2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

Ukraine imperils Obama’s foreign-policy legacy

How far the blunt and threatening posture US secretary of state John Kerry took in his interview with the CBS News toward Moscow — and President Vladimir Putin in person — over the Ukraine situation was genuine and how far it was intended to meet the domestic criticism of the Barack Obama administration being ‘weak’ in its foreign policies doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Kerry demanded virtual capitulation by Russia under the shadow of US retribution and that’s being plain dishonest and unrealistic.

The history of the current Ukraine crisis didn’t begin with the Russian Duma’s authorization of Putin to use military force in Ukraine, if necessary. Kerry can easily check that out by asking his subordinate Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland whether she indeed discussed a road map for Ukraine’s color revolution on phone with the US ambassador in Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt during their famous “F**k-the-EU” conversation two months ago.
In fact, that conversation took place on December 11 and the subsequent events in Ukraine, including the takeover by the new prime minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, have been ditto according to Nuland’s road map. Suffice to say, Kerry can’t say there is no blood on his hands. So much about UN Charter, international law, 21st century norms of inter-state behavior, blah-blah.
Kerry is dishonest in taking to the high ground of political morality. The starting point for a reasonable solution to the crisis is an honest stocktaking by the Obama administration as regards its deliberate attempt to kindle the new cold war spirit in Europe as a ploy to reestablish Washington’s transatlantic leadership in terms of a “containment” strategy toward Russia.
Equally, Kerry’s threats to Moscow won’t wash. Primarily because the US doesn’t enjoy global hegemony and it no longer has the ability to marshall a “coalition of the willing” in world politics. This is evident from the hollow threats Kerry held out.
Kerry warned Russia that the US and its allies would boycott the G8 summit in Sochi in June and even doubted Russia’s eligibility to be a G8 country. Big deal. Niall Ferguson has a fine blog in the Spectator what the G8 has come to be. Yes, based on last year’s GDP figures, the BRICS is slated to overtake the top four guns of the G8 — the US, Japan, Germany and the UK.
Whereas, Kerry is on cloud nine when he speaks of G8. Will Russia compromise on its determination to counter the US’ “containment” strategy because it may otherwise lose G8 membership? Kerry must be joking.
The same holds good for the economic sanctions he has threatened against Russia. How feasible is it for Europe to impose economic boycott of Moscow when its dependence on energy supplies from Russia is so very critical? True, US has no big stakes in trade or investment with Russia, but that is certainly not the case with Germany. Most important, will Japan’s Shinzo Abe mothball his concerted strategy to woo Russia as a counterweight to China — all because of Ukraine?
But Kerry is an experienced politician and diplomat. So, why did he say all that in the CBS interview? His intentions seems to have been to drive wedges within the Russian political elites. Russia has an influential lobby of “westernists” who have traditionally dominated its post-Soviet foreign policy. Putin’s “pivot to Asia” hasn’t exactly gone down well with them.
A very large section of the Russian elites park their ill-begotten assets in western countries and Kerry’s threat to “freeze” Russian assets affects them. In essence, Kerry has given a nudge to them. This is an old thesis among America’s Russia hands such as Nuland — that Russian power structure is ridden with factions and cliques that are vulnerable to US manipulation and Putin’s authority can be undermined.
But Kerry is in a fantasyland. How could Moscow compromise on Ukraine’s induction into the EU and NATO, when it happens to be an existential issue for Russia? Zbigniew Brzezinski’s noted work The Grand Chessboard, which has profoundly influenced the US’s policies toward Russia under successive administrations since the end of the Cold War, is quintessentially built on the geopolitical matrix that without Ukraine’s partnership, Russia weakens, and that’s the path leading to America’s primacy in the 21st century.
Simply put, the US has bitten more than it can chew in Ukraine. Alright, as Nuland wanted, “Yats” has become prime minister, but without Russia’s acquiescence, which is clearly lacking, it will take light years to put together a successor regime in Kiev that is stable and whose authority runs all across that big country of over 45 million people.
The Obama administration will find it an uphill task to persuade the European allies to keep bankrolling the Ukraine economy. It’s a tough proposition to replace with American or European supplies the heavily subsidized Russian gas supplies on which Ukraine’s economy survives. Ukraine’s debt liabilities run into tens of billions of dollars.
Most important, Russia will counter, no matter what it takes, any US move to hustle Ukraine into the EU or NATO. The point is, there is no consensus within Ukraine for such a co-option into the Western orbit. The domestic opinion is evenly divided — and more so today. If the US proxies in power in Kiev try to bulldoze a decision, the eastern region, which wants to preserve Ukraine’s age-old ties with Russia, will revolt.
As the shadow boxing in Crimea underscores, Russia actually needs to do precious little to leverage what happens next. No “invasion” of Ukraine is necessary. Russia merely has to prevent the US proxies in Kiev from showing muscle power in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. In Crimea, the revolt by the local political leadership against the US-backed putsch in Kiev cannot be crushed militarily. With minimum effort, Moscow has ensured it.
The fundamental weakness in the US strategy is that Ukraine is not something that is felt in the blood and felt along the heart in “Old Europe”. The US strategy is riveted on “isolating” Russia, which is not an obsession with “Old Europe”.
Finally, if Kerry goes ahead and carries out his threats, Moscow is not going to take it lying down. At the very least, if Putin chooses to adopt the Gandhian way of “non-cooperation”, the US will be in big trouble over a number of foreign-policy issues.
If the US imposes sanctions against Russia, Moscow will most certainly bust Washington’s sanctions against Iran and it will put such a big hole in Obama’s foreign policy tapestry that he won’t know where to turn to. In fact, a senior Iranian diplomat has just arrived in Moscow for consultations. It will do well for Obama to know the limits to American power.
The right thing to do for Obama is to put the neocon lobby in its due place and to rein in the powerful ‘Russia hands’ in the US foreign-policy establishment who are running the policies for their laid-back president.
Nuland is a protege of Madeline Albright — and of Moldovan extraction to boot, and, furthermore, she is married to the famous neocon ideologue Robert Kagan. Is there any big mystery to be explained? There is really no need for Obama to look very far to grasp where the real problem lies. It lies within his own house. He shouldn’t be an absentee landlord when it comes to the making of the Russia policies.

