Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Firn]

The guardian offers as usual well organized live-blogging with good summaries.

It contains also a link to the presentation of the new Russian uniforms to be fielded in 2014. I'm certain that the local Russian-Non-Russian paramilitary forces of the Crimea got the first pick. Or maybe they stumbled across them in an old warehouse, along with pretty modern locking small arms. Happily the equipment was in complete sets and so everybody could uniformly drive away in the military vehicles which happened to be there as well.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I'm certain that the local Russian-Non-Russian paramilitary forces of the Crimea got the first pick. Or maybe they stumbled across them in an old warehouse, along with pretty modern locking small arms. Happily the equipment was in complete sets and so everybody could uniformly drive away in the military vehicles which happened to be there as well.

At this point I don't know if additional troops have been introduced to the Crimea or if these are Marines from the Naval Base taking up a defensive posture to keep the Ukrainians, or anyone else, from trying to remove them from the area. Either way, they are Russian troops on Ukrainian soil. But they may not constitue the vanguard of an invasion but simply a LP-OP of sorts. I would be curious to know what, if any, legal authority they are claiming for this action.

As for warnings not to intervene, I am not sure that we (the US) should be making any. There is still a government (of sorts) in the Ukraine. If they invite in the EU or NATO perhaps we can get involved, but if there is anything left to the concept of sovereignty, then we have little authority to act.

On the other hand, the Russians have physical bases in the Ukraine. The question now is whether Russia will recognize (not openly, but covertly) the new government of Ukraine or whether they will take the posture that this was an illegal coups and intervene directly.

[Firn]

As I have written before nobody knows what will happen, even Mr Putin which has clearly ordered armed aggression a bit similar - minus bloodshed - of what happened in Afghanistan ealier. I was a bit surprised when I heard about those organized well-armed men taking over the Crimean parliament a couple of days earlier. A local mixed bag was not out of the question but the CCTV footage on the BBC shows quite clearly that this was no rabble from the street. I will leave the evaluation to competent guys but it really looks like Russian SF waltzed at 04XX into the regional parliament of a sovereign nation...

From the sheer amount of gear it seems that they planned to stay for a while.

[omarali50]

+1

Why is the US supposed to eagerly jump into what is a truly complex dispute, with some right on both sides? (and thousands of nuclear weapons on one of them)
After all, Crimea is, as these things go, historically more Russian than Ukrainian (whatever that means), ethnically mostly Russian and probably has more Russian troops right now than Ukrainian ones...not a simple matter for a distant power to get involved in...
And while Russia is not an attractive state, Ukraine is not very likely to rise above Moldavian levels anytime soon.
But then again, what do I know. I am certainly not an expert on the region or its history.

[carl]

It seems to me the critical unknown is will somebody, maybe the Tatars in Crimea or the Ukrainians themselves in Crimea or somewhere else, fight the Russians? If they don't, no big deal. If they do, trouble approaches.

I don't know enough about it to make a guess. Does anybody have an idea?