Things are about to get really much stickier in Ukraine
On a 50% turnout, electors in Crimea have voted in today’s referendum to detach from Ukraine. The United States and the United Kingdom made it clear ahead of time that they regard the referendum as unconstitutional because it was not legitimised by a vote in the national parliament (permission to hold a referendum on the matter), as required by Ukraine’s Constitution.
A vote on the matter in the United Nations assembly did not go through because Russia (obviously) used its veto and China abstained.
The United States warned Russia this afternoon that it must not use the outcome of the referendum as justification for annexing Crimea.
But that is exactly what is going to happen, isn’t it.
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The Soviet Union is back. The international media has reported that other regions of the Ukraine are asking for their own referendum to join Russia.
I have an idea. Let’s have our own referendum this coming Sunday to join Russia. If Putin can promise to give us cheap gas for the power stejxin so that we can have another Labour promise of “innaqqsu l-kontijiet,” I will vote Yes.
I’d have expected you, of all people, to avoid flippancy on this matter.
What is back, and back to bite us in the arse, is the rush to dissolve the Soviet Union into separate states along the borders set by Stalin for the USSR’s 15 republics. And Gorbachev acquiesced, out of political expediency or catastrophic bad judgement. Virtually all of the problems that Russia’s had since 1991 are the result of people sitting uncomfortably within those borders: South Ossetia, Bessarabia, Ukraine, the Baltic Russians, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh.
Then there’s the big elephant in the room: Kosovo.
That too was an integral part of a sovereign state. And it was torn away by force without even a referendum.
Russia felt itself deceived over that and many other international matters since: Libya, for one.
It would be the height of condescension to expect it to sit back while an elected president – corrupt though he may be – is deposed by force of arms and an ostensibly anti-Russian government is installed in his place.
People round that part of the world have long memories, Ciccio. We Europeans seem to think history started in 2003 or so.
There is no comparison between Kosovo and Crimea.
In Kosovo the West was forced to intervene because the human rights abuses and atrocities committed by Serbs against Kosovars were too gruesome to ignore.
The US had no strategic interests there. The province was not occupied or annexed by any Western power.
In Crimea, the Russians were not threatened at all. Russians in a democratic Ukraine (like those in Latvia and Estonia) would have had more rights and freedom than Russians living in Putin`s Russia.
Putin used trumped up excuses to annex a strategically important region and bully his neighbours into submission. Unfortunately the West has not learnt anything from the Sudetenland crisis.
Dictators understand only one language, brute force. Diplomacy and watered down sanctions will only make Putin more daring and dangerous, but unfortunately there are no Churchills or Roosevelts in sight.
Kosovo is the heart of Serbia. What the Americans did in Yugoslavija was a cruel example of realpolitic – stoking the fascistic ustaza element in Croatia to split the country up. Then they even had the gall to exhonerate the ‘generali’ of Croatia at the Hague. I hope Tudzman rots in hell.
Ciccio has a point, Baxter. However, the USSR will be renamed the USSP, ‘The Union of Soviet Socialist Putin’.
This guy is in total control and has cited the destuction of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest disaster of the 20th century.’
He’s on his way to fix that. Ukraine is only the first.
We have another Stalin here.
You need to get your facts right on Kosovo.
The comparison is right there before our eyes: a province of one country unilaterally breaking away. Kosovo chose to be independent, just short of opting to join Albania, which it may still do in a few years’ time.
Crimea chose to break away and join Russia.
I can’t see any reason not to compare the two.
No strategic interests? Pull the other one. The US had the highest strategic interest of all: to curry favour with a Muslim country, and with the Mother of All Evils and longtime ally Saudi Arabia, which practically financed the Kosovo insurgency single-handedly.
No one’s denying the human rights abuses in Kosovo (by both parties, please note). But what was touted as a peace-enforcement intervention turned up to be secession by force of arms. It’s the secession that’s at the heart of my comparison, not the human rights.
I see a lot of gloating over the Ukraine business here in Europe. What kind of message does that send out? That we’re cynical, hypocritical, land-grabbing US puppets. It may not be true, but that is precisely how we come across.
Let me try and resolve this with a simple question: what is the final outcome that would satisfy Europe?
That is what we need to define. It seems to me that we don’t know and we don’t care, just as long as it’s anything opposing Putin’s intention. That’s not the way to do international politics.
Who is gloating? For many Europeans the invasion of Ukraine is “a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing”.
And who is land grabbing? European leaders are even more spineless than Obama.
They are not even willing to impose token sanctions so as not to suffer any economic inconvenience.
The final outcome which will satisfy the European political elite, is for the whole issue to die away as quietly as possible.
The best outcome for Europe however is for the Russian people to follow their Ukrainian brothers and overthrow their oppressor and finally establish a European democracy in Russia.
@ J Vella. The point is that THEY WERE THREATENED! The people of Crimea, the people of Eastern and South-Eastern Ukraine ARE under the threat of ethnic cleansing and mass genocide as we speak from fascist government who usurped the power in Kiev. Just because western media say that there is no threat, doesn’t make it a true fact. There are other opinions as well and other media reports showing different footage where Nazi swastika and fascist declarations of Kiev government are exposed. The one who is not blind will see.