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Putin's army salutes a Nulandized Kiev
By Peter Lee

The coup in Kiev was a loss for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but doesn't look like much of a win for the US, Europe, or Ukraine. What we see in Ukraine today is the messy consequences of a clumsily executed regime change strategy.

Clumsy, because somehow it excluded pro-Russian forces in Ukraine that make up about half of the country. And clumsy because it blew out of the water an EU-brokered transition deal by which Viktor Yanyukovich and his party would have stayed in the government and Russia would have supplied US$12 billion to help Ukraine ride out its major economic difficulties.

With Russia excluded, Putin was welcome to imagine the worst, including an attempt by the Ukraine government to install anti-Russian administrations in the eastern provinces and Crimea ... and the possibility that an anti-Russian government in Kiev, liberated from EU geopolitical and energy qualms, might give priority to a key Pentagon and US foreign-policy priority: evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its base at Sebastopol.

Russia operates its Black Sea Fleet at Sebastopol under a lease that expires in 2042. That lease extension was negotiated by Yanyukovich two years ago in return for favorable gas pricing. By doing so, Yanyukovich overturned the policy of the previous administration (Viktor Yuschenko) which had stated its desire to eject Russia from Sebastopol.

With an anti-Russian revolutionary government in power in Kiev, it would not be unreasonable for Russia to expect that the new government might move against Russian interests in Crimea.

So, in my opinion, rather than wait for the Ukrainian government to stabilize itself in Kiev and think about adventures in the east, Putin acted first and forcefully in Crimea, which happens to be the most securely Russian part of Ukraine.

Crimea didn't become part of the Ukrainian SSR until 1954, when Krushchev decided to transfer it out of the Russian SSR. And in 1992, Crimeans voted in a referendum for independence, which the Ukrainian government refused to acknowledge. However, Crimea was allowed a very high degree of autonomy in its government. Russia operates in Crimea under a Status of Forces Agreement that allows it to position 11,000 troops there.

