Not only did they not fight, the vast majority of Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea actually defected to become Russian soldiers (not counting the Russian news sources, the defection rate is quoted to be as high as 75%)
If you were a Russian-speaking ehtnic Russian Ukrainian stationed in Crimea when it was annexed by Russia, wouldn't you defect? One thing that was touched on in this thread but I don't think everyone in the wide world really appreciates is that the Crimea was never really Ukrainian. Except for a brief period in the middle ages, no identifiably Ukrainian state held it. Crimea has had many conquerors over the centuries, but Black Russians don't feature prominently. It had been mostly Tatars until Russian conquest in the 18th century. Ukraine was given the territory in an administrative shuffle 60 years ago. That's their whole claim. I still don't think Russia should have done it because they violated treaties respecting Ukraine's borders. But, it's a bit different from violating the Ukraine's heartland. No one should be surprised that residents of Crimea don't feel particularly Ukrainian.
Glynch - you make some of the most bizarre posts on this entire bbs. I'm paranoid regarding Russia? Or is the entire world, including Ukraine, Latvia and other surrounding countries? Stevie Wonder could see what's about to happen. From the Kiev Post today: State Of War Ukraine’s new National Guard trains on March 17. The nation is scrambling to mobilize 40,000 National Guard and reserve members to bolster a Defense Ministry with 180,000 personnel. Fears are high of a Russian invasion of Ukraine’s mainland, following its invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Russia is mobilizing for war and may be poised for a springtime invasion of Ukraine’s mainland, after stealing Crimea in less than three weeks. Tens of thousands of Russian troops and military hardware, including artillery, tanks, warplanes and helicopters are amassing and carrying out war games on all sides of Ukraine. High concentrations have been spotted in Russia’s Klimovo in the north and Russia’s Belgorod in the northeast, in Russian-annexed Crimea in the south and in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region in the southwest, as well as sizable groups carrying out military exercises in Belarus in the north. As a spring invasion of mainland Ukraine looms large, Yevhen Marchuk, a retired Ukrainian general and former defense minister, warned on March 27 that the crisis is intensifying, saying that Russia has now moved to the “second phase” of its plan “to eliminate” Ukraine as a nation. “There are many signs of an imminent attack,” he told journalists at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. “Now it is in fact war time.” Estimates of Russian troops on war footing vary, from the West’s estimates of more than 30,000 to the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s calculations of 100,000 soldiers ready to strike. There are, in addition, 700 tanks and armed personnel carriers staging near the eastern border, according to Dmitry Tymchuk, head of the Center for Military and Political Research in Kyiv. He added there are 240 warplanes and helicopters, 150 artillery systems of various calibers, and 100 units of multiple rocket launcher systems. In Transnistria, Tymchuk noted, there are 2,000 Russian boots on the ground, of whom 800 are commandoes. But presidential chief of staff Serhiy Pashynsky said at a briefing that “no activity of Russian troop mobilization” has been spotted near Ukraine’s borders for two days now. Still, experts noted that the battle-ready force is capable of cutting Ukraine off from the sea with a westward thrust, chopping perhaps a quarter of Ukraine’s territory into Moldova. Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted at a plan to do this in his March 18 speech at the Kremlin, during which he spoke of righting historical wrongs, specifically calling out the loss of those regions of Ukraine. “After the (1917) Revolution, the Bolsheviks… included into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic significant territories of southern Russia. This was done without taking into consideration the national composition of residents, and today its modern southeast of Ukraine,” Putin said. Taking advantage of Ukraine’s weakened and ill-prepared military, he seized Crimea with barely a shot fired, unconventionally taking the Black Sea peninsula in a flash and catching Ukraine and the world flat-footed. