The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ukraine Concedes Crimea to Russia

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 83 Comments

Putin scores an easy victory:

Bowing to the reality of the Russian military occupation of Crimea a day after Russia announced it was annexing the disputed peninsula, the Ukrainian government said on Wednesday that it had drawn up plans to evacuate all of its military personnel and their families and was prepared to relocate as many as 25,000 of them to mainland Ukraine.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors have been trapped on military bases and other installations here for more than two weeks, surrounded by heavily armed Russian military forces and loosely organized local militia.
While the provisional government in Kiev has insisted that Russia’s annexation of Crimea is illegal and has appealed to international supporters for help, the evacuation announcement by the head of the national security council, Andriy Parubiy, effectively amounted to a surrender of Crimea, at least from a military standpoint.

The “crisis” is over, and we now have the fait accompli.

 

Comments

83 Responses to “Ukraine Concedes Crimea to Russia”

  1. Dianna Deeley
    March 19th, 2014 @ 4:23 pm

    There wasn’t much they could do. It makes me ill, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to end with the Crimea.

    But…well.

    Neither the US nor the EU was going to make it possible for Ukraine to resist – rations rather than arms, for pity’s sake! – so, I guess they’re doing what they can to preserve their country. I am pessimistic, and I believe the Ukrainian government is, as well, but they have to try.

  2. Shawny
    March 19th, 2014 @ 5:00 pm

    Which Ukrainian government? The one lawfully elected by it’s people under which none of this incursion by Russia was likely to take place or the unelected junta who must surely have known there would be consequences for their actions? Who must have promised them backing against those consequences in order for them to think it was a winning proposition? Just a question.

  3. Unix-Jedi
    March 19th, 2014 @ 5:52 pm

    Peace in our time.

  4. AngelaTC
    March 19th, 2014 @ 5:54 pm

    Thanks! With the lack of attention to that detail, I thought I must be imagining that America was once again siding with a mob that had just overthrown an elected leader in a democracy.

    And I must have dreamed seeing the video of our ambassador talking about it before it happened.

  5. Unix-Jedi
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

    And that accomplished….

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/19/us-russia-estonia-idUSBREA2I1J620140319

    “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is currently in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as part of a trip to reassure the three countries, all European Union and NATO members, of Washington’s support.”

    Well, then, I feel MUCH better now.

  6. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:10 pm

    The Ukrainian legislature was lawfully elected by its people and impeached and deposed the President under Article 111 of the Ukrainian constitution. His own political party would not defend him. More than 4/5 of his parliamentary caucus abstained, nearly all the remainder voted to remove him, and the party offices issued a “good riddance” press release after his removal.

    The current president of the Ukraine was the constitutionally designated successor and elections are due in two months.

    I have no clue why there are so many press agents for the erstwhile president of the Ukraine in these fora and no clue why they traffick in readily debunked political fictions.

  7. Shawny
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

    No one dreamed it. 5 billion taxpayer dollars were dumped into this plan for a “better democracy”. Too bad it wasn’t spent on arms and ammunition rather than cookies or it might have actually worked.
    2013 Nuland distributes cookies to protestors in Kiev[edit]

    In December 2013 Nuland distributed cookies to protestors in Kiev’s Maidan Square. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev criticised this as interference in the affairs of a sovereign state. [12]

    Victoria Nuland spoke at “Ukraine in Washington 2013” conference organized by US-Ukraine Foundation on December 13th 2013. The aim of the presentation was to announce Washington’s plan to provide funding in order to install ’a good form of democracy’: “Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”[13][14]

  8. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

    You’re referring to disbursements and loans over a period of 20 years in a country which has a 176 billion dollar economy.

  9. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

    Good.

    1) The Crimea was Russian till 1954 anyway, most of the locals are still Russian, and joining Russia seems to be what they want. National boundaries clearly haven’t been sacrosanct since we attacked Yugoslavia over make-believe stories about genocide, took away their Kosovo province, and turned it into a Muslim gangster state. At least Putin hasn’t bombed the Crimea back into Russian hands.

    2) The West has no vital national interests at stake there, but the Russians do. It shouldn’t matter to us one way or the other.

    3) This is a deserved humiliation for Obama, Kerry, the EU, and others who spent Western taxpayers’ money and allied with neo-nazis to overthrow the Ukranian government and install a puppet regime in Kiev. The same geniuses responsible for the disaster in Libya and who wanted to send arms to help Al Qaeda take over Syria. The same geniuses responsible for flooding their own countries with Third World colonists. Putin isn’t an enemy of the West, its own leaders are.