About half of the population in Crimea is still ethnic Russian, and pro-Russian politicians have, presumably in coordination with Moscow, secured most of the local government organs and national government military installations without bloodshed.

Russian soldiers have been assisting, but I think to paint the local seizure of power in Crimea as simply a Russian occupation is misrepresenting the situation.

It's a political initiative with significant local support that has gone smoothly because of the overwhelming military force Russia can bring to the assistance of pro-Russian Crimean politicians. The unkindest thing you can call it is a pro-Russian coup or putsch very similar to the anti-Russian coup or putsch recently implemented in Kiev, but one that's neater, better executed, and with a lower dingbat quotient.

As to where Crimea might go, the possibilities look like 1) autonomy 2) independence 3) annexation by Russia.

Independence or annexation appear unlikely to me. There is a sizable and politically well-organized population of Crimean Tatars who suffered horribly at the hands of Stalin both before and after World War II, and I doubt Russia wants to take the risk of trying to detach them from Ukraine.

I think the most likely Russian objective is for the government in Kiev to confirm a very high level of autonomy for the Crimean government, give up on trying to have any effective central government civil or military organs in the province, and abandon the idea that it can effect the expulsion of Russia from the Sebastopol base.

Beyond that, the Russians have stated repeatedly that they want the EU transitional accord implemented at the national level, but I have a feeling at this point this is merely a bargaining position. Bringing openly pro-Russian political figures back into the central government doesn't seem possible now.

The US did not play a particularly glorious role in this mess. It would be disingenuous for the Obama administration to claim that it has not intervened in Ukraine.

The full extent of US meddling is unclear, but US support for the pro-EU political movement, verbally, through the implementation of sanctions, and through the extensive network of US-affiliated regime-change NGOs such as CANVAS, was unambiguous.

The Obama administration apparently gave a free hand to Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Why Nuland occupies a position of influence in the Democratic Obama administration is something of a puzzle; prior to her elevation to assistant secretary she had served in a rather modest capacity as a State Department spokesperson. However, she is married to Robert Kagan, a well-known neo-conservative and co-founder of Project for the New American Century, whose writings President Obama professes to admire.

In any case, Nuland was on the ground in Ukraine during the upheaval, talking up the demonstrations and famously visiting the Maidan protesters in December to distribute bread and biscuits in a photo op. She also made the famous "F**k the EU" remark in a telephone strategy session with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.

The substance of that phone call was quickly pushed aside to celebrate Nuland's straight-talking feistiness. But what was most notable (and presumably the reason that Russian intelligence intercepted and released the phone call) was that Nuland was calling for the EU to be sidelined because it was not being sufficiently aggressive on the issue of threatening pro-Russian figures with sanctions. Also, Nuland wanted Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, not Vitalyi Klitschko, to serve as the main pro-Western figure in any new government setup.

In the phone call, she tells the US ambassador to Ukraine that the US is going to go through its man at the United Nations, Jeffrey Feltman, to get a Dutch diplomat, Robert Serry, appointed as a special emissary to Kiev. (Serry did go to Kiev, but his role was challenged after the appearance of the tape and another UN diplomat, Jan Eliasson, is apparently now in charge of UN outreach on Ukraine.)

Apparently, again, this was to remove the initiative in Ukraine negotiations out of the hands of Germany and the EU.

It was also reported that in December Nuland had threatened one of Yanyukovich's key supporters, the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov (who controlled 40 delegates in parliament), with sanctions against his Western interests if the Yanyukovich government used violence against protesters.

Remarkably, after a truce was declared, as AP reported, protesters led by hard-right shock troops asserted "the truce was a ruse", attacked police, and snipers opened fire, precipitating a political crisis. Although EU representatives supervised the negotiation of a power-sharing agreement the next day, the protesters rejected it, Yanyukovich's supporters abandoned him, and he fled.

