Crisis in Ukraine

[Fulcrum29]

Ukraine is planning to withdraw from Crimea. Their captured naval base commander is also not yet released, past deadline, so they may cut water and electricity to Crimea. Source: BBC (using app)

 

[Alan]

Putin thinks the West is as weak as jelly. And the tragedy is he's right

The West’s outrage at Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimea found full expression at Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. It was announced that 21 Russian and Crimean politicians and officials face a travel ban and asset freeze, a sanction matched by America. Thus, a tiny number of Moscow’s elite and their puppets find their Harrods cards suspended. And in case you are wondering, it is as likely that President Vladimir Putin’s £25billion personal fortune will be discovered sitting in a current account at the Kensington branch of NatWest as that Sevastapol will win the 2014

Whatever the historic arguments for Crimean secession from Ukraine - and some exist - Putin’s act of armed aggression, with threats of more to come, relies on exactly the same arguments that Hitler deployed to justify his 1938-39 lunges into Czechoslovakia and Poland. Russia’s brutish president plays golf abroad with only one club in his bag — force, or the threat of it. Nothing that has been said or done by the West since the Ukrainian crisis began will have caused him a moment’s discomfort. Russia cannot impress the world by social or industrial achievements, because it boasts none. It can gain our attention only by inspiring fear or sponsoring mayhem, whether in Crimea, Iran or Syria, and Putin is content that this should be so. The United States yesterday warned of further sanctions against Russia, including expulsion from the G8. But it remains unlikely that the leading Continental nations will support convincing economic action. Half of Europe cooks on Russian gas, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes a display of real defiance against Putin, or indeed any foreign enemy.


Thus the master of the Kremlin has concluded that the West is weak, jelly weak. The evidence of almost three decades since the Cold War’s ending suggests he is right. Europe’s major powers have largely dismantled their armed forces. NATO is more dependent on the Americans than ever in its history for any display of military power. U.S. radar surveillance aircraft and U.S. fighters yesterday patrolled the skies over Eastern Europe, and mighty sick the American people are becoming of paying the bill for our defences. And where in all this is Britain? The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have talked bravely since the crisis began. Yesterday in the Commons, William Hague deplored Russia’s ‘land grab’, the manner in which Moscow has rejected ‘respect for the law of that country, or for international law’. He asserts that Putin has made ‘a big miscalculation’; that Russia will face ‘costs and consequences’ for its military intervention in Ukraine.


But why should Moscow be impressed? This British Government, for all its pretensions since 2010 to play a heroic lead, has conducted its affairs in a fashion that leaves us singing falsetto on the international stage. A friend who recently accompanied a national delegation to the Middle East told me how depressed he was to discover how respect for Britain has slumped. We have lost two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit as junior partners to the Americans; then made an almighty mess of policy towards Syria. There, David Cameron and William Hague marched to the top of the hill, then had to come scuttling down again when they found nobody else following. Libya is now a shambles. Defence cuts have made a sorry impression. We can no longer posture in Washington as a credible partner in military operations, and the Government lies through its teeth about the state of our Armed Forces. Stuck with two absurd giant aircraft-carriers under construction, it refuses to admit a truth well known in Whitehall - that it can afford only a handful of American-built F-35 jets to fly off them.

Ministers pretend they can make good their drastic reduction in Army strength by recruiting more reservists. Yet every man, woman and sniffer dog in the services knows the reserves scheme is dead in the water. Moreover, in the secrecy of the Ministry of Defence, discussions have already started about prospective Army cuts below the planned 82,000 establishment, on the assumption that even this will soon be unaffordable. David Cameron has placed Britain’s security in the hands of an accountant, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, who displays as much understanding of strategy as Davina McCall. It is welcome that a British Government should recognise our diminished place in the world. It is sad, however, that respect for this country should be so drastically reduced.
Accountant: Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has overseen plans to slash the Armed Forces

But William Hague’s stern remarks about Ukraine impress foes and friends alike no more than the same lines delivered by Winnie the Pooh. The lessons of the Ukraine crisis are written in neon lights. First, after decades in which the Left has denounced American ‘meddling’ in the affairs of other nations, here we see what happens when the greatest democracy on earth renounces its historic leadership role. Barack Obama’s presidency is a failure for many reasons, rooted in the weird detachment of the man himself. But it is scary indeed to see what happens when a big, ugly state such as Russia, ruled by a gangster elite, decides that the United States and its leader are no longer capable of resisting its thuggery.Beyond this, it has been plain for decades that the U.S. is unwilling much longer to bankroll and spearhead our defence - and why should it, when Europe is a rich continent? Now, we see Germany refusing even to use its vast economic muscle to deter Moscow.

