ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

The poll was more than merely flawed, and a "substantial number" doesn't mean an overwhelming majority. You know that, right?

"any time in Ukraine" -- a couple of days, fairly recently, but no more than that. Cancelled a business trip set for two weeks ago.

don't engage honestly and rationally w/ evil lunatics sv, you come off like neville chamberlain

interesting 538 piece on polling in crimea - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-signs-pointed-to-crimea-independence-vote-but-polls-didnt/

Interesting article, balls, where did you find it?

Why does it matter if the majority is 'overwhelming'?

The propaganda was certainly a factor. TV channels spent a huge amount of time playing up the far right links of the government and reminding people of the atrocities committed under Bandera. 40% of Crimeans thinking Ukraine and Russia should merge sounds feasible. You would expect more to think that Crimea alone should join Russia and more still now that an almost universally hated political leadership has taken power from a broadly popular one. That almost certainly wouldn't add up to 90+% but it forms a body of opinion that can't be handwaved away.

Obviously this is only anecdotal but of the Crimean interviews I've heard (mostly on BBC + Al-J) since the referendum, supporter interviews (who, for i guess obvious reasons*, outnumber referendum detractors in interviews like 3:1) are super outspoken + enthusiastic. One particularly memorable interviewee said that he identifies as Russian - not because of any affinity to the political entity, but because he identifies so strongly with Russian literature. I could def relate. Of non-supporters, they almost to a man explained that they refrained from voting because they thought it wouldn't matter. Some insinuated this was because the vote was stacked, but others said plainly that they could just tell which way the population was trending and it wasn't worth getting involved.

(*sorry, obvious reasons being that ppl who didn't support the referendum obv have plenty of good safety reasons to keep their mouths shut and not do interviews atm imo)

Good timeline, for events Nov. 21--March 8, anyway. Good framework/points of departure for further studies too: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/08/us-ukraine-crisis-timeline-idUSBREA270PO20140308

SV, can the difference between 40% and 90% be handwaved away? Because that it what it appears to me that you are doing.

You do get that it isn't the same polling-question, and that some pretty dramatic things happened between those two numbers? Also, fraud and supression, obviously, nobody is doubting that?

i haven't crunched the numbers, but if turnout was 83% as claimed then that would have to include a healthy chunk of crimea's ethnolinguistic minorities—mostly ukrainian speakers and tatars—who collectively make up something like 40+% of those living in Crimea. and a 97% "yes" vote would imply that even a majority of voters from those groups voted "yes." that seems, to put it mildly, highly unlikely. especially since international news groups report that most tatars sat out the vote because they think it's illegitimate. that would mean a very sizable chunk of ukrainian-speaking folks voted "yes."

anyway there are good reasons to discount the result as a fabrication even if you don't buy the most obvious reason, which is that the vote was carried out under implicit military threat with few international observers etc.

putin and his cronies are so profoundly cynical that they make my jaw drop sometimes*. esp. their references to kosovo as analogical to and thus legitimating the crimea secession. i have a bad memory, but not so bad as to have forgotten how bitterly the russian government was opposed to kosovo breaking away from serbia.

(*yeah, i guess it's not really any more cynical than arguing without good evidence that a poor, militarily decimated state was stockpiling chemical weapons that were an immediate threat to US security. but, you know.)

So it looks like annexation is going through. With the first round of sanctions looking like a joke, I guess the question is whether there's any appetite in Washington/Berlin/etc for a more serious second round.

Bizarre in an asynchronous way to hear the world community seriously discuss whether we should just let Putin have Crimea or if it might lead to further Russian annexations.

Here’s the dirty little secret of the foreign-policy pundit/expert orgy on what to do about Crimea: the US has at its disposal very few levers with which to change Russia’s behavior, at least in the near-term. We can cancel multilateral summits and military training (already done); we can deny visas to Russian officials (just beginning); we can even ramp up bilateral economic sanctions and try to build support among key European allies for a larger, more invasive sanctions regime (under discussion).
But as our long effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear ambition reminds us, such steps will take time and diplomatic effort to bring results. They won’t offer the guarantee of a satisfactory result, and they could produce significant economic backlash for US companies - and, more directly, US allies.
In the end, we’re stuck arguing over policy responses that largely dance around the margins, and a situation in which Europe’s actions likely matter more than America’s.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/14/us-foreign-policy-crimea-obama-response

Interesting that financial markets are rising on this news. There seems to be relief that Putin said in his speech that he doesn't want any more of Ukraine, which assurance the markets are apparently taking at face value.

I don't see why the US can't annex Ontario

i bet some of the western oil country would be happy to leave ottawa's hold (tho maybe not to come under obama's). i doubt a referendum of canadians anywhere of "would you like to become american?" would get out of single digits. among quebecois i doubt it would get over a rounding error.