As to why the US might be willing to blow up the EU deal, I - and perhaps V Putin - am inclined to speculate that Victoria Nuland, in allegiance to her neo-con roots, aggressively facilitated a government that was simultaneously pro-US, anti-Russian, and non-EU-oriented and would therefore see no problem with facilitating a cherished US objective - evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Crimea.

This contingency might have affected Putin's decision to employ forceful methods to secure Crimea and pre-empt any inclination by the new Kiev government to fiddle with the status of the Russian base, even at the expense of a sizable diplomatic and security crisis.

Maybe there was no conspiracy to blow up the EU initiative, maybe the protesters attacked spontaneously, but the end result was the same. The explosion of violence compelled Yanyukovich's oligarch backers to withdraw their support in order to protect their precious overseas swag, the EU agreement was stillborn and pro-Russian forces disappeared from the Ukrainian parliament. Yatsenyuk became premier and Klitschko was left on the outside looking in, very much as the US and not the EU wanted it.

But Yanyukovich, instead of getting slowly sidelined during the transition, was impeached with enough haste and legal loose ends that he can plausibly assert that he was not properly removed from office and the Kiev government is illegitimate - a position that the Russians have happily endorsed and which provides ample justification for Russia to disregard the 1994 Budapest Agreement, which is supposed to mandate non-interference in Ukraine's domestic affairs.

To my mind, Ukraine politics is generic skullduggery by both sides, with the United States perhaps holding the edge.

Nevertheless, the United States seems to have underestimated the Russian response to inserting a viscerally anti-Russian government in Kiev, one that immediately passed a law (since revoked) outlawing the use of Russian as an official language, while its supporters went on a spree of Lenin statue-toppling to demonstrate their disdain for Russia. Remarkably, the US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, resigned just at the time the Yanukovich government fell, and it would be expected that the US would want a steady hand on the diplomatic tiller.

What amazes me is the widespread desire to turn this rather sordid escapade into a "good vs evil", "US vs Russia" cage match. It began even before the Crimea crisis with disregard for the fact that the protesters, instead of standing up against tyranny, were simply trying to overturn an election whose results they didn't particularly like. It continued with the uncritical valorizing of the protesters in Maidan, who relied on some unsavory neo-Nazi extreme right Ukraine chauvinists to serve as shock troops in violent attacks upon the police.

Before the coup it was openly acknowledged that the purpose of the Euromaidan movement was to repudiate Yanyukovich's decision to reject an EU agreement and bring Ukraine into the Russia-led Customs Union - and the unrest was justified on grounds that, once Ukraine entered into the Customs Union, its pro-Russia/anti-EU orientation would be irrevocable.

But after the coup, despite the fact that the new government relies on a slate of fantastically rich oligarchs both at the national and local level to sustain its rule, Western commentators immediately spun the coup as a popular uprising against a kleptocratic regime.

I can only imagine that the purpose was to deny Russia a basis for claiming that its interests in a rather important bordering state had been trampled on by an anti-Russia putsch, and that it had a legitimate interest in interfering. But the proper riposte to corrupt officialdom is to vote the bastards out, not overthrow them.

What is, in reality, some thankfully bloodless local geopolitical jostling in Crimea is now spun by AP and Reuters as the biggest crisis since 9/11. And it seems a lot of people are thirsting for it, as if we don't have enough crises in the world. It seems America needs monsters to fight, and if they don't exist, we invent them.

The Russians aren't helping, either. In order to bolster their case for a rollback to the EU transition agreement, the Russian ambassador to the UN brandished a letter from Yanyukovich purportedly asking for Russia to intervene militarily. Presumably, this allows Russia to describe its Crimea intervention as legal and support the validity of the February 21 agreement as an alternative to the coup.

Nevertheless, I think moderation will prevail. The Germans have already inserted themselves in mediation between Russia and the West. Apparently, the UK is against meaningful sanctions. De facto, Kiev may have to resign itself to almost total loss of central government control in Crimea, but Crimea will probably remain autonomous and part of Ukraine.

Thanks to the crisis with Russia, Ukraine is enjoying the collateral benefit of being able to sideline the unruly and sometimes intimidatingly violent street protesters in the name of national unity against an outside threat. Russia will probably not egg on the pro-Russian demonstrators in the other eastern provinces, but will retain the right to intervene on their behalf.

