A lot of words with no meaning behind them as usual. Really you should think what you are saying since you can not support any of your words with anything but worthless retorics.

Dude, if you are even unable to tell compliment from critic, and eager to prove it , why you think what your "throughtful analysis of things happening around" looks as having any ground (even if its accidentally valid). But it was my fault now, i surely shouldnt write the previous post.

If you think an insult is a compliment then you really should learn english if you wanted to compliment anybody.

Right now, it's obvious Putin's just Stalin for time.

ba-dum-bum

Thank you, we have a wonderful show planed for you tonight. Try the vodka.

I'm surprised Russia did not take over the entire Eastern Ukraine. It'd be wise for Russia to annex Eastern Ukraine (for Russia's own strategic interest.)

This is not about Putin being Stalin or Ukrainians being Nazi. It's about major power blocs playing geopolitics - the US and EU vs. Russia. Even after the Cold War had ended, the US (and EU) have been deliberately subverting Russia's sphere of influence, sabotaging Russia's powers in Eastern Europe and former Soviet territories, right in Russia's backyards. If Russia had done the same thing to the US, and subvert and sabotage the US in, let say, Mexico, Cuba and Canada, the US would have reacted. Russia is just reacting in the same manner.

You may not need to continue, but you should probably do some continued research. The two options were return to Russia or return to the 1992 constitution of Crimea. Note that this 1992 constitution came in to effect after the 95% vote for Crimea seceding from Ukraine in the previous referendum, held in 1991 just prior to the USSR's break up, and originally had full independence later altered into very significant autonomy within Ukraine. This constitution was written and approved by the Crimeans themselves, as was the earlier referendum. That constitution was arbitrarily abrogated by presidential fiat from Kiev in 1995, after a vote in the crimean assembly to revert to the earlier (independence version) of the 1992 constitution, and for a time Crimea was ruled by decree from Kiev.

The current Crimean constitution which you'd like them to have the option to return to came in to force only after it was approved (basically written to all practical concerns, since they, as below, had veto power over its entirety) by Kiev- who specifically and deliberately wrote their own constitution to make Crimean secession impossible by making referenda on it national (art 73) and to make the Crimean constitution need approval by Kiev and its assembly dissoluble from Kiev (art 85.29&.38) if they talked secession. While they describe Crimea as 'autonomous' it has no effective autonomy at all, since it has to operate under that rescriptive Ukrainian constitution and law.

Of course, you won't get any of that background from most western media sources, they're too busy talking about invasions and the like. But it is an equally arguable view that Ukraine has been militarily occupying what should have been an independent country for 20+ years with the collusion of world powers and has persistently and repeatedly taken anti democratic steps to ensure their wishes are not met. Unfortunately being independent is no longer viable for Crimea due to them being able to have no confidence that Kiev will respect their wishes, indeed Kiev has a repeated and provable history of ignoring them.

And the US and EU can forget about any sort of economic sanction on Russia. It won't work unless China go along with it, and China will NOT, NEVER, go along with it. Unless the US and EU want to put sanctions on China for not going along with the sanctions on Russia.. yeah, like, good luck on putting sanctions on BOTH Russia and China. Not to mention as if EU would stop buying gas from Russia.

Actually, China would love the EU to have heavy sanctions on Russia. For the longest time, China has been telling Russia, "hey, don't sell your gas and oil to Europe. Sell them to us! (Because we know China can never have enough oil and gas.) And don't buy so many expensive stuff from Europe, we make the same things and you can buy from us!" Should the US and EU put heavy sanctions on Russia, it will play right into China's hands.

I was born in Sevastopol, Crimea, and grew up there until 1998, and from what I remember most people then, except maybe hardline nationalists from both sides, didn't really care much if Crimea was part of Russia or Ukraine. Those were extremely hard times economically for people then, and those were the issues that dominated politics. And the level of corruption was enormous, as was the level of cynicism from people towards politics and politicians. I think most people then' would prefer to see Crimea as part of Russia, but not enough to go for demonstrations for it, and certainly not fight for it.

So even when Ukrainian parliament suspended Crimean constitution in 1995 or 1996, don't remember exactly, and, abolished the office of president of Crimea, and made Prime-minister of Crimea as office appointed by Ukrainian instead of Crimean parliament, I don't think it was very important event for most people. I don't remember any demonstrations, but I was in like 3rd grade then, so what do I know.