No, short term nothing can be done about Russia. But long term, it will have consequences. By taking Crimea he has secured 100% that Ukraine will be oriented towards the west, and the quest for dropping the dependency on Russian gas will intensify.

But then Russia can sell it to China, so...

just knew putin would bring up kosovo sooner or later and the precedent it set is one reason alot of ppl argued against kosovo sovereignty at the time. there's a huge difference in causus belli but putin regards that as a joke, as does the rest of the world after the last ten years (if not two hundred). could someone (ie sv obv) who's more familiar w/ ukraine's demographics tell us what crimea's removal means for the future? total 'i haven't thought about the ukraine since they gave up their nukes' here but my very shallow understanding is there was a somewhat tenuous balance between eu-sympathetic west and ru-sympathetic east - does this kind of extreme gerrymandering of crimea shift that balance toward the west? if putin really does stop w/ crimea is this arguably a win-win situation? putin gets his show of power, western ukraine is shed a nuisance region, eastern ukraine has concrete demonstration of what happens if their interests are run over and threat of secession, america gets to see putin and russia continue to self-marginalize themselves (i mean does anyone think there are any real advantages to be gained from this long term? it's a pretty empty victory. i'm reminded of dan snyder.), europe keeps pipelining oil and dirty money, everyone knows where everyone stands. i'm almost definitely wrong but tell me where and why. i just keep thinking that this kind of reminds me of the construction of the berlin wall, something that was a 'crisis' in the moment but secretly was welcomed by both sides cuz it resolved continuing nuisances for both sides. i know nti had that op-ed saying 'this must not be a new berlin wall' but really would that be so bad?

anyhow, fun story on one of the bond villain clowns notionally targeted by us sanctions - http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117053/vladislav-surkov-responds-sanctions-will-miss-tupac-shakur

I think you are broadly correct in that there will be people in Kyiv if not welcoming the course of events then definitely seeing an upside. In terms of population Crimea isn't huge (not more than 5% of total) but is so heavily weighted towards the Party Of The Regions (85 - 90 per cent support) that it gives a kicking to their chances of winning future elections. It doesn't mean Tymoshenko is unassailable but it gives her a real head start when the margins are so close.

She will need to keep East more or less on board, will have to deal with Russia (EU isn't going to supply gas or make up list trade) but I reckon she's going to be pretty confident of doing that.

*Lost trade*

Apparantly, fracking-gas from the US will be able to be delivered to Europe from 2015. Perhaps Ukraine can get some of that?

Meanwhile, Ukraine commander reports some of the self-designated self-defense groups gave a deadline for getting out of Crimea or joining the Russian military:

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-crimea-ukraine-troops-20140318,0,1415462.story#axzz2wGyC1mlz

And now the exchange of deadly fire begins (with some beating and robbery of Ukraine soldiers as well) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26637296

i do wonder for how long ukraine will have to maintain the rhetoric of crimea as illegally wrested from their country (which it was, but now it's a fait accompli rather than an act in progress). i guess it'll be like those other long-contested zones in asia where one country has had effective power for decades but the uncertain status remains a "diplomatic hurdle" or whatever that contributes to a general freeze (see e.g. india/china). i wonder if kyiv will appoint "shadow governments," etc. in the crimea and if so for how long.

2 interesting things i heard on the radio today:

1. a pro-Ukrainian activist using a Russian idiom I've never heard before to refer to pro-Crimean (non-military) "defenders": "like monkeys holding hand grenades" - quick google turned up an official last August using the same expression to refer to American interventions in Islamic countries.

2. no-godwin, http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/165408,Polish-FM-Anschluss-in-Crimea-needs-EU-response

"Unfortunately instead of de-escalation we have anschluss of Crimea, which cannot be left without a response," the 'Poland in Europe' group tweeted Radoslaw Sikorski as saying before a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday morning, referring to the German word for the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.

Sikorski clarified that he doesn't think this is going to erupt into a WW3 but i had thought of the anchluss comparison a couple days ago so i thought it was interesting to see other ppl noticing at least some (superficial?) similarities.

Yeah, I think the anschluss-thing is underlying a lot of this discussion (notice TWU calling SV 'chamberlainesque' upthread). The key difference to me is that Russia would lose WW3 in a heartbeat, though also nukes, I guess...

This article on Putin's speeches was interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html?emc=edit_th_20140319&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=62580219

Anschluss isn't a special word, btw; it's a good cognate for the English word "annexation". The key difference to me between the two annexations is that I think Hitler's was less controversial among Austrians at the time.

Also, the annexation of Austria led to a World War. That really seems like 'the key difference' to me...

thus far ya

We're not headed towards WW3.

War is war.