We must keep a sense of historical perspective. The Ukrainian crisis is grave, but it is not 1914 nor 1939. Nonetheless, it should provide a giant wake-up call to Europeans.History did not end with the conclusion of the Cold War. There are still very bad people out there, willing to do very bad things unless they are deterred or stopped.It is indispensable for NATO to warn Moscow, and mean it, that any act of aggression towards the Baltic states would provoke a major showdown.Instead of imposing personal sanctions on a mere 21 Russians and Crimeans, every member of the Russian parliament who voted for invasion and annexation should be denied entry to the U.S. and EU.Germany must recognise that its place as the richest and most powerful nation in Europe demands that it should start to do its share towards protecting our common security, as it has not done since 1990.


It is a misfortune for the world that Russia, a great nation, should have fallen into the hands of brutes. Putin reveres Stalin, one of the most successful mass murderers of the 20th century.Freedom and dissent are, in the Russian president’s eyes, unacceptable in his new czardom.Yesterday, a Ukrainian servicemen was shot and killed at a base that came under attack in Crimea’s main town of Simferopol.The acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called it a war crime and said the Crimean conflict has now entered a ‘military phase’. These are chilling words indeed.We neither need nor wish to fight Russia, but the West must abandon its dismally failed attempt to appease its leader.The bear will continue to claw victims unless we display the will to drive him back into his lair - before he comes hunting closer to our own door.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...elly-And-tragedy-hes-right.html#ixzz2wU6ANK8f

 

[OrbitalDawn]

So wtf do they want "the West" to do? Start a war with Russia? :erm:

 

[LazyLion]

The naval commander has been released

 

[Flip-Flop]

So wtf do they want "the West" to do? Start a war with Russia? :erm:

The same question might have been asked many times when Nazi Germany started to misbehave, and then ................... BAM! France falls and the Nazi's were right at the doorstep of Great Britain.

I hope we are not heading for something similar.

 

[thestaggy]

Related:

Moldova's Trans-Dniester region pleads to join Russia

Pro-Russian politicians and activists in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester region have asked the Russian parliament to draft a law that would allow their territory to join Russia.

The Trans-Dniestrian appeal comes as Moscow moves towards absorbing Crimea into the Russian Federation. Ukraine, the EU and US say that move is illegal.

Russian loyalists dominate Trans-Dniester, with support from Moscow.

The region split from Moldova in a war in 1991-92, as the USSR was collapsing.

Moldova's President Nicolae Timofti said in a news briefing on Tuesday that any decision by Moscow to accept Trans-Dniester "would be a step in the wrong direction".

In a September 2006 referendum, unrecognised by Moldova and the international community, the region reasserted its demand for independence.

Irina Kubanskikh, spokeswoman for the Trans-Dniester parliament, told Itar-Tass news agency that the region's public bodies had "appealed to the Russian Federation leadership to examine the possibility of extending to Trans-Dniester the legislation, currently under discussion in the State Duma, on granting Russian citizenship and admitting new subjects into Russia".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26627236

 

[LazyLion]

FRANCE DELAYS DECISION ON WARSHIPS SALE TO RUSSIA

France on Thursday said it would not make any decision about whether to suspend a controversial warship sale to Russia because of the Crimea crisis until October.

"The delivery of the first boat is due in October, so the question of a suspension will arise in October," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, a day after Germany cancelled a major arms contract with Moscow.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 12:17

 

[LazyLion]

PUTIN'S CRIMEA TAKEOVER SENDS SHIVERS ACROSS EX-SOVIET UNION

It is December 2019 and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is flying to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his bold moves in standing up to the US and establishing a new world order.

