>>I don't imagine the contract allows Russians in the Crimea to disenfranchise or take over Ukrainian military assets.
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>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.
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>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.
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Was nicely scripted and executed. Big question is will eastern part of Ukraine follow the same script if Putin wants them...

>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.

Now get real, why should the west offer real carrots after USSR got all the atom heads not distructed on-site ? Metals can be found elsewhere, they are importing more energy than forcing from the ground. Selling them credit to offload more of your own production is not that en vogue any more... Putin perhaps not too wrong in deciding that stick is more cost-efficient than carrot.