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that half of its 18,000 troops there have switched allegiance to Russia, while Tymchuk said it was “much less.” And yet, with all that is known, Putin could still catch Ukraine and the West unprepared again if Russian troops should storm the mainland, experts say. Experts talk of scope of invasion The Russian forces amassing at the Ukrainian border are “very, very sizable and very, very ready,” U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s top commander, warned on March 23. “And that is very worrisome.” The tens of thousands of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border, combined with others put on alert and mobilized, give Putin the ability to move quickly into Ukraine without the U.S. being able to predict when it happens, CNN reported top level American officials as saying. What mainland invasion could look like If Russia does invade, it would do so with swift precision, military experts say. Mark Galeotti, a New York University professor and post-Soviet security affairs expert who has researched security forces in Russia and Ukraine, said Russia’s aim would be “as quickly as possible to seize the bits of eastern Ukraine they need and want to hold. And then… to lock that down.” “A classic Putin model is to change the ground and turn to the rest of the world and say ‘what are you going to do about it?’” he added. What Russia would do first, Galeotti explained, is “completely disrupt Ukrainian political and military communications systems.” “We would probably see missile and air raids on military bases, bridges, transportation routes throughout the country… as much as anything else, to slow down Kyiv’s ability to muster and use all its forces,” he said. “The Russians almost certainly have positioned some special elements in eastern Ukraine. Plus, they have allies and sympathizers. So probably they would be able to seize the airports in places like Donetsk. And what they would do is bring in paratroopers very quickly. Paratroopers are great at seizing things very quickly.” Breedlove said that in a series of military maneuvers on the Ukrainian border, the VDV corps of Russian paratroopers and the air force already have been preparing to spearhead a possible push deep into Ukraine. The armed paratroopers have been training to take over “enemy airfields and airports as bridgeheads of an overall advance,” he said, adding that such a thrust would be closely followed by the tank and motorized army brigades that have been training and mobilizing along the Ukrainian border. The Russian Defense Ministry has denied it is preparing to invade Ukraine. Admiral Ihor Kabanenko, a former first deputy chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, claims that a special operation is now being conducted in Ukraine to “destabilize the situation in a technological way” by duly formed and motivated groups, acting by means of bribery and blackmail. Russia’s so-called fifth column, including extremist groups, is on Ukraine soil, he said, and working systematically and at various levels to create a pretext for Russia to invade. Marchuk, said that he doesn’t rule out proxies – as in Crimea – first trying to seize key administrative buildings and infrastructure in eastern cities leading up to the invasion. Ukraine’s security forces and border guards have caught on, though. Three operations jointly conducted by the Border Guard Service and Interior Ministry have since March 4 denied more than 8,200 Russians entry into Ukraine as of March 25. National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy stated on March 27 that between 500 to 700 Russians are now being denied entry daily. Additionally, the nation’s television and radio regulator has stopped broadcast of four Russian TV channels. “Would you allow the enemy to broadcast its propaganda on your territory?” stated Oleksiy Melnyk, director of foreign relations and international security programs at Razumkov Center. Russia has protested the measure on freedom of speech grounds. Pro-Russian authorities in Crimea several weeks ago abruptly switched off almost all Ukrainian TV channels and replaced them with channels originating from the Russia. Putin’s end game Putin’s ultimate goal is to install a pro-Kremlin government in Kyiv, experts say. He tried doing this in the four years of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s rule, observed Marchuk, but failed, “and the EuroMaidan squelched his plan altogether.” What he has succeeded through Russian spies, said Melnyk, is to weaken Ukraine’s defense and security capabilities. He pointed to ex-security service chief Oleksandr Yakimenko and ex-Defense Minister Dmytro Salamatin, who are residing in Moscow and giving interviews to Russian television channels. “Whether by use of force or through other tactics, Putin’s main goal is to install his own pro-Russian, very cooperative government in power,” said Melnyk. Putin’s war crimes Putin’s entire Crimean operation committed an array of brazenly illegal acts and, some would argue, war crimes. Among them, Russia violated the 1994 Budapest Agreement it signed to guarantee Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity, as well as the 1997 Black Sea basing agreement of troop size and movements. Chief among its transgressions was the violation of the United Nations Charter and 1975 Helsinki Final Act. They include respect for the rights in inherent sovereignty, refraining from the threat or use of force, territorial integrity of states, non-intervention in internal affairs, among others. Reports of torture and inhuman treatment have been cited in Crimea. Whole scale plundering of state and private property has begun. Massive military mobilization along Ukraine’s borders itself, says Tymchuk, “is an act of war.” More heinous, in the view of many, is Putin’s hiding of his troops’ identities and even his denial