"Even in its sleep the world does not forget that Russia can turn the entire planet into radioactive ash, not only the United States," reads a new satirical short story by Belarussian writer Sergei Ostrovtsov.

The piece, titled "A Nobel for Putin", was published online as waves of concern spread across countries of the former USSR over Moscow's seizure of Ukraine's peninsula of Crimea.

Putin's pledge to protect compatriots beyond his country's borders and his readiness to revisit history has re-opened old wounds in the Baltic nations and even troubled the Kremlin's traditional allies.

Many of the post-Soviet countries have sizeable Russian-speaking populations and are struggling with festering territorial disputes and separatist claims of their own.

"All the former Soviet countries have artificial borders," said Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group.

"A precedent for redrawing borders has been created."

Following an uprising that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych last month, Putin sent troops to Russian-speaking Crimea, citing concern for compatriots.

On Tuesday, he signed a treaty making the peninsula part of Russian territory, saying Nikita Khrushchev's decision to give it to Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union in 1954 was a mistake.

The significance of Russia's absorption of Crimea has not been lost on the fellow Slavic nation of Belarus whose cities of Gomel, Mogilyov and Vitebsk were once part of the republic of Soviet Russia under the USSR.

Since the start of the crisis, the country's authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko has been manoeuvering to hedge his bets and remain on good terms with Moscow, agreeing to station additional Russian fighter jets in his country.

But just like Ukraine, Belarus in 1994 signed the so-called Budapest memorandum, renouncing its military nuclear capability in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and Britain.

"Where can we, poor Belarussians, hide from such a 'friend?'," said former Belarussian lawmaker and political analyst Andrei Klimov, referring to Russia.

The attitude of even close allies within the former USSR has been of extreme caution.

The energy-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan acknowledged the results of the referendum in Crimea, where a majority of the population voted to split from Ukraine and join Russia, but President Nursultan Nazarbayev has not so far made any public comments on Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.

President Serzh Sarkisian of Armenia, which last year said it would join Moscow-led customs union, agreed that people have a right to self-determination but stopped short of endorsing Russia's takeover of Crimea.

Many analysts said the seizure of the peninsula dealt a huge blow to Moscow's ties with ex-Soviet allies.

In 2011, Putin unveiled a grand plan to build on the experience of the European Union and integrate post-Soviet states into a economic zone on the basis of Moscow's customs union together with Kazakhstan and Belarus.

"There won't be any integration with Kazakhstan and Belarus when Russia is capable of seizing territory from other countries," said Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics.

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, which is desperate to reclaim Nagorny Karabakh from Armenian-backed separatists who seized it in a bloody war in the early 1990s, said that the crisis in Ukraine should be resolved "within the framework of the country's constitution".

The leaders of Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which is home to a major Russian base, have all watched the unfolding crisis in Ukraine in silence.

But Kyrgyzstan, the most politically open of the Central Asian states which survived a bloody uprising in 2010, quickly said it no longer recognised the ousted Yanukovych as Ukraine's president.

"It's a signal to the countries of the Central Asia," leader of the opposition El-Zhurt party, Kubanychbek Apas, told AFP. "It will now be easy for the former Soviet republics to become the colonies of Putin's authoritarian Russia."

Romanian-speaking Moldova immediately warned Moscow gainst trying to annex its breakaway region of Transdestr after the Russians-speaking separatist territory appealed to lawmakers in Moscow to pass legislation that could allow the region become part of Russia.

"Separatism is a very dangerous infection," said Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, were predictably furious.

President Giorgi Margvelashvili of Georgia, which fought a brief war with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, said the Ukraine events posed a threat to "the entire world order".

But many ethnic Russians across the former Soviet Union said they were happy to know that Putin was there to defend them.

"My mind has been put at ease," said Antonina Mikheyeva, a Russian who lives in Turkmenistan. "I know that if something happens Russia will protect my children and me."


