before U.S. ultimatums or that resists U.S.-orchestrated coups.

Whenever the neocons meet resistance, they don’t rethink their strategy; they simply take it to the next level. Angered by Russia’s role in heading off U.S. military attacks against Syria and Iran, the neocons escalated their geopolitical conflict by taking it to Russia’s own border, by egging on the violent ouster of Ukraine’s elected president.

The idea was to give Putin an embarrassing black eye as punishment for his interference in the neocons’ dream of “regime change” across the Middle East. Now, with Putin’s countermove, his dispatch of Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea, the neocons want Obama to further escalate the crisis by going after Putin.

Some leading neocons even see ousting Putin as a crucial step toward reestablishing the preeminence of their agenda. NED president Carl Gershman wrote in the Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. … Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

At minimum, the neocons hope that they can neutralize Putin as Obama’s ally in trying to tamp down tensions with Syria and Iran – and thus put American military strikes against those two countries back under active consideration.

As events spin out of control, it appears way past time for President Obama to explain to the American people why he has collaborated with President Putin in trying to resolve some of the world’s thorniest problems.

That, however, would require him to belatedly take control of his own administration, to purge the neocon holdovers who have worked to sabotage his actual foreign policy, and to put an end to neocon-controlled organizations, like the National Endowment for Democracy, that use U.S. taxpayers’ money to stir up trouble abroad. That would require real political courage.

The self-proclaimed government in Kiev has appointed two of Ukraine’s richest men to govern large industrial regions in the defiant east. One of the reasons for the Maidan protest was the influence the rich have on politics in the country.

The appointments of new governors of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk Regions are among 18 made on Sunday by Kiev, which is struggling to consolidate power after the coup which ousted President Yanukovich last month.

The newly-appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor is Igor Kolomoysky, Ukraine’s third-wealthiest man, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion. He co-owns the informal commercial group Privat, which includes Ukraine’s largest bank Privatbank, which Kolomoysky heads, as well as assets in the oil, ferroalloys and food industries, agriculture and transport.

A former ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, Kolomoysky reportedly had a falling out with her and refused to finance her election campaign in 2010, which the ex-prime minister subsequently lost to Yanukovich. Kolomoysky was reported to be a principal sponsor of the UDAR party, which is one of the three fueling the street campaign to oust Yanukovich. Kolomoysky has a dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship and controls his business empire from Switzerland.

The new governor of Donetsk Region is Sergey Taruta, who is estimated to worth around $2 billion, putting him among the top-10 wealthiest people in Ukraine. He heads ISD, one of the biggest mining and smelting companies in the world, and also own Donetsk-based Metallurg Football Club.

Pro-Russian activists shout slogans during a rally in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, on March 2, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexander Khudoteply)

Not a stranger to politics, he used to sponsor Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution of 2004. Among his personal habits is a reputed love for luxurious jewelry and ostentatious gold statues, reports RT’s Peter Oliver.

The appointments will have “a positive effect on the regional aspect,” believes Vladimir Groisman, who was appointed vice-president for regional development in the self-installed government.

“They are well-known and wealthy people. They had a choice – they could by a plane ticket or fly their own plane and go to another country and wait for the developments there. Or they could take responsibility. I respect their choice,” he said.

Among the accusations mounted on Yanukovich by protesting crowds in Kiev was the charge that he used his presidential power to take over assets of Ukrainian businessmen and make an illegal fortune for himself and his allies. Some Ukraine observers suggested that the oligarchs, threatened by presidential greed, financed the Maidan protests, seeing them as leverage on the government.

After his ouster, photos from Yanukovich’s opulent residence of gilded furniture and a private zoo in suburban Kiev made headlines worldwide. There is little doubt that many of those who sought to topple him for being corruptly enriched would eye the appointment of affluent businessmen to offices of power with a deal of suspicion.

The feeling is palpable in many comments in Ukrainian media.
“That’s good news. I’m tired of those businessmen in power,” said one sarcastic commenter at the site of the Ukrainskaya Pravda a leading online news service.

“It’s OK. The oligarchs have been controlling the regions anyway. I think they will provide order, because only they have the authority, unlike some middle-rank appointees,” soothes another one.

