Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The liberal delusions that provoked putin

[Tommy_Carcetti]

53. Actually, logic and reason would suggest the opposite.

Even if one were to subscribe to the belief that the US had some direct hand in the regime change last year (still unproven), the situation in the east of the country undoubtedly developed as a result of the situation that arouse in Crimea less than a week after Victor Yanukovych choppered out of Kiev.

That's right. It took less than a week for Putin to move in on Crimea. He claims (after the fact, of course--he denied he was invading when in fact he was invading) he was moving to protect Russian interests. But was there actually any exigent circumstances within that one week's time period that demanded Russia seizing the entirety of the Crimean peninsula? There was no attack on ethnic Russians living in Crimea by Ukrainian forces. There was no attack on Russian forces stationed at the naval bases in Sebastopol. All Russia can come up with was a measure in the Ukrainian parliament that would have made Ukrainian the sole official language of Ukraine, a measure that was ultimately vetoed by the interim government. I mean, really?

Logic and reason dictates that this was an opportunistic land grab by Putin--that he knew the Ukrainian government was at its very weakest just having gone through a revolution, and that it was not prepared to have any type of response whatsoever to having a portion of its territory seized. The Ukrainian army was in shambles after years of neglect and was in no shape ready to respond.

Why did Putin act so quickly? What was he supposedly reacting to? Every single sign points to this being Putin taking advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity to take land that he viewed as Russian by birthright.

Had Putin not invaded Crimea, I honestly think that Ukraine at this point would not anywhere close to this turmoil in its borders, and would probably be in a slow reconciling and unifying process.