    4) Lots of talk in the press about a “new cold war”. But from Russia’s perspective, the West never stopped fighting the cold war against Russia. The Evil Empire peacefully withdrew from eastern Europe and central Asia, so what did we do? Expanded NATO right up to their doorstep. Why? What do we get out of a binding obligation to go to war – nuclear war if necessary – to defend Albania or Romania? From Russia’s perspective, that was a humiliating and threatening policy not much different from Khruschev sending nukes to Cuba, and we know how that went down in the US.

    5) This is a huge wake up call to the eco-loonies in western Europe over energy policy. By making it almost impossible to frack shale gas or build new fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, they’ve left themselves vulnerable to Russian hydrocarbon blackmail. Reality is hitting them hard, and not before time. Maybe in future fewer old people in northern Europe will die of hypothermia because they’re scared to turn on the heating in winter thanks to green policies driving up the cost of electricity and gas.

    6) You’d have to be blind and deaf not to notice the viciously anti-Russian tone the Western media has taken in recent years. Before this Crimea business, the media was trying to portray Russia as some sort of gay-bashing nazi state and desperately looking for reasons to ridicule Russia over the Sochi olympics. Christians are being slaughtered in the streets of Syria, yet the Western media only wanted to talk about how awful it is that homosexual indoctrination of children is illegal in Russia. Russia gets a far worse press today than it ever did when it was a Communist nightmare state. I wonder why that is?

    Any country that the BBC, NBC, Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, and the Eurocreeps hate can’t be all bad. I’d rather have a patriotic crook like Putin running my country than a treasonous crook like Obama or Cameron.

  10. Bob Belvedere
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:13 pm

    …I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have.

    The utmost my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

    All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant….

    I venture to think that in future the Czechoslovak State cannot be maintained as an independent entity. I think you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi regime. Perhaps they may join it in despair or in revenge. At any rate, that story is over and told. But we cannot consider the abandonment and ruin of Czechoslovakia in the light only of what happened only last month. It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years – five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences.

    …they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:

    “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

    And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden
    time.

    -Winston Churchill in the House Of Commons, 05 October 1938

  11. Shawny
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:15 pm

    You’re right, but mostly I was referring to the stated strategy. What I don’t understand is why the junta now in charge would be considered by the U.S. as a better or acceptable or more secure kind of governance to support.

  12. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:16 pm

    A large fraction of Czechoslovakia’s industrial capacity, coal, and military fortifications was to be found in the Sudetenland. The situations are analogous on only one point, which is that both territories were largely populated with restive ethnic minorities. Supposedly, the Crimea was receiving a net subvention from the central government, so its not an economic loss in the short (or perhaps medium term). The question is whether its a prelude to something worse.

  13. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:16 pm

    Yes, because Russia in 2014 is exactly like Nazi Germany in 1938.

    Jesus wept.

  14. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:17 pm

    See my comments below and stop lying.

  15. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:23 pm

    National boundaries clearly haven’t been sacrosanct since we attacked
    Yugoslavia over make-believe stories about genocide, took away their
    Kosovo province, and turned it into a Muslim gangster state

    Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Nixon couldn’t tell the truth, and palaeoknuckleheads are too addled by talking points from Steven Sailer and The American Conservative to tell the difference.

    For the record, Kosovo has had an Albanian majority since the last quarter of the 19th century. By 1948, Albanian made up 65% of the population. By 1980, they made up 77%. The Serb government stripped the area of what residual autonomy it had in 1987 and began a dozen years long campaign of abuse of the local population and their political organization

    After the godawful mess in Bosnia, every part had every reason to assume a reprise was due in Kosovo and mass explustions were underway at the time NATO bombed Serbia into a fully justified submission.

  16. Bob Belvedere
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:25 pm

    History never repeats exactly, but Russia is indeed acting and reacting as Hitler did when he discovered the Western nations were weak in spirit.

    Ultimately this has to do with American national security because any Totalitarian regime that believes it can act with impunity on the world stage is a threat to The United States people.

    The world is only safe, free commerce is only protected, Human Life is only valued when one of the nations of The West polices it. And, since the defeat of Napoleon, it has been the English Speaking peoples who have caused whatever calm has existed in the World to be maintained, for freedom and liberty to flourish, for Mankind to advance Morally.

    Without enforcement of the Pax Americana, the World becomes a very dangerous place for The United States and it’s peoples.