“Are they handing out fiefs? I’m sick of it. Is that what the people died for at the Maidan?” another commenter says.

maps.google.com

There is also the regional aspect, which Groisman mentioned. The better-developed industrial east of Ukraine depends on business ties with Russia and would be hurt badly by the EU association agreement, which the new government wants to sign as soon as possible. Mistrust towards Kiev is growing in the east, with several regions already declaring they would not be taking orders from the capital.

The defiant regions seek greater autonomy from the central authorities. Having the right to elect their own governors as opposed to have them appointed in Kiev, is one of the demands regularly voiced at the protest rallies in eastern and southern Ukraine.

@Chellaney :: Note the contrast between Obama's reluctance to stand up to China's territorial creep in Asia and his prompt warning to Russia over Crimea.

@Chellaney : The big winner from the new cold war over Ukraine? China. Showdown over Ukraine leaves China more space for its territorial creep in Asia.

The Ukrainian Air Force 240th tactical aviation brigade based near Sevastopol has pledged allegiance to the authorities of Crimea. It is manned by more than 800 troops and has almost 50 planes, although most of them are not operational.

“Today the command of the 204th base in Belbek has declared that it stands with the people or Crimea,” a spokesman for the local authorities told Interfax.

With the addition of the personnel of the base, the total strength of Crimean military has almost reached 6,000 people, he said.

Belbek Airport hosts 45 MiG-29 fighter jets and 4 L-39 training jets. However only four fighters and one training aircraft are currently operational, the report said.

Crimean authorities earlier denounced the self-proclaimed government in Kiev and declared that all Ukrainian law enforcement and military deployed in the peninsula must take orders from them. The majority of troops in Crimea switched sides in favor of the local authorities.

Among those pledging allegiance to Crimea is Rear admiral Denis Berezovsky, who was appointed by Kiev last week as chief of the Ukrainian Navy, but swore to serve the people of Crimea on Monday.

SIMFEROPOL − The Russian army, which has controlled since Friday the main airport on the Crimean peninsula, tried very hard on Sunday morning to lower its profile and allow the small field to return to normal. Planes took off and landed according to the regular timetable, and on the tarmac an Aeroflot Airbus and a Ukraine Airlines Boeing were parked next to each other, as if their two countries are not in a state of war by any other name.

Within the terminal all was calm and only a few security personnel stood around. There was no stampede of passengers rushing to escape. Russian armored vehicles were no longer outside and the number of soldiers had been dramatically reduced. Fewer than 10 stood guard, their faces masked, carrying assault rifles and machine-guns with combat webbing and helmets. But for many locals arriving at the airport, they were an attraction. People stood in line to have their picture taken with them, others brought them flowers. Young women flirted with the men in green.

Less than 48 hours since Russia invaded Crimea, at least parts of the region seemed to be settling down to a comfortable occupation. In Simferopol, the regional capital, very few soldiers could be seen and most of those were off-duty, confident enough to walk around without masks and weapons. The avenue by the parliament building, which saw angry demonstrations last week, was calm and loudspeakers streamed light Russian music.

Above the building flew the very similar Russian and Crimean flags with identical colors. Ukraine’s yellow-blue flag wasn’t to be seen. Order was maintained by local police and members of a new, unarmed militia, set up to defend public buildings. They were all coordinating with the Russians, who had no need to stick around. Their work was being done for them.

Throughout the town small groups of young men and pensioners gathered, waving Russian flags and the banners of the Russian airborne division, shouting “Crimea is Russian.” The seemingly spontaneous demonstrations were good-natured.

Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled news channel, still insists on calling the soldiers in Crimea “members of self-defense teams,” but no one on the ground is trying to hide their true identity any longer. “I’m glad they’ve arrived,” says Sergei Ferdyunov, an engineering student and proud member of the new militia. “We are the same people and will always be. Crimea is part of Russia and no one in the world can claim otherwise. America invaded other countries but the Russian army has simply come home.”

Many commentators have compared the capture of Crimea with the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. There are similarities, but at least on the PR level it seems the Russian army has drawn lessons from that episode. In Georgia journalists were fired upon and their cars and equipment stolen routinely. This time around, aside from a few isolated cases of rudeness, the attitude toward reporters in the field is cordial. The Kremlin seems to be trying very hard, so far successfully, to create a peaceful image to this conquest.

Many foreign visitors were surprised by the quiet atmosphere in Simferopol. Not least the group of International Red Cross workers who arrived in Crimea especially to carry out an assessment of humanitarian needs, only to find out that there aren’t any for now.