I expect the US will affirm its global leadership by coordinating a campaign for the West to symbolically punish Russia by withdrawing from Group of Eight meeting in Sochi scheduled for June, and enjoy negotiating an onerous IMF agreement with its chosen instrument, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (or, as Nuland familiarly calls him, "Yats.") The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, have already said they will stay away from Sochi until the G8 can return to "meaningful" dialogue.

And, if Russia cannot be prevailed upon to honor its commitments for delivering $12 billion to Ukraine and raises the price of gas sold to Ukraine to genuine market levels, the EU and US can play the blame game for the economic hardship that Ukraine will suffer under the IMF package currently under preparation.

Putin can console himself with the observation that he is not chained to Yanyukovich, apparently an ineffectual and unloved client, and Russia's obligation to pony up $12 billion for Ukraine's rescue can be honored "in the breach". And if Crimea becomes completely autonomous, Russia's $90 million or so in annual rent for the Sebastopol base will not be lining the pockets of Putin's enemies in Kiev.

In passing, I would like to address one of the hoariest canards of the Ukraine crisis: that Russian would recapitulate its actions of 2008, when it invaded Georgia. This assertion has been made by Reuters, AP, and I think quite a few others.

The facts - internationally recognized facts, I should say - was that Georgia used the occasion of the Beijing Olympics to launch a carefully planned invasion to recapture the breakaway province of South Ossetia - which was at the time autonomous under a truce agreement negotiated by Russia, Georgia, and the Ossetians in Sochi in 1993. The Georgians massed 12,000-plus troops against 1,000 Russian peacekeepers and a few hundred Ossetian militia. Georgia had apparently not anticipated a Russian intervention, and its forces were completely routed when the Russians indeed counterattacked.

Hopefully, the Georgia parallel will stand up in one regard: that the Russians promptly withdrew from Georgian territory after their objectives were met. And they did not annex South Ossetia; they allowed it to declare independence instead.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

(Copyright 2014 Peter Lee)

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Putin: Russia has right to use force in Ukraine
Mar. 4, 2014 - 08:10AM |

By Vladimir Isachenkov and Tim Sullivan
The Associated Press
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MOSCOW — Accusing the West of encouraging an “unconstitutional coup” in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow reserves the right to use all means to protect Russians there. The Russian leader’s first comments since Ukraine’s fugitive president fled to Russia last month came just as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was flying to Kiev to meet with Ukraine’s new government.

Putin also declared that Western actions were driving Ukraine onto anarchy and warned that any sanctions the West places on Russia for its actions in Ukraine there will backfire.

Tensions remained high Tuesday in Crimea, with troops loyal to Moscow firing warning shots to ward off protesting Ukrainian soldiers. Russia took over the peninsula on Saturday, placing its troops around the peninsula’s ferry, military bases and border posts.

Yet world markets seemed to recover from their fright over the situation in Ukraine, clawing back a large chunk of Monday’s stock losses, while oil, gold, wheat and the Japanese yen have given back some of their gains.

“Confidence in equity markets has been restored as the standoff between Ukraine and Russia is no longer on red alert,” David Madden, market analyst at IG, said Tuesday.

Speaking from his residence outside Moscow, Putin said he still considers fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych to be Ukraine’s leader and hopes that Russia won’t need to use force in predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

“We aren’t going to fight the Ukrainian people,” Putin said, adding that the massive maneuvers he ordered last week had been planned earlier and were unrelated to the situation in Ukraine.

Putin also insisted that the Russian military deployment in Ukraine’s strategic region of Crimea has remained within the limits set by a bilateral agreement on a Russian military base there. He said Russia has no intentions of annexing Crimea, but insisted that its residents have the right to determine the region’s status in a referendum set for this month.

Earlier Tuesday, the Kremlin said Putin had ordered tens of thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine’s border to return to their bases. The massive military exercise in western Russia involving 150,000 troops, hundreds of tanks and dozens of aircraft was supposed to wrap up anyway, so it was not clear if Putin’s move was an attempt to heed the West’s call to de-escalate the crisis.