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 12:55

 

[LazyLion]

MERKEL: RUSSIA FACES MORE SANCTIONS, G8 SUSPENDED

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the European Union will impose more sanctions on Russia following its decision to annex Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and will suspend all G-8 meetings until the political situation changes.

Merkel told the country's Parliament Thursday ahead of an EU summit in Brussels that the bloc would expand a freeze of bank accounts and travel bans of people that have been linked to the crisis.

Earlier this week, the EU and the United States slapped sanctions on certain individuals that were involved in what they say was the unlawful referendum in Crimea over joining Russia.

She also said that the G-8 will not meet until the situation changes. Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to host leaders from the top industrial countries in Sochi in June.


Source : Sapa-AP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 11:28

 

[zippy]

Looks Like Hillbrow might be applying to join Nigeria shortly

http://www.news24.com/Elections/News/SA-rejects-Nigerians-poll-participation-calls-20140319-2

 

[Garson007]

Good old Ostalgie gripping the ex-soviet states.

 

[LazyLion]

AIDS: CRIMEAN DRUG USERS AT RISK, SAYS NGO

More than 14,000 injecting drug users in Crimea risk being cut off from life-saving treatment and services prohibited in Russia, an NGO working to halt HIV spread warned on Thursday.

Most immediately at risk are about 800 Crimeans who depend on opioid substitute therapy (OST), the International HIV/AIDS Alliance said in a statement highlighting a hidden health consequence of the political crisis.

People on OST receive synthetic drug substitutes which are safer than the heroin they replace and are administered under medical supervision, curbing HIV infection through needle-sharing.

"This treatment is prohibited in Russia and current stocks of methadone and buprenorphine on the Crimean peninsula will only last for another few weeks at most," said the alliance.

"With the blocking of highways that connect Crimea to the mainland, getting medical supplies through is challenging and there are concerns that a major public health crisis will arise as a result."

Once treatment is cut off, OST recipients will go into withdrawal and many are likely to revert to their old, unsafe drug habits, the British-based group said.

Contrary to Ukraine, where drug addicts have access to HIV prevention services like clean needle exchanges, condom distribution and HIV-testing, Russia takes a punitive approach to drug use that the alliance claimed was responsible for one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in the world.

"Injecting drug users represent nearly 80 percent of all HIV cases in the country," said the statement.

OST has been available in Crimea for almost a decade under the political control of Ukraine, which saw the number of new HIV cases among people who inject drugs drop from 7,127 in 2006 to 5,847 last year.

Andriy Klepikov, executive direct of the alliance's Ukraine branch, urged Crimean authorities to intervene.

"Any interruption to harm reduction programming is a disaster for health, human rights and the HIV epidemic in the region," he said.

"We urge the authorities in Crimea to step in and ensure that critical supply chains are not disrupted and lives not put at risk as a result of territorial politicking."


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 13:54

 

[LazyLion]

CRIMEA SPLIT TO DEPRIVE UKRAINE OF BLACK SEA GAS

With the forfeit of Crimea, a holiday peninsula of two million people, Ukraine is also set to lose offshore natural gas fields, likely to be snapped up by Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Upon voting for independence from Ukraine, the Crimean assembly moved Monday to nationalise assets of Chornomornaftogaz, a unit of state gas company Naftogaz, in a decision that also included the "continental shelf and exclusive economic zone" in the Black Sea.

Chornomornaftogaz owns 17 fields -- including 11 gas fields, four gas condensate fields, and two oil fields -- and has 13 offshore platforms, in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. It employs about 4,000 people.

Crimean deputy prime minister Rustam Temirgaliyev told Moscow's Kommersant business daily that the company would soon be put up for "privatisation" and that Gazprom had expressed an interest.

In remarks published in Forbes magazine's online edition in Ukraine, Chornomornaftogaz's deputy chief executive said representatives of the new authorities took the helm of the company on March 13, accompanied by gunmen.

"There were representatives of Gazprom, four of them," Volodymyr Plechun was quoted as saying. "They immediately began to study documents."

The men armed with automatic weapons were then deployed at Chornomornaftogaz's platforms.

