Crowd in downtown Moscow supporting Crimea's reunification with Russia/Photo Credit: RIA Novosti
``The U.S. mainstream news media is reaching a new professional low point as it covers the Ukraine crisis’’, writes Investigative reporter Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com
``As the Ukraine crisis continues to deepen, the mainstream U.S. news media is sinking to new lows of propaganda and incompetence. Somehow, a violent neo-Nazi-spearheaded putsch overthrowing a democratically elected president was refashioned into a “legitimate” regime, then the “interim” government and now simply “Ukraine.”
``Yet, the danger of false narratives – as the American people saw in Iraq and almost revisited in Syria – is that policies, including warfare, can be driven by myth, not by fact. The real story of Ukraine is far more complex than the black-and-white caricature that the New York Times, the Washington Post and others are presenting. It is in the truthful grays that responsible policies are shaped and bloody miscalculations are avoided.’’ http://goo.gl/Ksya36
RIA Novosti: Crimea Gets First Installment of Russian Financial Aid
MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti) – ``Crimea has already received the first installment of financial aid from Russia, the republic’s first deputy prime minister said on Tuesday.’’-and are expected to switch to the Russian national currency in early April. http://goo.gl/sPWT1u
Gordon Adams, professor of international relations at American University's School of International Service, writing in Foreign Policy.
``American policymakers don't get it; the politicians don't get it; Fox News certainly doesn't get it; the advocates for various flavors and colors of democracy don't get it...It's not about democracy. It's not about annexation.
``Moscow isn't trying to start a new Cold War, either. They're making sure the states right around them are friendly, whatever their form of government. So it serves little purpose talking about the Sudetenland or standing up to Hitler. Putin is a bully, but he is not an insane, genocidal dictator engaged in an ideological search for "lebensraum." http://goo.gl/6Ou8ql
``The Crimea Precedent’’ By Max Boot in Commentary Magazine: `
`As of this writing the Russian stock market is up more than 4 percent today after a 3.7 percent bump up yesterday. At this rate the annexation of Crimea is going to spark a major rally for Russian stocks.''
``It is imperative that President Obama not stop with the extremely mild sanctions announced Monday. He needs to go after the assets of major Kremlin powerbrokers and their oligarch allies–and he needs to send a shot across Putin’s bow by barring at least one Russian bank from conducting cross-border transactions, as suggested by Mark Dubowitz.'' http://goo.gl/9xSaIF
- Crisis in the Crimea: The Showdown Between Ukraine and Russia: An interactive map by Smithsonian.com shows the current hotspots and points of interest in the political crisis. http://goo.gl/dCxMtc
- BBC: Putin's options on Ukraine - in 60 seconds: http://goo.gl/3bZXGh
- Economic Policy Journal: Statistics On Russia's Trade with the EU and Ukraine. http://goo.gl/wx5Xs4
- EU Sanction List: White House FACT SHEET: Ukraine-Related Sanctions. http://goo.gl/534X8z
- INFOGRAPHIC: Map and data on Crimea following referendum http://goo.gl/nkHNEZ
L.A. Times: Costs to Russia for Crimea seizure far beyond pinprick sanctions
``But Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy in what might be the most destabilizing development in post-Cold War Europe appears to have little to do with economic logic, Kremlin analysts say, and everything to do with his single-minded campaign to project the image of Russia as a resurgent superpower.
In spite of the costs, recovering Crimea is "something very dear to Russian conservatives, who believe it is more important than leading a comfortable life that we build a strong state," said Sergei Utkin, department head at the Center for Situation Analysis at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Kremlin is "trying to show that Russia is back again on the world stage as a superpower," Utkin said in a phone interview from Moscow, a strategy he said he strongly disagreed with.’’ http://goo.gl/uOy3sv
Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan asks who's really the irrational one and lost touch with reality?
``Consider the world Putin saw, from his vantage point, when he took power after the Boris Yeltsin decade.
He saw a Mother Russia that had been looted by oligarchs abetted by Western crony capitalists, including Americans. He saw millions of ethnic Russians left behind, stranded, from the Baltic states to Kazakhstan.
He saw a United States that had deceived Russia with its pledge not to move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army would move out, and then exploited Russia's withdrawal to bring NATO onto her front porch.
America and Russia are on a collision course today over a matter -- whose flag will fly over what parts of Ukraine -- no Cold War president, from Truman to Reagan, would have considered any of our business.’’ http://goo.gl/jmy22z