Here is some alternative reading for you: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-fascist-danger-in-ukraine-resurgence-of-neo-nazism-denied-by-western-media/5372109
The current illegitimate government in Kiev has 4 ministers who belong to ‘Svoboda’ party.
The hero of Svoboda and UNA-UNSO is the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN), which aided the Nazis in horrific massacres of the Jewish population.
In 2010, Svoboda’s official forum posted a statement reading: “To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South…we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalise the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia…completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial shot. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties….”
And regardless of what different media report, the Russian people of Ukraine know too well what fascism is and how to recognise it, having lost 28 millions of lives fighting Hitler, and it is not up to western media, US or EU to dictate them whether they should see a threat or not. Yesterday people of Crimea voted overwhelming 97% that they want to do nothing with fascist government of Ukraine, end of story.
When Yanukovych was deposed, every EU politician and his dog was out in force tweeting gloating messages like “Welcome to Europe” with three exclamation marks. That’s gloating. The violence and killing was still going one, and who is that message addressed to? To the ethnic Russians in Donetsk who do not wish to be part of the EU?
It’s extremely patronising and did nothing but fuel anti-Russian sentiment.
Can’t you see the EU position on Russia, as your articulated it. undermines its own point? Here is a country, with a democratically elected government – whatever we may think of Putin’s policies on gay adoption, he was elected far more democratically than other leaders courted by the EU – whose government we wish to see deposed by its own people, so they can join the EU and live happily ever after.
Mr Vella, perhaps you should take a look at what the Saudi-funded islamists of the KLA Kosovo Liberation Army did in Kosovo too.
Don’t forget Izetbegovic’s Saudi-funded army in Bosnia either. That is not to say that the Serbians were innocent but I think history has been unkind to the Serb. After all, the media was absolutely dominated by an American slant at that time. The Americans obviously had their own interests there and they demonised the Serbs and blamed them for everything.
It was wrong to do that when so many Serbs were also killed in open acts of organised genocide — state-sponsored by Croatia — all over Yugoslavia, that includes Kosovo.
The Soviets did not oppose Nazism for ideological reasons or because of solidarity with its victims, but only to save their own skin.
In fact they were only too happy to collude with Nazis and carve up Eastern Europe between the two evil empires in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Nazism and communism are the opposite faces of the same coin. They may seem different but both enslave and dehumanise man.
The Nazis murdered 11 million civilians of all nationalities. Stalin murdered 3-4 million soviet citizens and starved another 5 million to death with his policy of targeted starvation, mainly aimed at Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
It must have been an immense relief for his victims and a source of great comfort to their relatives that they died at the hands of communism rather than Nazism.
American and European intervention in Yugoslavia, for all the ulterior motives you ascribe, brought the civil wars and the horrendous atrocities to an end and resulted in the overthrow of dictatorship and the establishment of stable relatively prosperous democracies in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.
Over 95 per cent of the Crimeans who voted in the referendum want to join Russia. Will the will of the people be respected?
The poll was as free and fair as the elections in Azerbaijan. These Laburisti have always had a fetish for tyrants and dictators. They always enjoy a thumb in the eye for the US and Western democracies. Plus ca change, plus c`est la meme chose.
There were independent international observers, few hundreds of international observers, they all reported that referendum was fair and no irregularities observed. The procedure was also transparent with live broadcast which can be found on the Internet. No need to invent the stories.
Are you serious, David? Aren’t you from the “Rebah il-Partnership” school of thought? Make up your mind, will you? You may wish to read about how Austria and the Sudetenland were annexed before you give us a civics lesson
Oh yes, over 95% of 50% of the population while Russian troops are ready to strike at any time. A proper, fair and free expression of ‘the will of the people’, that is.
The so called international observers were invited by Russia and chosen From Europe`s far right and neo Nazi parties, a strange choice considering the Russian rhetoric against the government in Kiev.
Well, perhaps not so strange, given that neo Nazis, like our Mintoffjani, loathe freedom and democracy but can`t resist strongmen and dictators.
The so-called international observers you mention were invited by Russia and chosen from Europe`s far-right and neo-Nazi parties, a strange choice considering the Russian rhetoric against the government in Kiev. Well, perhaps not so strange, given that these parties, like our own Mintoffiani, loathe freedom and democracy and can`t resist strongmen and dictators.
I say let Russia have the Crimea.
It was in Russian hands in the past and as the USSR only made it part of the Ukraine in 1954 when the Ukraine was part of the USSR.
No need for the storming of Sebastapol ( I like spelling that name with a “b”) and a battle at Balaclava by the western powers like a 21st century version of the Light Brigade debacle there in 1854.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AELyJnz23E0
Crimea will cost a lot of money to whoever owns it. Yes, the referendum was unconstitutional.
Ukraine does not want to part away with part of its territory as a matter of principle only. The Ukrainian government is not going to shed tears if it loses Crimea since it costs the Ukrainian economy a lot of money to sustain it.
The only sources of income for Crimea are tourism from Ukraine and direct funds from the Ukraine central government.
