Almost certainly orchestrated by Vladimir Putin, Crimea’s Parliament has appealed to join Russia. However, the latest development pits the President directly against the West in a standoff that has increasingly high stakes and unpredictable consequences.
The vote by Crimea’s Parliament gives Putin the upper hand in the crisis over Ukraine, but risks antagonising pro-Western leaders in Kiev who have refused to resort to military action or fan tensions in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking south and east.
“We are at a very dangerous point, and it threatens to push a political crisis in the direction of a military situation,” said former Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky.
It is not a referendum,it is a farce,a fake and a crime against Ukraine
Ukraine’s leaders had no doubt who was behind the latest moves in Crimea, including a call for a referendum to decide if the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula, which has an ethnic Russian majority, should return to its former Soviet master.
“It is not a referendum, it is a farce, a fake and a crime against the state which is organised by the Russian Federation’s military,” Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksander Turchinov, said in the country’s capital Kiev.
Putin has in effect thrown back in Western diplomats’ faces their argument that the ouster of Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s President on February 22 must be accepted because his removal was the will of the people. Now they will have to accept the will of the Crimean people. Former KGB spy Putin looked serene as he chaired a meeting of his most senior officials in the Security Council yesterday, seemingly oblivious to turmoil on Russian markets and Kiev’s insistence that a referendum on Crimea’s status would be illegal. The 61-year-old appears to feel he holds all the cards.
After appealing for membership of the Russian Federation, Crimea’s pro-Russian leaders, installed after Russian-speaking armed men took over the local Parliament, said they would have to wait for Putin’s answer to hold a referendum on status. They plan to hold the referendum on March 16, asking Crimea’s just over two million people whether they want to unite with Russia or stay with Ukraine. Moscow’s move to get a tighter grip on Crimea has been perfectly choreographed over the last few days.