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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (83686)	7/15/2018 9:30:55 PM
From: Katelew	2 Recommendations Recommended By Brian Sullivan Sawdusty Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 365066

I think you need to look at what immediately preceded the Crimean vote to rejoin Russia. As I understand it, the sequence goes like this: Crimea and Ukraine were split off from the USSR when the USSR broke up. Ukraine became an independent country, but Crimea was designated an "autonomous region". I take that to mean that Crimea, while not an independent country in status, had autonomy to determine its allegiance to either Ukraine or Russia. But there could be more to it. I haven't researched it out. The government of Ukraine was pro-Russian, and this, over time, didn't sit well with the US and the EU. The EU wanted to bring Ukraine into the EU and into NATO. The Ukrainian government, however, wanted economic self-determination. Russia, of course, wasn't real pleased with being further ring-fenced outside of NATO. At the same time, Crimea and the city of Donbaas, which were both heavily ethnic Russian, were happy with the pro-Russian Ukrainian government and happy to stay put. Then the military coup took place. Military rebels armed and backed by the US and the EU overthrew the Ukrainian government. The ethnic Russians throughout Ukraine fought back and something of a civil war started up but the military rebels prevailed. At the time, Russian was the spoken language in Crimea and the people were 65% Russian ethnicity. Many had family in Russia and most had kept their Russian culture. They wanted to preserve what they had had and voiced their insecurity with the new Ukrainian govt. So as a legally autonomous region they formed a leadership group and undertook a straightforward election. Whether to rejoin Russia or stay put. The new government of Ukrainian rebels tried to harass the local Crimeans and stymie their election efforts and Russia sent its own officials in to guarantee the election would proceed. Crimeans voted to become once again a part of Russia. Every poll since then has found wide satisfaction among Crimeans for their new Russian status. The US, being a world class meddler itself, was not happy. Crimea gives Russia, which is basically a landlocked country, access to the Black Sea. So for military reasons the US wants to hem Russia in and wasn't going to let a fair election get in the way. The Obama administration responded with sanctions against Russia. And this is where I get confused. In the beginning, the media reported the facts of the situation pretty much without bias. But overtime, the slant became "Russian annexation of Crimea", as though Russia came in militarily and conquered the Crimean people, forcefully taking the landmass. Then the coup that unseated the former Ukrainian government dropped out of the coverage making it look like the only reason Crimeans voted to annex itself to Russia was because Russia was somehow forcing it to. And now there are cries from the media and from both right and left for "Russia to give back Crimea." So my confusion is as to how this would work. How does Putin give back Crimea? He didn't take it in the first place. And it never was a fully legal part of Ukraine. It always had autonomy so how could Russia give it away to Ukraine. What entity has the legal authority to tell Crimea it no longer has autonomy? Anyway, so far Trump has sided with the position taken by Obama by virtue of the fact that the US continues to arm the new Ukrainian government military. Right after the election, Trump continued with these arms sales even as he was being accused of being Putin's poodle. Arming Ukraine definitely did not make Putin happy or benefit him in some way.