[credit: Gary Varvel, Indianapolis Star]
More: At least they are talking. President Putin called the White House and supposedly told the Current Occupant that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine. Western intelligence says Russian troops and supplies continue to mass at the border and has warned that an invasion is imminent. Thirty-thousand troops sounds like hardly enough to subjugate a country the size of Ukraine (another twenty-five are already in Crimea). Nevertheless, NATO Commander Breedlove said the Russian forces are capable of crossing Ukraine to link up with forces stationed in restive Moldavia. There is no diplomatic agreement yet on how to defuse the crisis, but Secretary of State Kerry is on his way to meet his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for discussions. The US wants Russia to pull its troops back while Russia is concerned with what it calls the rampage of extremists threatening the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Ukraine is no prize for the West if elections scheduled for May go its way. Its economy is, in short, a mess. The economy is now smaller than it was when the country declared independence from the Soviet system in 1992. Once smaller, Poland's economy is twice as big as Ukraine's. It has coal resources and aging heavy industries that are highly energy inefficient and highly dependent on subsidized Russian natural gas. A corrupt shadow economy accounts for 44% of GDP according to one Ukrainian academic study. It owes the Russian gas giant Gazprom $1.9bn. Gazprom said it will end Ukraine's one-third discount from April 1st now that Russian forces occupy Sevastopol and the rest of Crimea. The IMF agreed to loan Ukraine $14-18bn, but it has a history of defaulting on previous aid packages in 2008 and 2010. The region's instability has detered western investment. It seems the EU will be getting another basket case to add to its patient roster of economically sick countries. Incidently the 2014 vintage from Crimea's vinyards will be labeled, "Product of Russia".
{28.03.14}The United Nations General Assembly declared in a non-binding vote the Crimean referendum supporting annexation illegal. Of course the Russian ambassador chose to point out that more than half the number of nations that voted for the declaration, voted to abstain. Western politicians have a hard time understanding Vladimir Putin because he is a rare breed of politician who says what he means and does what he says. When he first addressed the Duma after being installed as Prime Minister under President Yeltsin in 1999 one of his first concerns in rebuilding a crumbling nation was Russia's territorial integrity. He said, "Russia has been a great power for centuries, and remains so. It has always had and still has legitimate zones of interest abroad in both the former Soviet land and elsewhere. We should not drop our guard in this respect, neither should we allow our opinion to be ignored." Western influenced political elements in Ukraine clearly were ignoring Russia's wishes in "a zone of interest" when they fomented an uprising against Yanukovych's elected government. So President Putin acted by annexing Crimea with the support of most of its citizens, and to his credit he did so without a pitched military battle of any sort. Putin began his career in the KGB at a time when Soviet world influence was at its zenith. He is not a crypto-communist longing for the reestablishment of the Soviet Union, but he is a nationalist and an authoritarian who wants Russia to be a respected player once again.
[credit: Nate Beeler, Columbus Dispatch]
Wackydoodle sez, Don't tell the folks in Moldavia that!