  17. JeffS
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:28 pm

    Huh. Another tyrant apologist. Must be a new fad.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:30 pm

    I’m amazed by it, but, I suppose, I shouldn’t be. After all, unless one has studied History on their own – made the effort – then one only knows what one gets from corrupted teaching in schools and in the Media.

  19. JeffS
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:31 pm

    No, no, Putin learned from Hitler’s mistakes. This particular Anschluß is new and improved.

    Putin is a tyrant, but he’s not stupid.

  20. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:32 pm

    So you’re agreeing with me? There was no genocide in Kosovo, that was a lie we were told to justify attacking a country that never threatened us. And to my more on-topic point, national boundaries aren’t sacrosanct.

    After all, the Crimeans are mostly ethnic Russians and no doubt they fear for their status in a Ukraine dominated by nationalists and neo-nazis. So I agree with the logical trajectory of your post. The Crimeans are fully justified in reuniting with Russia if they want to.

  21. Shawny
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:36 pm

    I don’t accept the label and have no apologies for Putin. Anyone here that knows history knew this is exactly what Putin was likely to do.
    And that Obama would do nothing to stop him.

  22. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:36 pm

    So… 21st century white man’s burden? The world at large doesn’t seem to agree that it needs to be saved.

    Who is a bigger threat to the liberty of the American people? Vladimir Putin, or the United States government?

  23. Dianna Deeley
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:43 pm

    Are you, then, in favor of a Russian puppet-state, or simply Putin satrapy?

    Just asking.

    In reality, the government was voted in on the presumption that it was in favor of closer EU and Western ties. The abrupt reversal – however justified by EU stinginess – is what created the present irregular mess.

    Which does not justify Putin’s landgrab. Or render entirely illegitimate the highly provisional government of Ukraine’ s objections.

  24. Dianna Deeley
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:45 pm

    Because it’s not a junta? Yet, anyway.

  25. CPAguy
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:46 pm

    The Muslims engaged in wide scale terrorism (though we didn’t really call it that then) which lead to the Serbs electing leaders who vowed to end the Kosovo threat.

    There were 2 sides to that story.

    Also, the Serbian (i.e. Yugoslavian) military was not decimated by US bomb strikes. This is a myth that US military strategist have since debunked.

    Serbia had to concede once NATO/US forces began bombing population centers in the capital of Belgrade.

    As a frequent traveler to eastern Europe, I am lucky that Serbians, for whatever reason, don’t equate the USA with NATO.

  26. Dianna Deeley
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:47 pm

    Well, yes. It’s the rest of your assertions making some of us look a bit askance.

  27. CPAguy
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:48 pm

    While the US doesn’t really have a dog in this fight, the truth of the matter is that Russia has frightened the populace in Crimea with fake stories and flooded the streets with paid supporters.

  28. Dianna Deeley
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

    I am gloomily certain the Crimea does portend worse to come.

  29. Bob Belvedere
    March 19th, 2014 @ 6:58 pm

    Both Totalitarians, ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ and Vladimir Putin, are dangerous threats.

  30. Jeanette Victoria
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:00 pm

    Duh

  31. Shawny
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:03 pm

    Neither. Ukraine is between a rock and a hard place trying to survive and had we really wanted to help them the U.S. and E.U. would have offered them better options and support. I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. used to defend budding democracies. Too bad we can’t vote out our own “abrupt reversal” of “hope and change”.

  32. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:03 pm

    I wouldn’t put it past them. I can only assume the Crimeans generally know what they want though. Most Eastern Europeans over the age of 35 or so have seen enough propaganda in their lifetimes to know it when they see it.

  33. Jeanette Victoria
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:10 pm

    To be honest I remember the discussion of the succession of Crimea 8 years ago when I lived in Kiev. This particular uprising wasn’t an accident. This is just leftover from the Orange Revolution (I was there on the Maidan for that one)
    The Ukrainians have always had a very weak and corrupt government. And force both East and West stir up problems

  34. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:12 pm

    Seems anybody can get into the Hitler-of-the-month club these days. I remember the good old days when you had to be a proper dictator who laughed at elections, rounded up his enemies and killed a whole bunch of people before you got compared to the Fuhrer.

    Nowadays all you need to do is get a bunch of locals in the armpit of Eastern Europe to vote to rejoin your motherland and BOOM! Funny little moustaches and swastikas all round.

    Putin will no doubt be building concentration camps and invading France and sending archeologists to find the Ark of the Covenant next. When will we ever learn? 🙁

  35. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:14 pm

    Left behind in a potted plant after barack’s meeting with Vlad:

    …so, after you just roll a bunch of hardware into youkrain (is that really like, a place or something?) while I’m looking the other way, this will get the ball rolling so China has a chance to do the same thing with Taiwan, and that will really help a brother out.