The Russian annexation has also brought economic optimism to a region that has been neglected by the central government in recent years. Even in central Simferopol there are many derelict buildings and on the streets are none of the fleets of shiny new cars seen in every city of neighboring Russia. “There isn’t any work here and many young people left for Kiev or Moscow,” says Oleg Ludin, an unemployed young man eager to propose his services to the Russian businessmen who are expected now in Crimea. “Russia will have to take care of us now and pour in resources. Not like Kiev that forgot about us.”

Along with the military and economic annexation, a cultural one is taking place as well. Fired by patriotic fervor, Russian entertainers began arriving over the weekend and staging free concerts. “A whole list of bands performed popular Russian songs” says Aleksandr Ostrovsky, a resident of Sebastopol who was about to fly on Sunday to Moscow on business. “They even held a beauty pageant in Sevastopol. There was an atmosphere of carnival in town.”

The total absence of opposition in Simferopol on Sunday does not mean it doesn’t exist. It just disappeared from the streets. Around 20 percent of Crimea’s population are Muslim Tatars, whose grandparents were deported by Stalin thousands of miles to the far eastern regions of Russia. From the late 1980s, the Tatars began to return and they certainly don’t miss the Kremlin’s rule. Yet despite holding a large demonstration outside the parliament last Thursday, since the weekend they are lying low on their leaders’ orders. Five million Tatars live in Russia, about half of them in the semi-autonomous region of Tatarstan, and they have good relations with the authorities. Now that the annexation is all but certain, they will find the way to survive in the new situation.

And still on Sunday there remained a few pockets of open resistance, mainly at two Ukrainian military bases near the port city of Sevastopol, which is also the main base for the Russian forces in Crimea. After the commanders of other bases lay down their weapons and allowed the Russians to enter, these two remained defiant. The sides agreed not to aim their weapons at each other and prevented a flare-up, though tense talks continued into the night. While Ukrainian naval officers were bravely standing up to superior Russian forces, the new commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Admiral Denis Berezovsky, who was appointed only on Saturday, was surrendering for them. Berezovsky transferred control of the navy’s ships to the Russians by swearing allegiance to the new prime minister of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, the man who invited the Russians into the peninsula and intends in four weeks to hold a referendum on leaving Ukraine.

Berezovsky, who was summarily fired and accused of treason, has almost totally denied Ukraine of any naval capabilities. This development does not bode well for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia if they face each other on the battlefield. Russian media on Sunday reported multiple cases of entire Ukrainian units going over to the other side, and while these reports of course serve Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interest, there seems to be at least a grain of truth to them.

Ukraine’s army is just as split as its population, between those who want to get closer to Europe and the West and those who identify with Russia. The Kiev government cannot rely on the army to obey orders if fighting breaks out.

The government has yet to order the army to retake Crimea by force, though Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced Sunday morning full mobilization of all Ukraine’s reserve soldiers. He said that Russia’s actions were “actually a declaration of war on my country.”

For now Yatsenyuk has ordered his soldiers not to respond to “provocations” from the Russian side and not to cause a bloodbath. The “provocations” narrative is serving both sides, with Russian spokespeople and media constantly mentioning “Ukrainian provocations” in the shape of persecution of ethnic Russians. These provocations were the basis for the Duma’s vote on Saturday to allow the Kremlin to deploy the army anywhere in Ukraine to “defend Russian citizens.”

It is extremely difficult to see how the wheel could be turned back and Russia leave Crimea. Western leaders may have been relatively quick to condemn the invasion but not one country is dreaming of deploying its troops to Ukraine to deter Russia. Ukraine may have won the West’s sympathy, but it is standing totally alone.

U.S. President Barack Obama made a stern speech and had a fruitless phone conversation with Putin, as did his colleagues Britain’s David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Britain even sent its foreign secretary William Hague to Kiev in a show of solidarity. But so far, the only real sanction they have come up with is not taking part in the G-8 conference that Russia is scheduled to host in Sochi in June. It doesn’t seem, however, that Putin is particularly concerned about his membership of the forum of the world’s eight major democracies. He himself didn’t bother to attend the 2012 G-8 summit in the U.S.

Meanwhile, there are no serious moves toward economic sanctions on Russia by America or the European Union. The U.S. hasn’t even got an ambassador in Moscow now that it can call back in protest.

