Russia's 'invasion and occupation' of Ukrainian territory.

[safeorigin]

Describing it as an invasion is very inaccurate and misleading. The Russians had significant investments in Crimea so parking military assets there is kinda justifiable. Heck, Putin even had parliamentary approval unlike a certain president who unilaterally bombed a foreign country without congressional approval...

It's like saying the Americans were invading and occupying the Philippines for decades without acknowledging the treaty that lets them have an Air base at clark...

[Monseratto]

Beside the defection of the "newly-appointed" Ukranian Navy Chief...

And Russian media is already calling Crimea an independent state...

5,500 Ukrainian Soldiers Defect to Serve an Independent Crimea | World | RIA Novosti

5,500 Ukrainian Soldiers Defect to Serve an Independent Crimea

MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti) – More than 5,500 soldiers have defected from Ukraine’s military to serve the autonomous republic of Crimea, the region’s newly appointed leader said.

Sergei Aksyonov, named prime minister last week in a local parliamentary vote, said Tuesday that talks with unit commanders led to the defections of soldiers to join an independent Crimean military.

“Of the 34 Ukrainian military units stationed in Crimea, 23 have defected,” a local government representative told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian peninsula in southeastern Ukraine, was seized by Russian-aligned troops in recent days following the overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Kiev by the erstwhile, Western-leaning opposition.

The regional leadership has announced that it will consider a referendum to secede from Ukraine on March 30.

Troops under apparent Russian command, many of them traveling in military trucks and armored personnel carriers, have deployed widely around Crimea, as attested by numerous eyewitness accounts from reporters on the ground.

The forces have surrounded Ukrainian military installations and demanded soldiers inside lay down their arms.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denied such a deployment had taken place, however, insisting the troops were part of “local militias.”

Neither the Ukrainian national government nor independent sources have yet confirmed the defection figures.

A Crimean government spokesman said the defections included troops stationed at Sevastopol’s Belbek Airport and three air defense regiments that operate S-300 surface-to-air missile systems.

S-300 systems, highly effective in shooting down most modern aircraft, would greatly increase the risk to planes conducting unauthorized overflights of Crimean airspace.

A source inside Ukraine’s naval headquarters told RIA Novosti Tuesday that some 50 officers had been prevented from leaving the building out of fears that they intended to defect to the Crimean military.

Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky, whom the interim government in Kiev appointed head of Ukraine’s national navy on March 1, swore allegiance to Crimea over the weekend.

He will head the region’s independent navy, according to Prime Minister Aksyonov, who also said Crimea will have its own defense ministry to oversee local troops.

[Monseratto]

A long frosty relationship will be bad for both side...

BBC News - Russia's trade ties with Europe

March 2014 Last updated at 17:42
Russia's trade ties with Europe

Russia has close economic ties with the UK and the rest of the EU so any trade and financial sanctions are likely to hurt both sides. Find out more about which countries do the most business with Russia in the series of charts below.

The EU ranks as Russia's number one trading partner, accounting for almost 41% of all trade.

Trade between the two economies has grown steadily and reached record levels in 2012.



EU trade
EU exports to Russia are dominated by machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, medicines and agricultural products.

Imports to the EU from Russia are dominated by crude oil and gas. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), European countries import 84% of Russia's oil exports, and about 76% of its natural gas.

Germany is the single biggest importer of Russian oil and gas, while the UK buys about 6% of Russia's gas.

The US is also an important trading partner for Russia. In 2013, the value of its imports was $26.9bn, more than double the value of its exports. The US imports about 5% of Russian oil.



UK trade
Russia ranks as 14th in a list of the UK's main trading partners for exports and 16th for imports, according to HM Revenue and Customs figures for 2013.

The UK imports more goods from Russia than it exports. From 2001-11 UK goods and services imports from Russia rose by just over 270%, while exports to Russia rose by 430%.

In 2013 Russia was the second biggest export destination, outside of the EU, for cars built in the UK - accounting for 9.5% of all vehicle exports.

The UK also supplies business and financial services, worth almost £1.7bn in 2011.