Putin accused the West of using Yanukovych’s decision in November to ditch a pact with the 28-nation European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia to encourage the months of protests that drove him from power and putting Ukraine on the verge of breakup.

“We have told them a thousand times: Why are you splitting the country?” he said.

Yet he acknowledged that Yanukovych has no political future and Russia gave him shelter only to save his life. Ukraine’s new government wants to put the fugitive leader on trial for the deaths of over 80 people during protests last month in Kiev.

Ukraine’s dire finances have been a key issue in the protests that drove Yanukovych from power.

On Tuesday, Russia’s state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom said it will cancel a price discount on gas it sells to Ukraine. Russia had offered the discount in December following Yanukovych’s decision to ditch a pact with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Gazprom also said Ukraine owes it $1.5 billion.

The new Ukrainian leadership in Kiev has accused Moscow of a military invasion in Crimea. The Kremlin, which does not recognize the new Ukrainian leadership, insists it made the move in order to protect Russian installations in Ukraine and its citizens living there.

On Tuesday, pro-Russian troops who had taken control of the Belbek air base in Crimea fired warning shots into the air as around 300 Ukrainian soldiers, who previously manned the airfield, demanded their jobs back.

About a dozen soldiers at the base warned the Ukrainians, who were marching unarmed, not to approach. They fired several warning shots into the air and said they would shoot the Ukrainians if they continued to march toward them.

Ukrainians said the troops that have overtaken Belbek and other Ukrainian military bases across Crimea, but Putin denied it, saying they were self-defense forces answering the pro-Russian regional government.

The shots reflected tensions running high in the Black Sea peninsula since Russian troops — estimated by Ukrainian authorities to be 16,000 strong —tightened their grip over the weekend on the Crimean peninsula, where Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet is based.

Ukraine has accused Russia of violating a bilateral agreement on conditions of a Russian lease of a naval base in Crimea that restricts troop movements, but Russia has argued it was acting within the terms of the deal.

At the United Nations in New York, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, said Monday that Russia was entitled to deploy up to 25,000 troops in Crimea under the agreement. Churkin didn’t specify how many Russian troops are now stationed in Crimea, but said “they are acting in a way they consider necessary to protect their facilities and prevent extremist actions.”

Russia is demanding the implementation of a Western-sponsored peace deal that Yanukovych signed with the opposition that set presidential elections for December. Russian envoy at those talks did not sign the deal. Yanukovych fled the capital hours after the deal was signed and ended up in Russia, and the Ukrainian parliament set the presidential vote for May 25.

In Crimea, a supposed Russian ultimatum for two Ukrainian warships to surrender or be seized passed without action from either side, as the two ships remained anchored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

In Brussels, meanwhile, the ambassadors of NATO’s 28 member nations were to hold a second emergency meeting on Ukraine on Tuesday after Poland, which borders both Russia and Ukraine, invoked an article calling for consultations when a nation sees its “territorial integrity, political independence or security threatened.”

President Barack Obama has said Russia is “on the wrong side of history” in Ukraine and its actions violate international law. Obama said the U.S. was considering economic and diplomatic options that will isolate Russia, and called on Congress to work on an aid package for Ukraine.

In return, Russia’s agricultural oversight agency on Tuesday reversed its earlier decision to lift the ban on imports of U.S. pork. It said the existing U.S. system of checks don’t guarantee its safety.

The European Union’s foreign ministers on Monday threatened Moscow with halting talks on visa liberalization and negotiations on further economic cooperation unless Russian troops on the Crimean peninsula pull back over the next three days.

The bloc’s 28 heads of state and government will hold an emergency meeting Thursday that will decide whether to impose sanctions against Russia if there is no de-escalation on the ground.

Putin’s economic advisor, Sergei Glazyev, says Russia can develop financial ties with other nations to offset any potential Western sanctions.

———

Ivan Sekretarev in Sevastopol and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

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SampanViking said:

It is perhaps curious that in 2014, just as in 1914 a major conflict started that redrew the map of Europe and the World forever. In this instance however, it seems likely that barely a single deadly shot will be fired in its achievement!

