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When President Obama and European allies meet next week, they can begin forming a meaningful response to Vladimir Putin’s adventurism. This new strategy should note that Putin’s view of the world is rooted in dangerous fictions. Churchill said Russia was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Under Putin, Russia’s rhetoric can be described as a fantasy inside a delusion wrapped in a tissue of lies.
Among the US sanctions on Russia this week, one new restriction targets a specific bank, Rossiya. Washington officials described it as a personal bank for senior Russian officials. Well, today, President Vladimir Putin seemed to laugh off the new restriction. He said he personally doesn't have an account at Rossiya, but vowed to transfer his money there by Monday.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a Washington audience on Wednesday that Russia’s absorption of Crimea is a “wake-up call” for his organization. The alarm had best ring loudly, because NATO has been sleeping deeply.
The Russian embassy in London has warned the "British side should mind its language" following a tweet yesterday by the UK embassy in Moscow on Russia's annexation of the Crimea region in Ukraine.
In remarks he gave in Washington, DC, on March 4, US President Barack Obama said something quite revealing about the role of international law in the Crimea crisis: "There is a strong belief that Russia's action is violating international law. I know President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations, but I don't think that's fooling anybody."
The only help Obama has offered the Ukrainian military are military rations, but those haven’t even been sent yet, as Russian forces begin to attack Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea. As the crisis in Crimea reaches its “military stage,” and Russian troops have begun firing on Ukrainian soldiers, American promises of limited help to the Ukrainian military have not yet been fulfilled.
Scepticism is growing online after Russian President Vladimir Putin inked a treaty to make Ukraine's Crimea region part of Russia. "In our hearts we know Crimea has always been an inalienable part of Russia," Putin said in a speech to parliament Tuesday.
If only America were fighting more wars, Russia would never have taken Crimea. That’s basically the argument John McCain made last Friday in The New York Times. “For five years,” he complained, “Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding’.… In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed.”