Yes, just like the Scottish referendum then, which is open only to voters resident in Scotland.
It’s the double standards in this entire affair that are making my blood boil.
What is happening right now at that part of the world is the legacy of Stalin’s mass deportations .Things are likely to get even more complicated as ethnic Russians all over the ex USSR region will start hankering to re-join Mother Russia.
For Crimeans who were born in that region sixty years ago, , it will be like being born in Russia, living in Ukraine and now hoping to die in Russia , all without having ever set one foot out of the town of their birth.
There are some who would argue that the Crimeans have a right to determine their future with the blessing of the west, even more then the Kosovar Albanians had, a couple of decades ago when Serb land became the new state of Kosovo. Re Kosovo, it is also important to bear in mind that historically , a sovreign state called Kosovo never ever existed before the west’s intervention in that region.
The EU should have used more caution and diplomacy when it started enticing Ukraine to join it and should have kept in mind the politics ,history and traditional allegencies in that region.
In the meantime,I wonder how Spain , with its vociferous and troublesome Basque separatists is viewing the state of affairs in Crimea. If I am not mistaken , Spain is one of the countries that did not recognize the state of Kosovo..
The Russian bear has awakened from its hibernation.
And it’s very hungry, pissed off (read Putin), and ready to return to the old ways.
As if anybody thought that Putin would leave Crimea as part of Ukraine with the Black Sea fleet based at Sevastopol to-ing and fro-ing through the Dardanelles into the Med.
The only Russian naval base in the Med is at Latakia in Assad’s Syria. Joseph Stalin deported ethnic Ukrainians to other parts of Russia and replaced them with Russians; he did this with other members of the USSR so as to have native Russians at least on a 50/50 ratio in each republic.
As for Yugoslavia, it did not exist before the Versailles Treaty as its member states formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
President Wilson went back to the USA leaving France and Britain chopping and changing the European and Middle East landscape into “areas of influence” and imposing huge reparations on the Weimar Republic leading to massive inflation and bankrupting a whole nation who saw Adolf Hitler as its saviour.
This year will mark the centenary when Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, thus starting the “war to end all wars” but led to another global war 20 years later.
Many years ago at school we learned European History 1848 – 1939; pity that the textbook was published in England as it heavily skewed the cause and effect of history in favour of the moribund British Empire.
Yugoslavia did not exist before the Versailles Treaty, but Serbia did and Kosovo was a part of it.
Daphne, please note that turnout at Crimea referendum was 83.1% and not 50% as you stated in the header.
Source ?
http://rt.com/news/crimea-referendum-results-official-250/
[Daphne – Russia Today again, Claudine…]
@Daphne, if you don’t trust Russia Today, you can google other media reports, by today’s evening, all major media would have to report the same figures and percentages. In fact, other media resources have confirmed the figure even this morning, just too lazy to provide the links for each and everyone.
Even without access to news reports, a bit of common sense tells us that the voter turnout is likely to be much higher than 50%.
Around two thirds of the voters are ethnic Russians. The rest are Ukrainians and Tatars. If we assume that all of the latter abstained, that gives us around 66% voter turnout. If we assume that almost all the ethnic Russians would vote in favour of independence, that gives us, say, 95% of those 66% voting in favour.
But not all of the ethnic Ukranians in Crimea will have voted against. After all, a lot of them have a vested interest in a Russian victory, through marriage, family ties, or jobs. So the figures being reported by the Russian media do add up.
I find some of the BBC reporting just a trifle delusory. They speak “fear of deportation” among ethnic Tatars. Millions of ethnic Tatars live in Russia proper, and none of them have been deported. From where we stand, Russia is made out to be some monolothic Slavic block with just half a dozen minorities: Tatars (newly-discovered by the Western media), Chechens, Georgians, gays, and Indian and African students. In fact there are officially 185 nationalities. That is why it’s called the Russian Federation.
You mean the current puppet government is legitimate?
Let me just tell you that whole nations have relinquished their sovereignty to the EU on turnouts much less than 50%. Moreover, the turnout was over 80%, Daphne.
“Small countries thrive in an open system of rules, albeit imperfect ones. If might is right, they have much to fear, especially if they must contend with an aggressive regional power.”
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21599346-post-soviet-world-order-was-far-perfect-vladimir-putins-idea-replacing-it
Frankly, I don’t know why most Maltese people don’t even seem to consider this when thinking of Russia’s action is the Crimea and Ukraine.
It’s the same reason why Ġensa’s “Mittna għall-barrani” is one of the biggest historical fallacies I’ve ever heard: the initial difference between the Axis and Allies in WWII was Hitler and Mussolini’s quest to rework the world order into one of “might is right” for their imperial interests against the latter’s quest for an international system based on rules (the Holocaust was discovered and believed to be happening at a later stage). Malta may have been roped into the Allies’ side by virtue of being part of the British Empire, but, realistically, it could not have stayed neutral for long before being gobbled up by the Axis if they had had their way.
Malta thrives in an international system based on rules and not “might is right”, which is why fighting in WWII on the side of the Allies was in its interests and why no intelligent Maltese person should accept the dangerous precedent set by Russia.