    See, those whiny yellow dudes are really killing our hardware industry back home, and Ellis and Gates told me to make it happen.
    I think this will also be cheap and fast for us all.

    So, a case of caviar, and a campaign donation will get us all where we need to be.

  36. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:17 pm

    You appear to be making them appear to be on opposte sides of some threat matrix.

    The problem is a Vlad-enabling SCOAMF in the White House. Not the “United States Government.”

  37. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:20 pm

    We had cards to play before barack set fire to them. Now they’re vanished like the smoke that went with the mirrors the media used to prop up this miserable, useless dog occupying the Oval Office.

  38. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:23 pm

    Good replay. Still has miles on it.

  39. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

    Yes, because Bob wrote that, exactly.

    Oh, wait.

  40. The West: ‘Weighed In The Balance And Found Wanting’ | The Camp Of The Saints
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:37 pm

    […] —K-Bob, Friend In The Ether […]

  41. Esther Williams
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:45 pm

    We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America:

    http://youtu.be/KrefKCaV8m4

    Although I would quibble a tad with your use of the term “United States Government”, preferring instead something along the lines of “Hussein Obama’s criminal marxist regime”.

  42. Art Deco
    March 19th, 2014 @ 7:45 pm

    The concern was ethnic cleansing, which was ongoing you fraud.

  43. Phil_McG
    March 19th, 2014 @ 8:20 pm

    You sure do like tossing out gratuitous insults. Pro tip: it doesn’t make you seem more credible.

    And no. I remember the olden days of yore in 1999. We were told there was genocide going on.

    Prime Minister Tony Blair, a man who never let the truth pass his lips when a fabrication would do, said:

    ‘It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide’

    He was right. It was no exaggeration. It was a bloody lie.

    The US government said as many as 400,000 Albanians could have been massacred. That was a lie.

    A US Defense spokesman told the world press the evil Serbs were herding nubile young Albanian women into rape camps. That was a lie too.

    Perhaps the reason you’re quick to accuse me, someone you don’t even know, of being a fraud is because you’re something of a fabulist yourself.

  44. Bob Belvedere
    March 19th, 2014 @ 8:28 pm

    Shut-up, whatever-your-name-is-today – you’re such a bore.

  45. Quartermaster
    March 19th, 2014 @ 8:34 pm

    As pointed out by Art Deco above, it isn’t a Junta. Putin’s land grab, however, fostered by a minority leader, foisting a plebiscite wile under foreign occupation, is illegit. Putin’s bunch have become a Junta.

  46. Esther Williams
    March 19th, 2014 @ 9:08 pm

    Nuland seems driven by a genuine visceral hatred for the Russian people.

    It’s a very odd phenomenon, actually; hard to wrap your head around the reasons for such an abject hatred.

  47. Esther Williams
    March 19th, 2014 @ 9:13 pm

    This whole thing seems to be more about a profound, visceral, media hatred for the Russian people, along with a similar hatred for the Russian people emanating from certain sectors of the USG – Nuland and the State Department being the primary one that I see.

    Re: Media Hatred, sodomite Jamie Kirchick being exhibit A: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/05/exclusive-rt-today-anchor-liz-wahl-explains-why-she-quit.html

    The Ukraine seems to be nothing more than an excuse to wage a psychological war and media war against the Russian people.

    When I look around at who’s waging war against our Constitution, I don’t see Russians, I see Hussein Obama’s criminal marxist regime.

  48. Esther Williams
    March 19th, 2014 @ 9:13 pm

    Self-determination is not illegitimate.

  49. Quartermaster
    March 19th, 2014 @ 9:25 pm

    Only if that’s what it was. The indications is that a minority is the one that was doing the determining and made sure they were the ones counting the votes.

  50. Esther Williams
    March 19th, 2014 @ 9:27 pm

    I’ve worked with Russians and dealt with Russians in non-work environments and I’ve found them to be generally likable people. They’re certainly not un-likable.

    Considering that, the visceral hatred that foisted upon them, by the US media in particular, strikes me as being deceitful and dishonest. Exhibit A being sodomite activist Jamie Kirchick:
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamelder/reporter-blasts-kremlin-channel-over-anti-gay-law

    Considering the strength of Kirchick’s hatred for Russians, it seems likely to be explained by a deep-rooted ethnic or religious hatred rather than a genuine concern for the people of the Ukraine, Estonia, or anywhere else.