of their presence, as well as his use of women and children as human shields during the storming of Ukrainian bases, all in violation of Geneva conventions on acceptable warfare. Ukraine’s readiness But should Russia invade the mainland, Ukraine is prepared, according to Marchuk. “A Russian assault on Ukraine would not be done as fast as they suppose,” he said. Although Kyiv has refrained from declaring a state of war, it has started to mobilize its military and tighten security at its borders. Aside from denying many Russians entry and blacking out four Russian TV channels, it has been forming a national guard of 20,000. More needs to be done, said Melnyk, starting with spreading out fighter jets and preparing for a partisan war by training units and setting up a network to distribute its vast cache of small arms. Still, Ukraine’s military, hollowed out by years of corruption and mismanagement, would not be a match for Russia’s, which by all accounts has amassed its best units and hardware around Ukraine’s boundaries. Ukraine is already at war Melnyk of the Razumkov Center think tank says there are plenty of reasons to argue that Ukraine is at war. At least four or five actions performed by the Russian Federation perfectly fit in the definition of “armed aggression” stated in Ukraine’s “law on defense,” he said. “From the military point of view, the current situation in Ukraine is classified as a war, despite no armed fight back from our side,” said Kabanenko on March 26. “The government has to admit this fact and give up its actual strategy of non-provoking, act in a decisive and tough manner following a new counter-strategy.” A number of facts exist to justify a state of war declaration, he explained. Numerous Russian troops are concentrated near Ukraine’s border, and elite “attack groups” are operating in Crimea. In particular, Uragan multiple rocket launch ers, as well as SU-24 frontline bombers are concentrated there. “That is offensive power (not for defense). Its range of action covers the whole territory of Ukraine. We are also aware that the Russian Federation has prepared an airborne component to conduct a deep-penetrating airborne operations 500 kilometers and more deep (into Ukraine),” Kabanenko said. Selling arms to the enemy Media reports in mid-March said that despite Russia’s aggression, Ukraine’s vast industrial military complex is still selling products to it, one of its top clients. According to Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, two military production plants on March 13 shipped radar and guidance instruments for Russian tanks and aircraft. A factory in Zaporizhya in the south makes all the engines for Russia’s Mi-8, Mi-26, and Mi-35 helicopters, for example. State-owned UkrOboronProm, which consolidates a number of multi-disciplinary enterprises in the defense industry, didn’t respond to a Kyiv Post inquiry on whether it is still fulfilling Russian orders. Likewise, Ukrspetseksport, the state-owned arms trading company, failed to respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for comments. If Ukraine is still carrying out Russian orders, it should stop, said Valeriy Chaliy, deputy general director of Kyiv-based Razumkov Center. “If Ukraine wants support from the West, it must act by example and stop selling arms to Russia and implement these measures,” he said. This week, Germany led the way by announcing it was suspending military trade with Russia, its leading supplier of weapons. France has yet to make the move. Meanwhile in Canada, New Democratic Party Foreign Relations critic Paul Dewear said it makes no sense to impose political sanctions while continuing to sell weapons and military equipment to Russia. Canada sells military electronics, aircraft parts and spare parts for communications equipment to the Russians. http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/state-of-war-341161.html
Looks like when US starts a war, they are war heroes; someone else starts a war he is a war criminal.
Just keep posting. You are making yourself look ever more foolish the more you post on this topic. With all respect due, of course.
So what happens if/when Russia invades Ukraine's mainland? What will be the international response? More seemingly ineffective sanctions?
Obama is more of a hawk that people think..... I wouldn't be surprised if there is military action by the USA in concert with Western Europe. I still think that Putin is bird doggin it to see how far he can push it and see what the response is.... and the Russian people are loving it, it makes Putin seem strong, standing up to the West. Anyone that says they can predict what Putin will do and not do consistently is wrong... he has been very coy, and his opinions and actions have changed over the years.
Not trying to say who's right or wrong, but a 75% defection rate is insane. I doubt ethnic Russians comprise 75% of Ukrainian military in Crimean so that means a significant % of ethnic Ukranians also defected. This also suggests that the Ukranian military is probably. to capable of putting up much resistance even if Russia invades Ukraine proper, it's hard to fight when you know the guy next to you might defect or shoot you in the back.
