Ukraine Crisis

[Middle-aged Europe]

Just read a report that the United States is considering to abstain from the annual G8 Summit (which is supposed to take place in June in Sochi of all places) and to urge the Europeans to do the same.

Welcome to Cold War II.

This reminds me that US is currently relying on the Russian space program to get to the International Space Station.

[Middle-aged Europe]

It seems to be that the Ukrainians have only few options left.

Either they do nothing or they issue an ultimatum to Russia. And when the ultimatum runs out they again have the option between doing nothing or start shooting at Russian soldiers.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Referendum on the future status of Crimea was pushed up by the new Crimean government by two months and will now take place on March 30.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Protestors have occupied the Kharkiv regional administration and raised the flag of Russia.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt: Russian military intervention a violation of international law.

[Middle-aged Europe]

- The Federation Council of Russia demands recalling the Russian ambassador to the United States in response to "Obama's insulting statement on the situation in Ukraine".

- Vitali Klitschko has called for a general mobilization of Ukrainian armed forces.

- Emergency session of the UN Security Council planned for later today, emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers most likely planned for monday.

- Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius has suggested a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in accordance with Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

[Middle-aged Europe]

As a side note, the Olympics may be over, but the Paralympics are supposed to open next Friday in Sochi.

Also, on March 26, Soyuz TMA-12M is scheduled to launch to the ISS with NASA astronaut Steven Swanson on board.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What are the chances of this being indicative of a Merkel-Putin Rocky IV-type situation?

Low. If anything it may end up being Obama going head to head with Putin. Merkel doesn't have the. Diplomatic power to take on Putin succesfully.

You would think that Merkel's FP  is more hawkish, closer and more ambitious than Obama's FP.

What makes you think Merkel is anything remotely resembling a "hawk"? In the UN Security Council, she abstained on authorizing military intervention in Libya. Merkel is primarily driven by the desire not to be involved in any kind of trouble.

Politically, she has probably realized that she won't be able to fully abstain from this one... and it most likely annoys the hell out of her.

The image Merkel has abroad of being some kind of political mastermind probably makes most Germans chuckle. Because at home she has more the image of someone who prefers to sit things out. She isn't seen as a leader, but as a moderator who is balancing out the interests of different factions within her party and/or government while lacking a personal opinion on (/not giving a sh**t about) a lot of issues.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Putin is scary...

Vladmir Putin doesn't care about international law or the national sovereignty of other countres.

He does what he does simply because he can. And because he thinks he'll get away with it.

[Middle-aged Europe]

In an interview with the newspaper Pravo, former Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg has compared Putin to Hitler.

Meanwhile, Crimeans seem to be in a great mood:

http://instagram.com/p/lBDJ87ss09/

[Middle-aged Europe]

There are reports that the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy, the Hetman Sahaydachniy, has defected to Russia - including having raised the Russian flag.

[Middle-aged Europe]

There are reports that the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy, the Hetman Sahaydachniy, has defected to Russia - including having raised the Russian flag.

Source: RT.

Nope.

My source was Die Welt which cited Reuters.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yeah I'm viewing a Crimea on the lines of Northern Cyprus or Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh).

Which has been more or less confirmed by the new Crimean government since they announced today that the referendum on March 30 is gonna decide whether Crimea wants to become an "independent" country.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Today, Russian riot police units heroically ended treacherous "peace rallies" in Moscow:










Also, anti-Russian protests in Warsaw...



And in Riga too...

[Middle-aged Europe]

Weird how Merkel hasn't said anything publicly.

That isn't weird behavior for Merkel though.

[Middle-aged Europe]

John Kerry to be in Kiev on Tuesday.

Good move as far as symbolism goes.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Moscow Stock Exchange got extremely nervous today and the Ruble took a dive.

Maybe Putin's achilles heel is that he's too fixiated on political and military power so that he underestimates the extent his economy is interconnected with the world. Perhaps the best way to go about this is to find a way to make the Russian oligarchs sh**t their pants.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Gazprom stock is collapsing.

According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, the company - which has the Russian government as its largest shareholder - has lost 45 billion Euro the last couple of days.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Dmitry Medvedev posted a peculiar message on Twitter:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I wonder if this could finally drive a wedge between Putin and Medvedev. Putin is ex-KGB, so doesn't seem to comprehend. Medvedev on the other hand was once a business executive himself back in the 90s.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Paralympics are scheduled to start in Sochi as planned, although all Western politicians are probably going to boycott.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Russia Today anchor Abby Martin condemns Russian invasion of Crimea - on air:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZolXrjGIBJs

Someone is about to lose her job, I guess.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Putin gave a surreal press conference today. His statements in short:

- At present, there's no need for a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. It will only be used as a last resort.

