DTNZ: US could recognise Crimea as Russian territory

The peninsula voted to secede from Ukraine following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev.

The US could recognize Crimea as Russian territory as part of a potential peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, Bloomberg reported early Saturday morning, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ron Smith: The Munich Moment

In a blog I wrote towards the end of the first year of his presidency (November, 2009), I asked the question, “Is Barak Obama destined to be the Neville Chamberlain of the Twenty-first century?”  It is now clear that the answer to this question is, “Yes!”  And Ukraine is his Czechoslovakia.  

On present trends and despite the huffing and puffing about ‘consequences’ and ‘lines being crossed’, it looks as if the world will acquiesce in Russia’s military occupation and annexation of Crimea.  I say ‘the world’ because Russia mustered precisely no votes in the Security Council debate on this matter beyond its own veto.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek from Lebanon: Russia – the phoenix rises

The king is dead. Long live the king! – Trad.

If ever an episode in history was easy to draft the script for, it was the accession of the newly independent state of Crimea to the Russian Federation. Did I hear someone say ‘annexation’? Not on your Nelly! 

First, there was a coup in Kiev and the president had to make a run for it, leaving behind an illegitimate ‘provisional government’, i.e. no Ukrainian government at all. Next, Russia exercised its well-established customary right of protective jurisdiction over its kith and kin in the Crimea. Next, over 90% of the people there signalled through a referendum that they wanted to return to the motherland from which they had been wrenched 60 years earlier. Where’s the problem?