My my, bank sanctions must be working. Russia's Putin calls Obama to discuss U.S. proposal on Ukraine: White House RIYADH (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin called U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday to discuss a U.S. diplomatic proposal for Ukraine, the White House said. Obama suggested to Putin that Russia put a "concrete response in writing" to the U.S. proposal, a White House statement said.
I'm not sure what you want from me, but if you want my opinion: 1. Intervening in one Russian internal conflict was a mistake by the West the first time. 2. I agree with UConn's Frank Costigliola that the Cold War could have largely been avoided had FDR lived longer and the world saved the fate of Truman colluding with Churchill to break the promises of Yalta. 3. US-Soviet (and later Russian) intransigence had a lot to do with the escaltion of the Cold War, and lost opportunities at arms reduction and cooperation on major problems facing the world today (namely radical Islam). Doing things like putting missiles in Poland, funding opposition parties in Russia and failing to recognize Russia's problems with radical Islam as part of the same global conflict have hurt US - Russian relations needlessly and for negligable gains, unless you consider helping to keep the corrupt regimes in the Caucasus a great victory for the free world. It's done little to erase the fear Russians have of US meddling that's gone on for nearly a century. 4. Crimea and Eastern Ukraine have an ethnic and linguistic Russian majority and like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and possibly Belarus, or even Transnistria might very well join the Russian Federation in the near future. 5. SacTown has resaonable fear that Russia may also annex Eastern Ukraine soon, but I think anything more would be outside Putin's stated goal of repatriating ethnic Russians. 6. No one should expect there not to be a political correction after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It will take time for more natural borders to take the place of old Soviet states. Those borders should be decided by the people, and not, like in the Middle East, by western powers who would have the lines decided to their own advantge. 7. No western country has much to gain or obligation by treaty to intervene in any of these conflicts. 8. I'm not a fan of Russian nationalism, or any nationalism or any other form of exceptionalism, including any that I might personally claim (other than maybe being a Houston sports fan). It's very easy to be critical of another nation's exceptionalism and jingoism and not examine the irrationality of one's own, especially when our nation has been responsible for most of the conflicts post-1945, most of which had little to do with actually protecting the United States. Bear in mind, I'm not the one opening that can of worms, but I will certainly not be the one to censor someone for making that point or going there. To presume the subject is so scared and above discussion to the point of taboo is to kind of concede the argument. 9. I have a lot of friends in Ukraine and in Russia. I'm not keen to see any of them die in yet another man-made conflict over real estate. I've had enough friends die in those, and I'm sure as hell not going to sign on to cheer the ****ing flag and send my family members to die in yet another war for someone else's geopolitical shortcomings and be assured with false sincerity that they were martyrs for "freedom." 10. None of this hasn't already been said by posters already in the thread, La Monde, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, FP, The Economist, Moshe Arens, Haaretz, The Guardian, DW, The South China Post, or the freaking Weekly Standard, so if this all seems challenging, politically radical and/or new to you, you might try getting your news from something besides Fox, the NYT and variety talk shows. I spend most of my days writing copy for a down market audience. I'd appreciate not having to do so in my free time.
Deji layin down the law. Refreshing to see someone on this board willing to be critical of more than one side of a conflict.
Actually I agree with you on most points, and do on most global issues, at least on these boards. Nothing your said is really original or radical. Rather, it was your white knighting of an idiot was puzzling. Regardless, back to being a very important person and driving a Dodge Stratus.
Beautiful. I actually love the way Obama has handled this. McInsane would have already had troops in there.
It would be the best if things can be settled peacefully. Good job indeed by president Obama, tho lots of Americans hate him for not involving the country enough in war as his predecessors did.
