Putin Annexed Crimea and Declared Cold War: The West Is Shameless

Does Barack Obama have another stance in the White House apart from threatening sanctions, which he has used against the Iranians, Bashar al-Assad and now Vladimir Putin? Putin has so far succeeded in sullying America and the European states’ reputation with Ukrainian mud, while he is also continuing to destroy that reputation in Syria.

American writer John Steinbeck once wrote, “When I look at the chimneys of the white houses, I figure that I see a great fabricated illusion.”* This statement was not expressing then what it is today, especially after Obama’s sanctions in response to Putin, who announced, in cold blood, the annexation of Crimea to Russia, after the referendum in which 96 percent supported splitting from Ukraine.

When Russia crowded into Crimea on Monday before 60 percent of the votes had been counted, Assad’s Russian fighter jets and missiles were destroying Yabrud and its environs on the border with Lebanon. It has since been confirmed that the Russian “attack” was pushing on all fronts, despite American-European sanctions. Putin has responded to them by essentially announcing “Cold War 2,” saying that the West is rude and hysterical.

The Washington Post published Monday a statement by Russian Deputy Leonid Slutsky: “It will be remembered as the place where Russia stood up to Washington and ended American dreams of creating a ‘unipolar world.’” It was interesting for us to read this next to Obama’s statement about America and its Western allies: “the Crimean 'referendum,' [...] would never be recognized by the United States and the international community [ .... and] we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions."

When Putin wrote his statement recognizing the independence of the Crimean Peninsula on Monday, a prelude to annexing it to Russia, Obama was enacting a series of sanctions that included freezing the assets of Russia and Ukraine’s advisers and forbidding their travel to the United States — that is America’s only tragicomic weapon, which Obama continues to use and has used with laughable results against the Iranians and the Syrian regime.

Experts agree that American and European sanctions will not have any effect Putin; the annexation of Crimea will widen Russia’s economic scope. It is known that Crimea possesses assets which make it the richest region of Ukraine. If this is true, Moscow will be forced to expend $3 billion per year supporting Crimea in the beginning, but its annexation will give Russia important and vital political and economic gains.

In that context, the Russian fleet will obtain stronger security guarantees in the port of Sebastopol in the Black Sea, and it will ensure the stability of its strategic powers there to push south to the Mediterranean Sea. Then Crimea will give Moscow a stronger excuse for its chronic claims about its right to ownership of offshore gas fields in the region, which Russia can subsequently use to offset the laughable sanctions that Obama has placed on it.

If Crimea were an important base for Russian politics in its quest to repel attempts by its nearby eastern neighbors at rapprochement with the European Union, then there is increasing regional fear of Putin’s push and the stated theory behind it: “The people in the region stretching from Poland to Central Asia have long been culturally linked by Russia throughout history and this link should return.” This forms, in analysts’ view, a brusque push from Putin to return to establishing the Caesarean empire as a base of “New Eurasia.” Russia wants to bury Gorbachev’s legacy. That is why Hillary Clinton says that Putin wants to redraw the borders of Eastern Europe.

Against the background of fear and deep anxiety that erupted about the Tartars, who make up a minority in the Crimean Peninsula — 12 percent of the inhabitants — and who are connected by religious ideology to Turkey and previously, Stalin, who oppressed them, a number are speaking out now saying that the annexation of Crimea will be a curse to Russia rather than a blessing. That is because it will lead to the emergence of a bridge amongst those resisting Russian occupation, such as Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and all those with Muslim majorities in the south of Russia.

All Western sanctions and objectives sank in the Black Sea, before a picture of Putin, when he signed the decision to annex the Crimean Peninsula. He has exceeded, with his threats and challenges, the insolence of the Bolsheviks and the arrogance of the czars. That is what Condoleezza Rice expressed in her statement published in the Washington Post: “[These global developments] have come due to signals that we are exhausted and disinterested. The events in Ukraine should be a wake-up call to those on both sides of the aisle who believe that the United States should eschew the responsibilities of leadership. If it is not heeded, dictators and extremists across the globe will be emboldened. And we will pay a price as our interests and our values are trampled in their wake.”

*Editor’s note: This quote, though accurately translated, was unable to be sourced. It is possibly a reference to a passage in Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”