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delft said:

This article in The Daily Telegraph says you're wrong:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Btw Putin is acting much more prudently than Obama in his war against Libya that let to the destruction of that country. That episode has seriously damaged Obama's moral standing in the World.

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Pro-Russia protesters occupy regional government in Ukraine's Donetsk

Mon, Mar 3 2014
By Lina Kushch
DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Russian demonstrators occupied the regional government building in east Ukraine's city of Donetsk on Monday, besieging lawmakers as they voted to support the protesters but stopped short of meeting their demands for a split from Kiev.
The chaotic scene in the heart of Ukraine's Russian-speaking east was one of the boldest actions yet by pro-Russian youths after several days of rallies in eastern and southern cities that Kiev says are organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade.
The protesters stormed the building and reached the second floor where the regional council sits, despite efforts to keep them out by switching off lifts and sealing stairwell doors.
The confrontation revealed a rift in the mainly Russian speaking region between locals who want less meddling from Kiev in local affairs and the protesters, who Ukraine says are led from Moscow and who are calling for the region to break away.
Hundreds of demonstrators, chanting "Putin, come!" entered the building through a side door after clashing with police guarding the front of the building, a Reuters photographer said. Windows were smashed, making it possible for some to reach the second floor.
Reporters inside, who sheltered on the fourth floor after the first floor was overrun, were eventually escorted out of the besieged building by police. The protesters checked documents to prevent employees and lawmakers from leaving.
The 11-storey building has been flying the Russian flag, rather than the Ukrainian flag, for three days, with pro-Russian demonstrators staging daily rallies outside.
Barricaded inside the building, the local lawmakers voted 98-3 in favor of a declaration that pledged "support for the popular initiatives of the residents of the Donetsk region, put forward at demonstrations," according to a text of the resolution on the regional government website.
However, the text fell short of demands of the protesters, led by a man named Pavel Gubarev, who has declared himself "people's governor" of the region. He had demanded deputies declare the government in Kiev illegitimate, put all security forces under regional control, withhold taxes from Kiev and a host of other measures.
NO REFERENDUM QUESTION
The resolution called for a referendum in the region, but did not say what question would be asked or when it would be held. The protesters want a vote on March 30 that would declare the region sovereign. Kiev says any such vote would be illegal.
The resolution also called for "public formations for the maintenance of public order", and recognized "historical, spiritual and cultural" links between the region and Russia.
Regional police chief Roman Romanov said police had opened a criminal case over the occupation of the building, two floors of which were still occupied by protesters by nightfall. He did not identify any suspects.
Romanov said police had failed to defend the building because they sought "to avoid bloodshed". Asked who he accepted as the legitimate authorities, he said: "I have given an oath to the Ukrainian people."
Many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine are angered by the dominance of Ukrainian-speaking westerners in the new authorities in Kiev and want greater autonomy, but they are also wary of potential provocation by Moscow.
Russian forces have already taken control of Ukraine's Crimea region, an isolated Black Sea peninsula, and Moscow has threatened to invade Ukraine to protect Russian speakers from what it says is a nationalist new government in Kiev.
Kiev says pro-Russian demonstrations have been organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade. Donestsk is one of the most industrialized parts of Ukraine, producing coal, steel, chemicals and turbines for nuclear plants.
It is also the home city of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian president who was toppled in Kiev 10 days ago. Most people in the region are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language. Few now support Yanukovich, though many still look to Russia as an ally.
Pro-Russian demonstrations have been held in several eastern and southern cities since Saturday, in some cases ending with Russian flags raised at regional government buildings.
Kiev says Moscow has organized the demonstrations and sent hundreds of Russian citizens across the frontier to stage them.
A protest in the eastern city of Kharkiv turned bloody on Saturday, with scores of people hurt in clashes when pro-Moscow demonstrators wielding chains and axe handles stormed the regional government building. Kharkiv was quiet on Monday.
(Writing by Peter Graff; editing by Timothy Heritage and Philippa Fletcher)

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