Russian investment
The UK also benefits from Russian investment, which in 2011 amounted to $11bn. It was the sixth biggest beneficiary of Russian investment - Cyprus received the most at $122bn. Investments in Cyprus originate from Russian businesses taking advantage of the country's financial system and favourable tax conditions.

According to the United Nations (UNCTAD) Russia was the eighth biggest investor economy in 2012 - the US came top, the UK was fifth.

The UK also has investments in Russia - in the form of BP oil. The company has an almost 20% share in the biggest Russian oil producer, Rosneft, which, in turn, generates profits for the British-owned company.

British firms have been encouraged to explore new trade opportunities with Russia. According to a report from December 2012, more than 600 UK companies were operating in Russia.

In January 2014, the body UK Trade and Investment announced it was widening its remit to encourage Russian companies to set up in the UK.

An official document, photographed as a senior official carried it into a meeting in Downing Street in March 2014, said the UK "should not support for now trade sanctions or close London's financial centre to Russians".

[safeorigin]

^translated: sanctions are half-hearted and at the end of the day meaningless rhetoric if the US is alone in brandishing sanctions

[safeorigin]

In case you missed it:

Foreign Policy

[yebo]

Very happy ang CHINA, di na sila ang bad boy ulit. Postpone na din ang pivot to asia ng US nyan. The chinese must be jumping for joy. Sana lang huwag sabay-sabay pag jump nila at baka mawala sa orbit ang earth.

[dr. d]

so they're re-building the union of soviet socialist republics???

[badkuk]

Hindi naman siguro. It's very hard and expensive to maintain a large country imho.

Ang style ng Russia ngayon is to install puppet governments in the former Soviet states -- more efficient imho:

Russia doesn't need to support the former Soviet state(at least not directly) so it's insulated economically;
it is, technically, a separate country, so Russia is insulated politically;
if there's any violent commotion, technically it's not in Russia

It's just that things got out of hand sa Ukraine -- i.e. Yanukovych got removed -- so he stepped in, big time. i guess you can argue that he did this to "protect" Russia, but he has no business invading an independent country. If he wanted to protect the naval base, he could have just deployed the troops there, then let Ukrainians play it out.

[safeorigin]

There are plenty of reasons to intervene:

1. Recently discovered gas and oil deposit in western Ukraine
2. Pipelines
3. Sovostopol - they did, indeed, deploy in their Naval Base which is in Crimea
4. Pro-western Ukraine = integration with EU and NATO; which leads to installing missile bases near the Russian border; which would inevitably lead to another Cold War, just like when the US installed missile bases in Turkey and USSR sent missiles to Cuba in return.
5. Preserve the status-quo or part of it to keep Europe's energy supply stable

[monkeybone1k]

But beneath it all, what do China’s problems and Russia’s problems have to do with each other? Although they initially ended up on opposite sides of the conflict, Germany and the USSR went into World War II with a non-aggression pact, which lasted two years until Hitler ripped it up and sent Nazis onto Soviet ice.

With perhaps some similarities to that historic pact, China and Ukraine signed a nuclear security pact in December 2013. The conditions: China won’t use any nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and if Ukraine is ever attacked by a nuclear force—or “threatened by such aggression“—China will provide Ukraine with security guarantees.

Why would China want to create such a pact with a country 5,800 kilometers (3,600 mi) away? And more importantly, with which government is China going to honor the pact? The past two months have seen a see-saw of political parties in control of Ukraine, but it’s likely that China’s involvement will be dependent on Yanukovych’s politics, which are decidedly pro-Russian. He’s the one who signed the pact. China says its relationship with Russia is warmer than ever, with China’s People Daily describing it as “one of the most active power relationships [in the world].”

It’s been speculated that Russia is hoping to draw a Western attack onto Ukraine, so that China’s entry to back Ukraine will cement the alliance between China and Russia. That idea reeks of conspiracy theory. But with Russia’s recent agreement to supply $270 billion in oil supplies to China, and with the majority of Russia’s pipelines running through Ukraine, China would want to protect its own interests. Either way, the enemy of an enemy is always a friend, and US-Russian relations are on very shaky ground.

10 Signs We Are Headed Into World War III


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