There were quite strong fears of Ukrainization however, by Russian speaking population at the time, and Ukrainization was strong and official policy then, mostly outside Crimea then.My school in Sevastopol didn't even taught Ukrainian as a foreign language, though some did. But in Ukraine as a whole Russian language schools, universities programs, TV, papers were discouraged and squeezed out in favor of Ukrainian. For example it was a real concern for my parents that I will have to learn Ukrainian and will straggle to get into university if by the time I grew up all higher eduction will be in Ukrainian. And when we lived outside Crimea for a year, it was very difficult to get into Russian language school, since only few remained in that city , and they were hugely overcrowded. My school for example had to operate in two shifts, some grades studied in morning shifts like 7.30AM to 2 PM, a and some grades in evening shifts, like 1 PM to 7 PM, to have enough classrooms for all. Despite that Russian language schools continued to close.

I don't know what is the citation now there, I live in Israel now, but I really hope for peace, so brother will not go against brother, and that both the West and Russia stop exploiting situation in Ukraine and Crimea in their chess game. I am certain that meddling only makes it worse. I think what Ukraine really needs now is both Russia and the West to take a step back,and stop inciting people in Ukraine, to allow Ukraine to make a compromise, inclusive and neutral interim unity government of both pro-EU and pro-Russian parties equally, until election in May.

I think that Crimea referendum is a mistake, for now at least, and serve only as Putin's playing card, to play or not to play against the West in a game for Ukraine, irregardless of Crimean people interests. I think Russian military intervention is a huge mistake, only escalating the situation against government in Kiev. On the other side, I think was a mistake by a new government in Kiev to strip official status of Russian language, especially at such a sensitive time. And I think it was a huge mistake for the West and EU to support formation of a narrow, only pro-EU and far-right interim members government in Kiev, and it would be a huge mistake for EU, to exploit the current situation to sign an association agreement with Ukraine, while its government is not elected, and so has mandate from only half a country.

Above all I hope there will be peace

Uhh... first off, they don't need China to do sanctions. Secondly China is a big supporter of state sovereignty, and already abstained from one security council vote.

The West can definitely hurt Russia over this. Russia's economy relies on Europe, and is already in a rough financial state. Whether Germany and others really go full force on hurting Russia is another matter, but they CERTAINLY would if Russia went into East Ukraine, as you advised them to.

I believe China will stay as far away from this mess as possible. You are right that China is a big supporter of state sovereignty, but at the same time China will not want to hurt their relation with Russia. I don't see China gonna directly take side in this whole mess.

Of course not, I didn't say they would. I said they won't stand in the way, and abstained once already.

And the whole debate is kind of pointless because the US and EU don't need China to impose sanctions, so there's no point to the discussion. All they need China for is to make a political statement by having Russia be the sole veto to UN Security Council action, which they already got.

China does not see this as just a "state sovereign" issue. Chinese see many parallels between the US has been doing to China and what the US has been doing to Russia. The US has been "encircling" China, poaching what China considers as its backyards in South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and other neighboring states to surround and contain China -- in the same vein as what the US has been doing to Russia for the past two decades: interfering in Georgia, Ukraine, i.e., right in Russia's backyards, to subvert and sabotage Russia's sphere of influence.

I can tell you A LOT OF Chinese, and I've heard from them and read in many Chinese forums, (where I hang out most of the time,) when Chinese see what what the US and EU have been doing in East Europe and the former Soviet members, immediately recognize that pattern as the exact same thing as what the US has been doing to and around (i.e., surrounding) China. It is almost the exact same tactics. So I think many Chinese -- and China -- can sympathize with Russia, and kinda glad that Russia took a hard stance, and wish China could have done the same and sent a strong message to the US.

China is not going to help the US efforts to encircle, surround, contain, subvert and sabotage Russia via proxy states, when the US have been doing the same things to China.

Not exactly.

What the US and EU needed was China to vote yes. China knew Russia needed only one vote to veto to UN resolution to invalidate the Crimea referendum, so China knew it did not need to vote at all. The resolution did not need two vetoes to fail. It only needed one.

However, the US and EU really needed China to vote "yes", as a message that the West have "international consensus" or "international backing" on this one, (other than Russia that disagreed.) Anything without Russia *and* China is not exactly an international consensus. However, the vote result showed that there was no "international consensus." It was just Russia vs West. And China clearly saying that they are not with the West on this one and, therefore, it was not exactly an "international consensus" (minus Russia.)