In 2013, the Crimean company extracted some 1.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas, accounting for more than five percent of Ukraine's overall production.

This represented a 40-percent increase from the year before, and was enough to satisfy the needs of the peninsula.

"It is never good to lose an asset, but it's not a critical loss," said Dmytro Marunych, an analyst at the Energy Research Institute.

"All of the extracted gas will be for consumers in Crimea. This means that the population of mainland Ukraine will not be affected," he explained.

Although largely symbolic, the loss will be painful for the government in Kiev, which for years has been trying to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.

Significant efforts had been made to modernise the company, which intended to double its production and build a pipeline in the south of the ex-Soviet state.

At the UN General Assembly in September, Ukraine announced it had reached a natural gas production-sharing agreement with a consortium led by Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell and US counterpart ExxonMobil.

But this suffered a setback this week when Shell confirmed that in January it had terminated talks on the project to extract natural gas from the Skifski site in the Black Sea.

ExxonMobil, for its part, said it remained interested but that it was suspending the negotiations given the Crimean crisis.

The result of this is that Ukraine may be forced to pay Gazprom more for gas extracted by Chornomornaftogaz.

"Over 50 percent of (Chornomornaftogaz's) planned 2015 gas output will be sold domestically (in Crimea) at a relatively low price," analysts at French bank Societe Generale said in a note to clients.

"We think the balance could be sold to Ukraine, where prices for Russian imports are currently at a par with the EU's prevailing long-term contract prices."

But analysts say they expect a lengthy legal battle over the ownership of Chornomornaftogaz at international courts.

"The dispute will last for several years," said Valery Nesterov, an analyst at of Sberbank Investment Research in Moscow.

"It is a policy of acquisition. This (legal) action is embarrassing but there is no choice. Since it is (Russian) territory, it is okay to buy it," he added.

For Gazprom, the Crimean company is not a major prize, with analysts putting Chornomornaftogaz's value at between $500 million and $800 million (365 million and 580 million euros).

Its production and reserves represent only 0.5 percent of the Russian giant's.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 13:59

 

[Compton_effect]

CRIMEA SPLIT TO DEPRIVE UKRAINE OF BLACK SEA GAS

With the forfeit of Crimea, a holiday peninsula of two million people, Ukraine is also set to lose offshore natural gas fields, likely to be snapped up by Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Upon voting for independence from Ukraine, the Crimean assembly moved Monday to nationalise assets of Chornomornaftogaz, a unit of state gas company Naftogaz, in a decision that also included the "continental shelf and exclusive economic zone" in the Black Sea.

Chornomornaftogaz owns 17 fields -- including 11 gas fields, four gas condensate fields, and two oil fields -- and has 13 offshore platforms, in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. It employs about 4,000 people.

Crimean deputy prime minister Rustam Temirgaliyev told Moscow's Kommersant business daily that the company would soon be put up for "privatisation" and that Gazprom had expressed an interest.

In remarks published in Forbes magazine's online edition in Ukraine, Chornomornaftogaz's deputy chief executive said representatives of the new authorities took the helm of the company on March 13, accompanied by gunmen.

"There were representatives of Gazprom, four of them," Volodymyr Plechun was quoted as saying. "They immediately began to study documents."

The men armed with automatic weapons were then deployed at Chornomornaftogaz's platforms.

In 2013, the Crimean company extracted some 1.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas, accounting for more than five percent of Ukraine's overall production.

This represented a 40-percent increase from the year before, and was enough to satisfy the needs of the peninsula.

"It is never good to lose an asset, but it's not a critical loss," said Dmytro Marunych, an analyst at the Energy Research Institute.

"All of the extracted gas will be for consumers in Crimea. This means that the population of mainland Ukraine will not be affected," he explained.

Although largely symbolic, the loss will be painful for the government in Kiev, which for years has been trying to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.

Significant efforts had been made to modernise the company, which intended to double its production and build a pipeline in the south of the ex-Soviet state.

At the UN General Assembly in September, Ukraine announced it had reached a natural gas production-sharing agreement with a consortium led by Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell and US counterpart ExxonMobil.