NY Review of Books: Obama’s Putin Delusion [rquoter]Are we playing Vladimir Putin’s game? On Friday, amid what may be the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile affair, the Russian president put in a surprise call to President Obama. The purpose of the call, apparently, was to raise the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, though it remains unclear whether Putin wants to negotiate with the West or was just trying to ascertain Obama’s level of concern about further Russian encroachments on Ukraine—and possibly neighboring Moldova. Whatever the case, the White House seems to have been caught completely off-guard by Putin’s call, just as it was by Russia’s military take-over of Crimea last month. There are now upwards of 30,000 Russian troops—some US estimates have run as high as 50,000—poised on Russia’s border with Eastern Ukraine (ostensibly for routine military exercises) and Putin spokesmen have been claiming ominously that ethnic Russians on the other side are being attacked by Ukrainian extremists. Putin reportedly repeated these claims to Obama, adding that similar violence was occurring in Transdniestria, a breakaway region of Moldova that borders Ukraine and is the home of a large Russian population. Over the past few days, US intelligence officials and Western analysts have warned of the possibility of Russian actions in both eastern Ukraine and Transdniestria. Washington has described these threats as a radical shift in Russia’s relations with the West—a situation almost unimaginable as recently as early February, when Russia hosted the Sochi Olympics. In a lengthy op-ed piece in The New York Times last Sunday, Michael McFaul, President Obama’s former Ambassador to Moscow, asserted that Putin’s decision to annex the Crimea “ended the post-Cold War era in Europe,” an era he characterized by “an underlying sense that Russia was gradually joining the international order.” But to anyone who has followed the Kremlin’s actions closely over the years, none of this should come as a great surprise. To the contrary, the recent events bear out longstanding policy aims of the Putin regime, whose senior members have changed remarkably little since Putin became president in 2000: for years, the Kremlin has worked to roll back US and European influence in post-Soviet states, and to rebuild its own suzerainty over like-minded regimes from Ukraine and Belarus to the Caucasus and Central Asia. Failure to recognize how deeply engrained these aims are, and how seemingly immune they have been to Western overtures, has severely undermined US efforts to address challenges from Russia effectively. The Obama White House has exhibited a misguided optimism about Kremlin intentions ever since the introduction of the “reset” with Russia in 2009, which was intended to inaugurate a new era in US-Russia relations, following the cooling off that had occurred after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August of 2008. The new rapport, which Obama pursued with then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev (Putin was at the time Prime Minister) was based on pragmatism and deal-making, rather than attempts to promote American values. The chief architect of the reset was McFaul, who served as Obama’s advisor on Russia in the National Security Council from 2008 to 2012 before becoming ambassador to Moscow, a post he has just vacated. As McFaul and other Obama administration officials portray it, apart from a few hiccups like the 2008 invasion of Georgia, Moscow has spent much of the Putin years integrating itself with the West. Thus, they argue, after 9/11, the Russian government cooperated with the US on counter-terrorism; it allowed American military flights to Afghanistan to traverse Russian airspace; and it developed economic and energy ties with Europe. Since the “reset,” they maintain, Russia helped pressure Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program; it joined the World Trade Organization; and, until 2012, had in Medvedev a “moderate” in the Kremlin under whom—in McFaul’s words—the “policy of engagement and integration…appeared to be working again.” In recent months, Washington has also credited Russia with brokering a deal with Syrian President Assad to dismantle his chemical weapons program. In fact, hardly any of these purported achievements holds up to scrutiny. Russia used the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an excuse to pursue its brutal suppression of Chechnya and expand its unaccountable security state, a process which, as I have noted, continues to this day. It has persisted in arms sales to Iran and provided crucial military hardware, along with diplomatic support, to the Assad regime in Syria. Regarding the Afghan conflict, it has long pressured Kyrgyzstan to expel the US from Manas air base—a crucial supply link for allied forces—which will in fact be closed this summer. And while the US has been distracted with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Moscow has stepped up it aggressive efforts to establish a “Eurasian Union” with post-Soviet states like Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and most recently Ukraine, with the goal of creating a series of pro-Kremlin governments and re-establishing its hegemony in the region. Rather than an aberration, the 2008 invasion of Georgia was a clear part of this long-running strategy, just as Russia’s continuing moves in Ukraine are an extension of longstanding efforts to prevent the country from moving closer to the West—efforts stepped up considerably after the Orange Revolution in 2004. Nor has the Kremlin made much progress in adopting western standards of rule of law at home. Though the Obama administration championed Russia’s entry into the WTO during Medvedev’s presidency, Medvedev never achieved the