>>The contract allows them 25000 pairs of boots on both bases (there's an airport as well) and they're still below 15000. What they seem to be doing is driving some trucks between the two locations just to throw some candy to the cameras. Some asset movement on their side of the russo-ukrainian border has happened, some troops are on the move, but that's the usual saber rattling that we've seen so many times around the world. Having 6th fleet in the nearest sea always helps clearing people's minds - well, this is the land version.
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>I don't imagine the contract allows Russians in the Crimea to disenfranchise or take over Ukrainian military assets.

The events were faster... just after writing the above, I went back to that forum and found that there was a referendum on Crimea where they decided to revert to the 1992 constitution (version of 5th of may where they were an independent state, or of 6th, where that state joined Ukraine) and to join the russian federation as 79th or whichever member.

Now this plays nicely with all the precedents set in the last 20 years (one country can arrest another country's president [read: Noriega], secession is actually a good thing [read: Kosovo, and generally the splitting up of Yugoslavia]), so if it was good when you did it, it can't be bad when we do it.

>Hmm, haven't seen the Kyiv protesters characterized as Nazis, or anything like it, over here. There was media coverage of protesters there taking head and neck shots from snipers. The impression over here was that rather than not knowing what to do about it, Yanukovich unleashed some unaccountable secret police cadre (not the regular police) who were given carte blanche to bash heads. When that didn't work, then he didn't know what to do, so he fled. It seems he is wanted for mass murder.

The missing part is when the same snipers were killing the police too.

And of course you don't get to see that nazi angle - it would show how low can the west go just to spite Russia (which isn't a rose garden either), and then if that was known the popular support would go down the drain. The first rule of propaganda: you don't need colors, black and white suffices. Second rule: if they are with you, they are white.

>Over here we're still not hearing of any significant country-wide opposition to Yanukovich's fall.

I think both sides have flushed him down the drain. There are, actually, multiple sides, two doesn't begin to describe it. Now it's a matter of how to compose the new government without the ugly guys - namely the Svoboda, Right sector and Homeland, at least two of which are white supremacist, antijewish, nazi-like (or without the suffix). There were a number of articles in the western media about the nature of these parties, some with even some detail about their training camps (and the possible origins of the money for their weapons), but these are the flies in the media soup that's being served to the western public, and if not outright suppressed, they are mostly ignored. Two colors, only two colors.

>What will Ukraine give up if they accept 32B from Putin?

I don't know, because this Eastern Partnership programme devised by the EU is less than a paper tiger. It basically means "you open your markets to our companies to sell you the fancy chinese junk, and you ditch your trade contracts with Russia, and, BTW, we didn't promise you any money and membership is not on the table at all". As I said above, no substantial carrot.