But this suffered a setback this week when Shell confirmed that in January it had terminated talks on the project to extract natural gas from the Skifski site in the Black Sea.

ExxonMobil, for its part, said it remained interested but that it was suspending the negotiations given the Crimean crisis.

The result of this is that Ukraine may be forced to pay Gazprom more for gas extracted by Chornomornaftogaz.

"Over 50 percent of (Chornomornaftogaz's) planned 2015 gas output will be sold domestically (in Crimea) at a relatively low price," analysts at French bank Societe Generale said in a note to clients.

"We think the balance could be sold to Ukraine, where prices for Russian imports are currently at a par with the EU's prevailing long-term contract prices."

But analysts say they expect a lengthy legal battle over the ownership of Chornomornaftogaz at international courts.

"The dispute will last for several years," said Valery Nesterov, an analyst at of Sberbank Investment Research in Moscow.

"It is a policy of acquisition. This (legal) action is embarrassing but there is no choice. Since it is (Russian) territory, it is okay to buy it," he added.

For Gazprom, the Crimean company is not a major prize, with analysts putting Chornomornaftogaz's value at between $500 million and $800 million (365 million and 580 million euros).

Its production and reserves represent only 0.5 percent of the Russian giant's.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 13:59

And the penny drops...

 

[LazyLion]

EU TAKES AIM AT RUSSIA ECONOMY AS KIEV PLANS CRIMEA PULLOUT

European leaders were on Thursday to debate biting economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea as Ukraine tore up key ties with the Kremlin and drew up plans to evacuate its nationals from the rebel peninsula.

The European Union is under intense pressure to find a credible response to an explosive security crisis on the 28-nation bloc's eastern frontier that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday called "the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War."

But the Kremlin has warned repeatedly that it would strike back hard if confronted with a new wave of Western punitive measures that EU nations -- their energy and financial sectors intertwined with Russia's -- would keenly prefer to avoid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU leaders would widen the list of people targeted by travel bans and asset freezes and warned of economic sanctions if the crisis escalates.

The EU Council "will make clear that we are ready at any time to apply third-phase measures in the event of a further worsening of the situation," she said, adding that "it will, without a doubt, be a question of economic sanctions."

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also find himself on the diplomatic defensive in Moscow when he hosts United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon amid a chorus of global condemnation of his aggressive Ukrainian approach.

But world anger has done little to halt unchallenged Russian military advances that prompted Kiev's new Western-backed government to acknowledge preparing a Crimean evacuation plan for thousands of its soldiers and families.

Tensions eased somewhat in the region on Thursday when acting president Oleksandr Turchynov announced the release by Crimean militias of Ukranian navy chief Sergiy Gayduk.

Turchynov had threatened the Crimean authorities with "an adequate response... of a technical and technological nature" unless they immediately released Gayduk and several others seized during the storming of Ukraine's naval headquarters in the port of Sevastopol on Wednesday.

But Ukrainian lawmakers still adopted an emotional if entirely symbolic declaration saying they "will never cease to fight for the liberation of Crimea as long and painful as this can be."

The march by Russian troops and pro-Kremlin militias across the mostly Russian-speaking region roughly the size of Belgium has been unhalting since the day Putin first won the right to use force against his ex-Soviet neighbour following the February 22 fall there of a Moscow-backed regime.

Kiev's untested leaders and their Western allies now fear that Putin has set his sights on the Russified southeastern swathes of Ukraine as part of his self-declared campaign to "protect" compatriots from the more nationalistic forces who rose to power on the back of three months of deadly protests in Kiev.

"Our major concern right now is whether he will go beyond Crimea, whether Russia will intervene in the eastern parts," NATO chief Rasmussen also conceded on Wednesday.

Kiev has responded by seeking protection from Western powers and planning on Friday to sign the political portion of a broad EU Association Agreement whose rejection in November by Ukraine's pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych sparked the protests that eventually led to his fall.

Ukraine on Wednesday also announced plans to withdraw from the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) alliance that replaced the Soviet Union and to slap visas on Russians who sought entry to their country.