But a World War is not just a War.

right, i don't mean anything special about the word itself but more the historical evocation -- the annexation of a historically national (German/Russian) territory filled w/ ethnic citizens whose majority are enthusiastic about the merger. and i think the really unspoken element of the comparison is - does this augur further territorial ambitions. obv if putin takes czech peeps are going freak (joekz, there are more obv targets like latvia/estonia/etc).

Radek Sikorski (and his wife Anne Applebaum) have had a longstanding fear / paranoia about Russia becoming a major global power again. The key driver for opposition to Anschluss at the time wasn't concern for the rights of Austrians, I think, it was the fear that Germany would regain and misuse its former might. That is probably the key driver for lots of fairly hawkish critics with Crimea as well - although obviously not the only one.

on that note, i've been meaning to finish reading applebaum's iron curtain book. now seems as good a time as any tbh.

Honestly don't think that most Russians are fussed about Baltic states, other than with Estonia as a pointer of what can happen when Russian-speakers don't have a strong defence of their rights. Crimea is special to them. There was a poll last year asking people whether they thought various places 'were part of Russia' and eight times as many people said yes to Crimea than Chechnya.

really interesting to see who actors/speakers in this thing try to cast as the "right wing" or the imperialist. seems slightly different from a more standard rhetoric of claiming the other to be merely the "aggresssor"

maybe they're *all* right, heh

i don't think anyone considers putin a leftist, but i wonder if Russian conflicts w/ the west (EU) have a historically built-in bias for leftists who have a lot of practice swinging for the entity to the north over the capitalist colonialists in europe proper. ymmv etc.

Don't think we're anywhere near WW3, but if we did hit WW3, the annexation of Crimea seems like a perfect textbook catalyst, a la assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Just in the generic we all look back, in retrospect, and say "duh" sense, after WW3 happens, which is not happening.

Un-thought-through thoughts on the global perspectives:

What really seems interesting to me today, caused by reading about Putin's responses, is that this might be the first time since 89 where the global system is becoming fundamentally less integrated. It will probably be seen as the greatest setback for globalism in 25 years. China will have to choose sides, and they could very well choose to turn away from the west and more towards Russia as well.

And this next thought is caused by reading another article in todays Times on the effect of Globalization: For the vast majority of people in the west, a less global economy is a good thing. It's really only the elite who has benifited from the global restructuring. This can be seen most clearly in Britain, where London City is very much opposed to sanctions, as Russian money is very important. The benifiters of the last 25 years has, to a large extent, been the newly created middle class in the developing countries. However, the leaders of these countries might very well want to stop this development now. After all, the urban middle class were the people who opposed Putin in 2012, more educated middle class would mean more trouble.

i don't think anyone considers putin a leftist, but i wonder if Russian conflicts w/ the west (EU) have a historically built-in bias for leftists who have a lot of practice swinging for the entity to the north over the capitalist colonialists in europe proper. ymmv etc.

Couple of different things going on I think:

Assumption that anyone defying the US is probably right. Residual affection for Putin for going against Iraq /Syria invasion.

Belief that this was a crisis engineered by US /EU.

Belief that this is a neo-con power grab to asset strip Ukraine (which is kind of true but ignores fact that Yanukovich was also an asset-stripping neo-con).

Perception of 'mainstream media bias'.

Unease at Fascist-packed Ukrainian government.

Lots more besides. Putin is an odd figure because, while clearly a jackal, he's almost certainly the *best* leader Russia has ever had. I mean, he has no real competition in that regard. The position often taken by the left is that Russia was completely destroyed, deliberately and ideologically, by the World Bank / US / IMF with a view to putting state assets in the hands of literally anyone who wasn't the state - irrespective of whether they were mafia dons - and with no regard for how many would die in poverty as a result. Putin has not fully reversed that but he has capped the power of the oligarchs and raised living standards for pretty much everyone. Balancing that against his authoritarian streak is a major challenge though. He is not a leftist by any stretch of the imagination but he's a different kind of rightist than Yeltsin and wildly popular in most of Russia as a result.

Obviously best is relative here. Russia had never had any remotely decent leaders. And many Chechens would disagree, etc.

China will have to choose sides, and they could very well choose to turn away from the west and more towards Russia as well.

i wonder why they would do this, when there are so many more people/potential trading partners among the countries now lined up in opposition to russian expansionism. the USA alone has more people and a stronger economy, add to that the EU, much of Asia e.g. Japan, Brazil (who I also can't imagine siding w/ Russia over US/Europe)...

also all these theories about long-term geopolitics might be moot when half of world's capitals are underwater and most countries can only feed a portion of their citizens.

no one really speculating more than 5 years old i don't think and i doubt half world's capitals will be underwater by then.

5 years out* i mean