It is hilarious to see the alleged plight of the Tatars played up by Western propagandists as if the vast and overwhelming majority in North America and Western Europe even know what a Tatar actually is or gave two figs for their cause before their television sets told them to. Who the majority of Tatars support retaining sovereignty over Crimea is ultimately inconsequential as they are a minority demographic and Russians are the majority. Most Crimeans speak Russian, identify with Russian culture and history, consider themselves Russian, and fortunately now they truly
are again! When the Soviet Union fell to pieces and Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, Crimea should have in reality been returned to Russia then and there.
And what makes Crimea sacred Ukrainian territory? What makes anyone believe the sincerity of anti-Russian think-tanks and West-based organizations when they considered the Soviet Union illegitimate and a monstrous regime throughout its existence only to now hold up as sacred the arbitrary decision made by the Soviet dictator Khruschev with the flick of a pen in the 50's? A decision made without voting of or consultation with the Russian population of the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian population of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic, or the Crimean population itself?
As for whether the regime of thugs and open servants of every interest outside Ukraine which the parasitic clique infecting the transatlantic community managed to implant in Kiev by force of arms in February would allow the referendum in a piece of Ukrainian territory not protected by a Russian occupation, we don't need to speculate about anything. The instructions from their bosses told them to keep Crimea at all costs, as NATO warships in Sevastopol was one of the ultimate prizes aimed for behind the coup d'etat. We only need to see how the regime is dealing with a separatism rooted in sentiment which rejects their legitimacy as the national government of Ukraine now in parts of the country which are not protected by the Russian Army such as Donbass, with their declared "ATO" against the stalwart heroes of the Russian resistance or even the brutal security crackdown in cities like Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk intended to clear the streets of all anti-coup-regime protesters (with a little help from ruthless mercenary outfits like Academi and foreign advisers sprinkled in, naturally).
I find the question of "Did Russia violate international law in the Crimean crisis?" painfully irrelevant however. The elephant in the room anyone even moderately seasoned in world affairs must see is that international law doesn't really exist, and in the cases where something like it exists in the sense of precedents and taboos which countries are mindful of, those are established by force by the countries capable of force to begin with. Were NATO's actions in Yugoslavia with bombing with no UN Security Council approval and later dismembering and detaching territory from a European nation-state, the territory of Kosovo from Serbia after a unilateral declaration of independence resisted by the actual national government in Belgrade, so that its mining industry could be privatized and one of NATO's largest bases placed to occupy its soil in the heart of southeastern Europe legal or illegal? Was it legal when old Soviet-made East German arms were funneled by Berlin with NATO backing via Albania to paramilitary groups engaged in heroin trafficking and organ smuggling in Kosovo in order to fuel the insurgency against a sovereign country in Europe legal or illegal? Is funding and training opposition movements to destabilize and oppose governments in operations now known in the popular lexicon of the politically savvy as "color revolutions", one of which played out in Ukraine this February, legal or illegal? Is it legal against governments deemed illegitimate by neoliberals because they were not elected like Syria or China? What does that make it when it is done against elected governments previously universally recognized by Russia, the EU, and the United States alike as freely elected and completely legitimate as the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions was? Is Russia's response to the coup in a border country aimed directly at them and Moscow's immediate national security and defense concerns and the annexation of Crimea legal or illegal?
The answer to all these questions is it really doesn't matter, because the answers of both individuals and governments will be completely and unavoidably tainted by ideology, geopolitics, and interests. Those are the real determinative factors behind the emperor with no clothes known as international law, which is everything and nothing to all international actors concerned depending upon the time of day.
By the by, there was not a thing wrong with the incorporation of the Czech-administered Sudetenland into German territory either. Ethnically similar and contiguous populations should be, generally speaking, allowed to link up and find unity via the representation existence under one state and one voice brings. Russia still has some level of concern for actual ethnic Russians which constitute a large proportion of its own population. That the reigning constituent governments under Brussels and the Western governments of the New World led by Washington D.C. have not only zero regard for their own ethnic populations which founded these states but are in fact actively trying to dilute their respective population groups out of existence with migrant slave labor and mass influxes of foreigners is well known. And just because "nationalism" is a taboo dirty word and considered an enemy concept now under the heel of these radical liberal regimes, it does
not mean in
any way, shape, or form that other countries share this same diseased orientation.
Cetric wrote:The West does not use such tricks to augment his territory or do you know of such case?
Hawaii. Half of Mexico, not to mention how many dirty tactics used to suppress parties or governments in Europe not wishing to become the next patch of EU or NATO-held territory, among other things.
Cetric wrote:Iraq was left alone (now they may regret it)
Left alone after how many thousands upon thousands killed from the invasion, bombing and inevitable resulting chaos of daily suicide attacks and ethnoreligious cleansing, not to mention the punitive embargo placed on even basic materials entering Iraq throughout the 90's designed to punish the population into getting rid of their government so that Western powers didn't have to, to the tune of as many as a million deaths including some 500,000 Iraqi children denied access to even rudimentary medications according to official estimates. When Madeleine Albright was asked of these deaths of half a million children to serve the agenda of her masters in Iraq, she stated for the cameras, "We think the price is worth it".
As opposed to how many killed in the bloodless invasion of Crimea? One?
Get the hell out of here with these comparisons. Russia has been St. Francis of Assisi in comparison in the past twenty years.
Cetric wrote:not annexed to become the "52nd state of the US"
Yes, a territory landlocked on another continent filled with a 100% non-American, non-white Muslim Arab/Kurdish/Turkmen population. Such would be even a serious candidate for annexation as "52nd state" and completely comparable to Crimea, which lies in proximity to Russia, is filled with a majority of Russian-speaking Russians who identify with Russia and which was part of Russia for centuries until 50 years ago, right?
"I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work" - President Vladimir Putin
"Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin." - Muammar Qaddafi