In the absence of any meaningful international influence on events in Ukraine, the timing is entirely up to the local players. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were working Sunday on digging fortifications near the only land bridge connecting Ukraine to Crimea. Each side is making defensive preparations but are also thinking of attack. Kiev is still adamant that Crimea must remain part of Ukraine, but it’s hard to see how they back that up militarily. Kiev can make an opposite move, cut off its economic ties with both Russia and Crimea, disconnecting the peninsula from its supply of water and electricity, leaving Russia to deal with the problems. But that would be tantamount to admitting that Crimea is lost.

Putin’s army is, on the other hand, in a position to advance inland and take away from Ukraine wide swathes of territory where a majority of Russian-speakers live. Violent demonstrations in cities such as Kharkov and Donetsk, where Russian flags were flown over government buildings, could supply the “provocation” necessary for such a move.

The issue would be whether EU will fund the war if West Ukraine wants a confrontation? Ukraine has reasonable weaponry on paper, but how much of it is functional? Has even the salaries of forces been paid?

The Russians have been playing chess. We have been playing marbles.

UlanBatori wrote:

The issue would be whether EU will fund the war if West Ukraine wants a confrontation? Ukraine has reasonable weaponry on paper, but how much of it is functional? Has even the salaries of forces been paid?

Since the Ukrainian Navy now flies nishaan-e-Russky, and if Odessa as well as Sevastopol decides to speak Russian, then the Kiev regime has no access to the Black Sea. Is "Kharkiv" what used to be known as Kharkov, highly-contested strategic rail junction in WW2? If that, plus Dnieperest (I presume that controls the Dnieper river traffic? plus Sevastopol are all going wave vodka bottles, that leaves Kiev with just the vast countryside facing Germany, hain?

Forget the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the poor fellows have not been paid for months! BUT... What happens if the Brave POTUS BO sends the 82nd Airborne into Kiev, and holds the bridges waiting for the EU's massive tank battalions to come swarming across the open countryside like in 1941? Will Putin attack? Or accept the Fait Accompli? The air may be hotly contested, and quite possibly the Russians may not be able to hold on in the air at all, which would expose the vodka-carriers to massive aerial attack, if Putin attacks the 82nd Airborne. All that the US has to do then is to send in Lt. General Wayne Mays, lately GOC-in-C, BDS at the head of the 24th Mechanized Infantry with Paco leading The Dawgs of War, and the Russians will run for the border. Take THAT, you yeller-bellied commies!

I loved that quote

The Russians have been playing chess. We have been playing marbles.

Speaks so eloquently about the SD. Now it all comes down to whether the 82nd Airborne gets its orders.

We’re now witnessing the consequences of how grossly both Russia and the West have overplayed their hands in Ukraine. It is urgently necessary that both should find ways of withdrawing from some of the positions that they have taken. Otherwise, the result could very easily be civil war, Russian invasion, the partition of Ukraine, and a conflict that will haunt Europe for generations to come.

The only country that could possibly benefit from such an outcome is China. As with the invasion of Iraq and the horrible mismanagement of the campaign in Afghanistan, the U.S. would be distracted for another decade from the question of how to deal with its only competitive peer in the world today. Yet given the potentially appalling consequences for the world economy of a war in Ukraine, it is probable that even Beijing would not welcome such an outcome.

If there is one absolutely undeniable fact about Ukraine, which screams from every election and every opinion poll since its independence two decades ago, it is that the country’s population is deeply divided between pro-Russian and pro-Western sentiments. Every election victory for one side or another has been by a narrow margin, and has subsequently been reversed by an electoral victory for an opposing coalition.

What has saved the country until recently has been the existence of a certain middle ground of Ukrainians sharing elements of both positions; that the division in consequence was not clear cut; and that the West and Russia generally refrained from forcing Ukrainians to make a clear choice between these positions.

During George W. Bush’s second term as president, the U.S., Britain, and other NATO countries made a morally criminal attempt to force this choice by the offer of a NATO Membership Action Plan for Ukraine (despite the fact that repeated opinion polls had shown around two-thirds of Ukrainians opposed to NATO membership). French and German opposition delayed this ill-advised gambit, and after August 2008, it was quietly abandoned. The Georgian-Russian war in that month had made clear both the extreme dangers of further NATO expansion, and that the United States would not in fact fight to defend its allies in the former Soviet Union.