The Ukrainian authorities said they would further consider asking the United Nations to declare Crimea a "demilitarised zone" and thus force the removal of up to 25,000 Russian soldiers that could be based there under an existing agreement with Kiev.

The EU leaders have already suspended talks on easing visa requirement for Russian travellers into Europe -- an issue that Moscow has lobbied for years -- and slapped travel bans and asset freezes on 21 Russians and Ukrainians considered culpable for the Crimean swoop.

But the measures covered a much lower rank of officials than the punitive steps also announced on Monday by Washington against 11 Russians and Ukrainians.

Those covered Yanukovych and some key Putin allies who play a prominent and powerful daily role in politics.

Germany stepped up the pressure on Wednesday by announcing the suspension of a major arms deal with Moscow that signalled its commitment to a tougher stance.

But France said on Thursday it was pushing back a decision on whether to shelve its disputed sale of a second state-of-the-art Mistral warship to Russia until October, when the first one is due to be delivered.

The message from Washington has been more consistent and forceful.

"The question at this point is not if we will do more sanctions, it's when," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

But Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that Moscow was preparing an entire series of "asymmetrical measures" should the United States hit his country with more severe steps.

Ryabkov said these covered "a number of areas of dialogue... that are important to the Americans" and hinted that Russia could "raise the stakes" in the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 20 Mar 2014 14:22

 

[Compton_effect]

Didn't the French try really hard to sell the SA Navy on the Mistral a few years ago?
I'll bet money they try to flog one to us if the embargo goes into effect.
Just what the Navy needs. (The sarcasm is so heavy it can sink ships)

 

[Flip-Flop]

But the Kremlin has warned repeatedly that it would strike back hard if confronted with a new wave of Western punitive measures that EU nations -- their energy and financial sectors intertwined with Russia's -- would keenly prefer to avoid.

What would they do? Drop a atom bomb on Berlin cause we no longer want to play with the bully in our sand box?

 

[Compton_effect]

What would they do? Drop a atom bomb on Berlin cause we no longer want to play with the bully in our sand box?

Thanks to fracking - the US is the world's biggest producer of oil and natural gas.
5 years ago Gazprom could have threatened to cut the supply to Europe - a real case of cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Now all that would happen is that they would open Europe as a market for the US and Canada, drawing Europe even closer to the US.
While Russia would focus more on the Chinese Market, strengthening ties to the east.

Its a hollow threat. Even on the aerospace side, measures like cutting flights to the ISS, would actually just be in the benefit of the US economy.

 

[lucifir]

And the penny drops...

its always about the oil/gas/energy ... so all the other ex-soviet states need to make sure they got no oil/gas to plunder

 

[Compton_effect]

Just found this in the Siberian Times - dated 4 days ago. :wtf:

Russia gains vast new area twice the size of Crimea with 'the energy riches of an Ali Baba's cave'

16 March 2014
Highly prized victory comes without a shot in anger after 13 year battle in the corridors of the United Nations.

'A real Ali Baba's cave in terms of resources'. Picture: Vladimir Serebryanskiy

The Siberian land mass is officially 52,000 square kilometres bigger after an enclave in the Sea of Okhotsk was recognised as part of Russia's continental shelf. The decision comes from the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

'This water area of the Sea of Okhotsk has many biological and natural resources, which have not considered as the main income source of the country's economy and now we can consider and include it in our long-term plans,' said Sergei Donskoy, Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology.

The underwater area is roughly the size of Holland and Belgium combined.

The treasure trove includes hydrocarbon resources exceeding one billion tonnes, believes Donskoy. He has described it in the past as 'a real Ali Baba's cave in terms of resources', adding that access will long-term bring 'enormous opportunities and prospects for the Russian economy'.

Moscow sent a request in 2001 for the entire continental shelf, including the Arctic shelf, which the UN rejected demanding more data and evidence that the enclave is the natural continuation of the Russian territory. The decision, released at the weekend, is a first step in a Russian campaign to claim huge new rights based on the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges being extensions of the Siberian continental shelves.

If approved, Russia would gain 1.2 million square kilometres of Arctic territorial waters.