There is an avalanche of information demonizing both Putin and Russia and painting them as aggressors. Aside from various statements by those who apparently still live, and live happily, in the Cold War, such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Fox News analysts, and neoconservatives, there are those who offer objective and balanced analysis of events in Ukraine. Among these include former U.S. National Security Council officials Tom Graham and Jack Matlock, Columbia University professor Robert Legvold as well as National Interest publisher Dimitri Simes. But there aren’t many. Unfortunately, officials sometimes also partake in that sorry attempt, compounding the efforts of experts and journalists. McCain showed himself to be a buffoon even earlier—when he believed that Pravda is still the main paper of the Russian government. This is a telling indicator of the low level of knowledge and understanding of what is happening in Russia. Unfortunately, clueless and pernicious claims concerning Russia were also made by Secretary of State John Kerry. He demonstrated that he too lives in another dimension by discussing Russian actions (when Russian military personnel were likely moving around Crimea) as a ninteenth-century policy in the twenty-first century. He easily forgot that the U.S. has been engaging in exactly such policy all the time, both in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. People are obviously turning schizophrenic: they judge some actions by one set of criteria, while they totally forget their own such as American actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Obama’s advisers also misled him, talking about an “invasion” where there was none at all. By treaty, Russia has the right to place 25,000 of its own soldiers on Ukrainian territory in Crimea. By my own count (I spoke with people from Sevastopol), Crimea now has a little over 10,000 military personnel from Russia. This means Russia can send 15,000 more perfectly legally. And it’s perfectly understandable that various military personnel were moving around the peninsula. The actions of the Russian personnel even when blocking Ukrainian garrisons were also in accordance with the negotiated norms between Russia and the new Crimean authorities and with the legitimate President Viktor Yanukovich. Crimea is still the home of people who disagree with the Kiev cutthroats in power, whose first act was to ban the law on regional languages, thus putting the Russian language and Russians outside of law, in addition to threatening to destroy their autonomy and the Russian fleet. Russians in the East and Southeast of Ukraine are basically deprived of the right to protect their own interests.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 21:35:05 +0000
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