In the two decades after the collapse of the USSR, it should have become obvious that neither West nor Russia had reliable allies in Ukraine. As the demonstrations in Kiev have amply demonstrated, the “pro-Western” camp in Ukraine contains many ultra-nationalists and even neo-fascists who detest Western democracy and modern Western culture. As for Russia’s allies from the former Soviet establishment, they have extracted as much financial aid from Russia as possible, diverted most of it into their own pockets, and done as little for Russia in return as they possibly could.

Over the past year, both Russia and the European Union tried to force Ukraine to make a clear choice between them—and the entirely predictable result has been to tear the country apart. Russia attempted to draw Ukraine into the Eurasian Customs Union by offering a massive financial bailout and heavily subsidized gas supplies. The European Union then tried to block this by offering an association agreement, though (initially) with no major financial aid attached. Neither Russia nor the EU made any serious effort to talk to each other about whether a compromise might be reached that would allow Ukraine somehow to combine the two agreements, to avoid having to choose sides.

President Viktor Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU offer led to an uprising in Kiev and the western and central parts of Ukraine, and to his own flight from Kiev, together with many of his supporters in the Ukrainian parliament. This marks a very serious geopolitical defeat for Russia. It is now obvious that Ukraine as a whole cannot be brought into the Eurasian Union, reducing that union to a shadow of what the Putin administration hoped. And though Russia continues officially to recognize him, President Yanukovych can only be restored to power in Kiev if Moscow is prepared to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and seize its capital by force.
The result would be horrendous bloodshed, a complete collapse of Russia’s relations with the West and of Western investment in Russia, a shattering economic crisis, and Russia’s inevitable economic and geopolitical dependency on China.

But Western governments, too, have put themselves in an extremely dangerous position. They have acquiesced to the overthrow of an elected government by ultra-nationalist militias, which have also chased away a large part of the elected parliament. This has provided a perfect precedent for Russian-backed militias in turn to seize power in the east and south of the country.

The West has stood by in silence while the rump parliament in Kiev abolished the official status of Russian and other minority languages, and members of the new government threatened publicly to ban the main parties that supported Yanukovych—an effort that would effectively disenfranchise around a third of the population.

After years of demanding that successive Ukrainian governments undertake painful reforms in order to draw nearer to the West, the West is now in a paradoxical position: If it wishes to save the new government from a Russian-backed counter-revolution, it will have to forget about any reforms that will alienate ordinary people, and instead give huge sums in aid with no strings attached. The EU has allowed the demonstrators in Kiev to believe that their actions have brought Ukraine closer to EU membership—but, if anything, this is now even further away than it was before the revolution.

In these circumstances, it is essential that both the West and Russia act with caution. The issue here is not Crimea. From the moment when the Yanukovych government in Kiev was overthrown, it was obvious that Crimea was effectively lost to Ukraine. Russia is in full military control of the peninsula with the support of a large majority of its population, and only a Western military invasion can expel it.

This does not mean that Crimea will declare independence. So far, the call of the Crimean parliament has been only for increased autonomy. It does mean, however, that Russia will decide the fate of Crimea when and as it chooses. For the moment, Moscow appears to be using Crimea, like Yanukovych, in order to influence developments in Ukraine as a whole.

It also seems unlikely that the government in Kiev will try to retake Crimea by force, both because this would lead to their inevitable defeat, and because even some Ukrainian nationalists have told me in private that Crimea was never part of historic Ukraine. They would be prepared to sacrifice it if that was the price of taking the rest of Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit.

But that is not true of important Ukrainian cities with significant ethnic Russian populations, such as Donetsk, Kharkov, and Odessa. The real and urgent issue now is what happens across the eastern and southern Ukraine, and it is essential that neither side initiates the use of force there. Any move by the new Ukrainian government or nationalist militias to overthrow elected local authorities and suppress anti-government demonstrations in these regions is likely to provoke a Russian military intervention. Any Russian military intervention in turn will compel the Ukrainian government and army (or at least its more nationalist factions) to fight.

The West must therefore urge restraint—not only from Moscow, but from Kiev as well. Any aid to the government in Kiev should be made strictly conditional on measures to reassure the Russian-speaking populations of the east and south of the country: respect for elected local authorities; restoration of the official status of minority languages; and above all, no use of force in those regions. In the longer run, the only way to keep Ukraine together may be the introduction of a new federal constitution with much greater powers for the different regions.

