Game on in Ukraine

Guards take their places in front of government buildings in Crimea, over the opposition of ethnic Ukrainians.

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Russian armed forces effectively seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula on Saturday, as President Vladimir V. Putin had the Russian Parliament grant him broad authority to use military force in Ukraine in response to deepening instability there.

Russian troops stripped of identifying insignia and military vehicles bearing the black license plates of Russia’s Black Sea force swarmed the major thoroughfares of Crimea and occupied major government buildings, closing the main airport and solidifying what had been a covert effort to control the largely pro-Russian region of Ukraine.

-- from Alison Smale and David M. Herszenhorn's NYT report today

by Ken

Right-wing doodyheads like it when the U.S. tawks tuff. So they should have been pleased when President Obama warned President Putin to keep its military mitts off Ukraine . . . or else.

The only problem with tawkin' tuff is ya gotta backit up. The doodyheads don't give a flyin' frig about reality. They tawk straight from their tiny testicles. Which are larger than their tinier brains. "Do something about Egypt!" they squealed. "Do something about Syria!" they screeched. "Do something about Iran!" they shriek.

Um, like what, doodyheads? When the DHs trouble to provide answers, they merely spew more mindless tuff tawk that has nothing to do with reality. Then can tawk, of course, because nobody in actual authority who happens also to be in his/her right would give serious consideration to doing any of the nonsensical gibberish they prattle.

More from today's NYT account:

In Moscow, Mr. Putin convened the upper house of Parliament to forcefully denounce President Obama and obtain authorization to protect Russian citizens and soldiers stationed in Crimea as well as other parts of Ukraine.

Both actions, military and parliamentary, were a direct rebuff to Mr. Obama, who on Friday pointedly warned Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. In the south, in Crimea, scores of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across the center of the regional capital, Simferopol. They wore green camouflage uniforms with no identifying insignia, but they spoke Russian and were clearly part of a Russian military mobilization. In Balaklava, a long column of military vehicles blocking the road to a border post bore Russian plates.

Large pro-Russia crowds rallied in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Kharkiv, where there were reports of violence. In Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, fears grew within the new provisional government that separatist upheaval would fracture the country just days after a three- month period of civil unrest had ended with the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally who fled to Russia.

President Obama accused Russia of a "breach of international law" and condemned the country’s military intervention, calling it a "clear violation" of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Mr. Obama, who had warned Russia on Friday that "there will be costs" if Russia violated Ukraine’s sovereignty, spoke with Mr. Putin for 90 minutes on Saturday, according to the White House, and urged Mr. Putin to withdraw its forces back to its bases in Crimea and to stop "any interference" in other parts of Ukraine.

In a strongly worded statement after the call, the White House said the United States would immediately pull out of preparations for the G8 economic summit meeting scheduled for Sochi in June. The statement warned of "greater political and economic isolation" for Russia if the country’s "violation of international law" continued. . . .

Does anyone really believe that Russia is going to be moved out of the Crimea? (We could go back further and ask if anyone really believed that Russia would allow this crucial peninsula, which in addition to housing essential Russian security installations is overwhelmingly ethnic Russian, to remain in the control of a hostile-to-Russia Ukrainian regime?)

And does anyone really believe that the U.S. is prepared to go to war over Russian intervention either there or in the heavily pro-Russian eastern Ukraine, which not only has strong historic ties to Russia but is considered by security-conscious Russians as a western-border buffer zone essential to their national sovereignty? It may be that something can be done to contain Russian assertion of its vital interests in Ukraine, but if anyone thinks President Putin can be bluffed, I'm going to have to disagree.

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