Ukraine: Putin, Pride and Ports

The de facto expropriation of Crimea by Russia raises serious questions about the perceived legitimacy of the new government in Kiev. It also seems that Putin has obtained what many Russians have been longing for, the return of the Crimea to Russia. On  a larger scale Russia's actions raise much larger questions of power of the Russian state in the future and the battle of ethnicity and identity in Ukraine and the region as a whole. These events that we see playing out today are almost wholly rooted in the past Cold War politics and history. Joseph Stalin ethnically cleansed Crimea, effectively making it majority Russian, followed by its formal annexation by Russia in 1945. Khrushchev returned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of independent Ukraine. Tensions still persist today over the true authority of this region. President Putin used the destabilizing events in the Ukraine as a point of leverage in order to strike up support for taking this region back in order to protect Russians beyond Russia's borders. As a result of Putin's bold move the international community is not happy, but is it seems unlikely that the EU or the US will take any serious military action against the Russian state despite its membership in the G8. However, some argue that Putin is justified in his attempts to protect Russian citizens beyond its borders and also correlate this with what the US has done in many of its past interventions around the world. The main difference being that the US does not appropriate land outside its borders for permanent seizure. Also there is the complicated issue of past ethnic cleansing in the regions and whether or not Putin can use the majority Russian population as a reason to invade. The historical humanitarian "wrong" that  the Soviet Russian regime committed in the Crimea somehow justifying and legitimizing a Russian invasion leaves many uncomfortable to say the least.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/ukraine-putin-pride-and-p_b_4886925.html?utm_hp_ref=foreign-affairs

Katelyn Krumreich