substantial political or economic reforms he talked about and continued to be a pawn of Putin, without an independent power base. This became all too clear when Putin announced in September 2011 that he would be replacing Medvedev as the Russian president in 2012. And with the West mostly looking the other way, the Russian government has been consistently ruthless in crushing political dissent. As long ago as 2003, Putin put oligarch Dmitry Khodorkovsky, in prison for supporting a political party that posed an alternative to Putin’s United Russia. And the Kremlin has been relentless in its efforts to silence Alexey Nalvny, the opposition blogger who has exposed widespread corruption among Putin’s circle. Some of these persecutions continued, largely unnoticed, even as the world was watching this winter’s Olympics in Sochi. To be sure, the White House inherited the perception that the Kremlin was moving toward the West in part from George W. Bush, who famously declared that he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw “his soul” (presumably that of a nascent democrat). But did it really take Russia’s invasion of Crimea for the White House to finally realize that Putin is an authoritarian hegemon who has long been moving away from Europe and building Russia’s domination of its “near abroad?” McFaul tells us that “Mr. Putin’s own thinking has changed over time,” and that, with Crimea, “Mr. Putin has made a strategic pivot.” But the Russian president has not veered from the course he set out on as far back as 1999, when as prime minister he made the decision to unleash a crippling war on the republic of Chechnya. As Fyodor Lukyanov, a Russian analyst and editor of the quarterly journal Russia in Global Affairs, recently observed: While McFaul eventually mastered diplomatic protocol, he had no power over the turn of events in Russian politics and bilateral relations. The circumstances when he was appointed ambassador to Russia changed completely by the time he had arrived….McFaul’s ambassadorship was the symbolic end of the era when America believed it could influence Russia’s trajectory. It may be unfair to blame the Obama administration for being caught by surprise by Russia’s Crimea grab, which many experts failed to predict (though The Wall Street Journal has reported that US intelligence agencies had indications that Putin might be planning a military takeover of Crimea as far back as December). But it is dismaying to consider that the White House remains under the delusion that Russia’s actions mark a sudden departure from past practices. The US and its European allies seem to have accepted Moscow’s annexation of Crimea as a fait accompli because there is little they can do to force it to take the humiliating step of withdrawing from the region. The goal now is to prevent Russia from further incursions into Ukraine, particularly the east and southeast areas of the country, where many ethnic Russians live. There are many reasons why such an intervention would be inadvisable for the Kremlin. As Swedish economist Anders Aslund pointed out Tuesday in the Moscow Times, Russia can ill afford the economic damage already caused by its military aggression in the Crimea, which he estimates at one to two percent of GDP for 2014. Stock prices have fallen, along with the value of the ruble, and investors, both Russian and foreign have begun withdrawing their investments from the county. Meeting in Brussels this week, President Obama and other Western leaders have suspended Russia from the Group of Eight and declared their intention to introduce further, as yet unspecified, economic sanctions against Russia if it takes military action in mainland Ukraine. Yet by failing to recognize Moscow’s larger regional aims, the West may be underestimating the Kremlin’s readiness to take advantage of a situation that has offered new opportunities to exert its influence, and that has played well at home. In recent weeks, Putin’s inner circle of siloviki from his hometown of St. Petersburg, several of whom have been targeted by the new US sanctions imposed this month, have closed ranks around their leader. And polls show that, among the Russian population at large, Putin’s popularity is at a new high. (Russians typically rally around their leader when their military forces are deployed, as they did in the past during the conflicts with Chechnya and Georgia.) To prevent further Russian aggression, the United States and its European allies should be prepared to inflict broad sanctions against the Kremlin’s energy and financial sectors, rather than only against certain Russian officials. But Western leaders may also need to take a larger strategic view of the situation and shore up NATO military defenses in the Baltic states and Poland, while giving more robust support to democrats in Kiev and other vulnerable governments in the region. During a news conference early this week in Brussels, Obama responded to those who claim he has been naïve about Putin by dismissing Russia as a “regional power” that poses no risk to the security of the United States. But this assessment seems more like a justification for allowing the Kremlin to call the shots than a true statement of reality. A Russian demarche into eastern Ukraine, and possibly Moldova, would threaten the security of all the newly independent states of Europe and, by implication, that of the US as well. The Kremlin can only be deterred if the West, recognizing that Putin’s main goal is to project Russia’s power and influence upon the former Soviet empire, begins to anticipate Kremlin threats with resolute engagement of its own. As a report from the Carnegie Moscow Center observed: “For the rest of the world, dealing with Russia in the next few years will mean dealing directly with Vladimir Putin, and it will not be easy.”[/rquoter]