But that is for the future. For now, the overwhelming need is to prevent war. War in Ukraine would be an economic, political, and cultural catastrophe for Russia. In many ways, the country would never recover, but Russia would win the war itself. As it proved in August 2008, if Russia sees its vital interests in the former USSR as under attack, Russia will fight. NATO will not. War in Ukraine would therefore also be a shattering blow to the prestige of NATO and the European Union from which these organizations might never recover either.

A century ago, two groups of countries whose real common interests vastly outweighed their differences allowed themselves to be drawn into a European war in which more than 10 million of their people died and every country suffered irreparable losses. In the name of those dead, every sane and responsible citizen in the West, Russia, and Ukraine itself should now urge caution and restraint on the part of their respective leaders.

Published time: March 03,

Ukrainian servicemen on the territory of their military unit located some 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Simferopol, Crimea's capital, March 3, 2014. (Reuters / Vasily Fedosenko)

Media reports about an alleged Russian ultimatum made to the Ukrainian armed forces in Crimea are “total nonsense,” a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said.
He said that no ultimatum had been made to the Ukrainian forces, Interfax reports.

“We have become accustomed to the daily accusations by the Ukrainian media of carrying out some sort of military actions against our Ukrainian colleagues," Russian Black Sea Fleet representative said, adding that “those who want to pit us against each other in the Crimea won’t succeed.”

Also, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry told RT that they are unaware of any Russian ultimatum toward the Ukrainian forces in Crimea.

The source revealed that they had only heard about the alleged ultimatum from a report by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

“We’re interested in keeping friendly relations with the people of Ukraine and in preserving stability,” the source told RT.

The self-deсlared Ukrainian Defense Ministry claimed earlier Monday that the Russian Black Sea Fleet had delivered an ultimatum to the Ukrainian forces remaining on the Crimean peninsula.

“If they won’t give up by 05:00 local time (03:00 GMT) a full-scale assault on the units of Ukrainian military in Crimea will begin,” an unnamed source in the ministry told Interfax-Ukraine.

The most important thing is for us – the United States – to make sure that we don't go off without the European community," the majority leader in the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid, told Politico. "Their interests are really paramount if we are going to do sanctions of some kind. We have to have them on board with us."

But at an emergency meeting in Brussels the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy and Spain resisted calls for trade sanctions, instead limiting discussion to freezing long-running talks with Russia on visa liberalisation that would have made it easier for Russians to visit Europe. Washington is also threatening to kick Russia out of the G8 group of leading economies, but Berlin opposes this.
The secret government document, which reveals Britain's attempts to ensure any EU action against Russia over Ukraine would exempt the City of London

Britain's attempts to ensure any EU action against Russia over Ukraine would exempt the City of London were embarrassingly revealed when a secret government document detailing the plan was photographed in Downing Street. The document said Britain should "not support, for now, trade sanctions … or close London's financial centre to Russians".

Like other EU countries, and especially Germany, which obtains almost 40% of its gas and oil from Russia, the UK is reluctant to adopt measures that could damage its still fragile economic recovery.

It said Britain should:

• "Not support, for now, trade sanctions … or close London's financial centre to Russians."

• "Discourage any discussions (eg at Nato) of contingency military preparations".

• Embark on "contingency EU work on providing Ukraine with alternative gas [supplies] if Russia cuts them off".

• Draw up a technical assistance package for Ukraine "ideally jointly with Germany".

• Pursue the "deployment of OSCE and/or UN (but not EU) monitors in Crimea and eastern Ukraine".

• Push the "UN secretary general Ban to take the lead in calling and creating a forum for engaging Russia on Ukraine".

• Accept an emergency summit of EU leaders to discuss Ukraine.

UlanBatori wrote:AHA! Dniepropetrovsk (wow! try saying that to an "American"!) is The Boss. Presumably means: The Rock On the River Dnieper, if I use the Old Testament translation for Petros.

Singha wrote:

kiev would be left like Seoul always under artillery range.

...under a four-year contract that was signed recently (in 2013)

anupmisra wrote:By the way, I wonder what's the status of all the battle tank engines that Ukraine was assembling for al-bakistan's al-kha-leeedh in its Kharkov-based Malyshev Plant? Were they delivered or should one consider that order on hold in perpetuity? Clicky Here.

...under a four-year contract that was signed recently (in 2013)

Maybe this is a RAA engineered coup!!