- There's currently no Russian military intervention in Crimea. Only "local self-defence forces" are active there.

- The protestors on the Maidan have legitimate grievances and Viktor Yanukovych has no political future.

- The current Ukrainian government came to power through a coup and is hence illegitimate. The Ukrainian parliament is a legitimate institution which is recognized by Russia, but the Yatsenyuk government isn't.

- Russia is and will always be friends with Ukraine. But Russia won't have relations with its current government.

- Russia is continuing preparations for the G8 Summit in Sochi, but nobody should feel forced to attend.


One could say Putin seems confused, except that he's probably acting confused on purpose.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yeah, to get back to Planet Earth for a moment... the Russian position does make sense from a Russian point of view. They feel like have been duped.

On February 21, Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with the leaders of Batkivshchyna, UDAR, and Svoboda as well as the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland that a national unity government will be formed which consists of Yanukovych's Party of Regions and the three aforementioned opposition parties. Yanukovych also agreed to hold presidential election in December of this year.

http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/671350/publicationFile/190027/140221-UKR_Erklaerung.pdf

A day later, Yanukovych is suddenly removed from office. Subsequently, a government led by Batkivshchyna and excluding the Party of Regions is installed and elections are set for May. The Russians feel like the West and the Ukranian opposition have broken the rules, so they don't feel obliged to follow the rules themselves in this matter.

That being said, the Russian position is of course not a very realistic one and stems from a state of denial. After all, Yanukovych was removed from office by a majority vote of parliament, just like the new Ukrainian government was voted in by the parliament.

The Russians are clinging - and this was confirmed by Putin's statement from today - to the fiction that the agreement from Feb. 21 is still in place and must be honoured. This leads to hilarious claims like the one that the Ukrainian parliament is recognized as a legitimate institution, while the government who was elected by the same parliament isn't.

Russia expected from all Ukrainian members of parliament to feel bound by the agreement (and to be precise, an Russian interpretation of the agreement) no matter how the situation evolves and despite the fact that only three Ukrainian MPs actually signed the agreement themselves. In essence, Putin expected the Ukrainian MPs to act like United Russia MPs in the Duma.

So, now we have to deal with the fact that Putin's expectations weren't met.

[Middle-aged Europe]

You realize, Russia was never a party to that agreement. Not only Putin, when asked to send a representative, sent a nobody (literally, a nobody: a human rights ombudsman - a pathetic position on its own - whose term had finished the week before), but this representative explicitly refused to sign the agreement. It is a bit disingenuous to argue that you are upset that they are not following the agreement you opposed.

Yeah, that's because Russia wasn't really happy with the contents of the agreement to begin with. As far as Putin is concerned he would have preferred that everything remains status quo in Ukraine: Yanukovych stays in power and the opposition remains the opposition. They tolerated that this agreement came to be, but they didn't want to give the impression that they're happy about it by actually signing it.

And now they didn't even get the agreement that was just tolerable to them in the first place. Logical conclusion for Putin: Screw it, let's occupy Crimea!

Like I said, it's neither a realistic nor a preferable (for pretty much any non-Russian anyway) point of view. But that's how it is.

[Middle-aged Europe]

You realize, Russia was never a party to that agreement. Not only Putin, when asked to send a representative, sent a nobody (literally, a nobody: a human rights ombudsman - a pathetic position on its own - whose term had finished the week before), but this representative explicitly refused to sign the agreement. It is a bit disingenuous to argue that you are upset that they are not following the agreement you opposed.

Yeah, that's because Russia wasn't really happy with the contents of the agreement to begin with. As far as Putin is concerned he would have preferred that everything remains status quo in Ukraine: Yanukovych stays in power and the opposition remains the opposition. They tolerated that this agreement came to be, but they didn't want to give the impression that they're happy about it by actually signing it.

And now they didn't even get the agreement that was just tolerable to them in the first place. Logical conclusion for Putin: Screw it, let's occupy Crimea!

Like I said, it's neither a realistic nor a preferable (for pretty much any non-Russian anyway) point of view. But that's how it is.

No, it was not about the content. Putin explicitly sent as his representative a guy who was not allowed to sign anything - no matter what was there in the agreement. He wanted to keep his options entirely open. Whatever happened, he was going to find a pretext to act the way he liked.

As Lukin (Russian representative) was only flying to Kiev, the puzzled journalists asked Putin´s press officer, in which capacity was he going (everybody knew that Lukin was a nobody).  You know what was the answer? I am quoting: "in his own capacity".

That's guesswork.