... regretting they are not able to, in turn, shoot people in the head, fire nuclear weapons on them, and march down to Crimea themselves and start an armed retaliation campaign against all those who were for the referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Tymoshenko is especially intense in her bravado, claiming that if she had been able to get down to Crimea the people would have been eating (expletive deleted) instead of succeeding in holding the referendum.
I am not able to say at this early time that there can be no doubt whatsoever about the recording. Reliable sources in both Ukraine and Russia ...
Interviews with RIAC experts
After President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty on Crimea's accession to Russia on March18, 2014 the imposition of U.S. and EU sanctions against Moscow has become more likely. We have met Vladimir Baranovsky, Deputy Director of RAS Institute of World Economy and International Relations, RAS Academician and RIAC Member, Valery ...
... with hyperbolic posturing would be counter-productive and potentially dangerous.
Why Russia should be disappointed: don’t bite the apple. Attempts at Western posturing and redefining events aside, it is hard to overstate just how complete the Russian victory on Crimea has been, despite attempts in the West to understate it. Putin followed his own country’s Constitutional protocols, caught potential adversaries completely off-guard in terms of his intentions, efforts to reverse his gains are weak, his maneuvers ...
... – and will continue to cast – a dark shadow on Russian–Ukrainian relations. I am afraid that they will never be the same, because many Ukrainians will now judge people on the basis of whether they supported or opposed the occupation of Crimea. Russia will cease to be considered a fraternal country by the majority of Ukrainians. This does not mean that contacts and relations will be broken off completely, but this will be the general perception.
Because of this there is a groundswell of sentiments ...
... America’s ‘reset’ and Europe’s partnership ambitions. They have to put on the boxing gloves; they can knock Russia out in the first round. It will not be painless, but it will be worth it.
Because, even if the Ukrainian conflict is ... ... security landscape has been arbitrarily re-written, understandably worrying the EU member states of East Central Europe. The Crimean adventure, seasoned with a large amount of the usual disinformation, has occasioned a huge rise in Putin’s popularity ...
... steps, as demonstrated by the controversial language legislation, which was quickly repealed in the midst of international uproar. But they are not fascists after all. They would never have spat Russia in the face by cancelling the contract.
Annexing Crimea, Russia has in fact given up the rest of Ukraine for good. Unless this is not the end of the story — though a similar course of action in Eastern Ukraine is unlikely. The threat is clear: 60 000 Russian troops have reportedly gathered in the border ...
... profession with the utmost seriousness and have high personal standards of integrity. The problem, as I mentioned, is a pervasive subconscious Cold War residue that has major influence on how uninformed readers around the world learn about the situation in Crimea and Russia’s role there. For example, the 1992 constitution mentioned above is the UKRAINIAN Constitution, not the Russian. It does indeed grant the Crimean region effective independence within Ukraine AND the right to determine its own path and relations ...
... is a time where many states would feel almost obligated to engage the instability, real or perceived, in order to safeguard its strategic interests or further enhance areas of strategic import that need improving. Russia doesn’t want Ukraine. Russia wants control of Crimea (whether that means seceding into Russian Federation territory or just de facto controlling the territory doesn’t really matter to Russian foreign policy/military strategists). Crimea’s importance to Russia as it’s sole warm-water ...
... believe that both Moscow and the authorities in the Crimea understand the complexity of taking sides for Turkey, which is a member of the NATO alliance. In that context, a lot of attention is being paid now to bringing the Tatars to the side of the Crimean Russia-oriented leaders.
Until now, the head of the Mejlis (Council) of Crimean Tatars, Refat Chubarov, has been a firm supporter of the Maidan. He is saying that Kiev’s Rada is the only legitimate power in Ukraine and that there currently is no ...
... responding strongly to unrest and instability threatening its own North Ossetia (which resulted in Russian peacekeepers being killed according to the UN) and sending an appropriate force message to Georgia to stop exacerbating the situation. And now in Crimea, Russia is bluntly pursuing its best foreign policy interests during a time of political turmoil in a region that was once its own (Crimea was given to Ukraine in the 1950s with an air of diplomatic indifference as the expected eternal nature of the Soviet ...
