Peter Greste case: Tony Abbott urges Egyptian president to free Australian journalist

 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has personally intervened on behalf of detained Australian journalist Peter Greste.

Photo: Peter Greste has been charged with spreading false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. (AFP: Khaled Desouki)

Related Story: Jailed journalist Peter Greste denied bail in Egypt

Related Story: Peter Greste preparing for long court battle: brother

Related Story: Detained journalist Peter Greste pleads to Abbott for help

The award-winning Al Jazeera reporter was arrested in a Cairo hotel along with colleagues Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed on December 29.

The men have been accused of broadcasting "misleading" news about the political situation in Egypt and supporting the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood of deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues have denied the charges, which the media outlet has labelled absurd.

The ABC understands Mr Abbott spoke directly to interim Egyptian president Adly Mansour last night and asked for Greste to be released.

It is understood Mr Abbott said Greste was only doing his job as a journalist and had no intention of damaging Egypt's interests.

The ABC understands Mr Mansour noted he has written to Greste's parents promising the journalist would be subject to a fair and just legal process.

It is understood the president assured Mr Abbott that Greste would receive all necessary legal assistance, and said he hoped the case would be resolved as soon as possible.

Deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek has commended the Prime Minister's action, and says Labor stands ready to assist in any way it can to secure Greste's release.

"Being a journalist is not a crime. A free press is critically important. Journalists shouldn’t be put on trial or locked up for doing their job," she said in a statement.

"At this terribly difficult time, our thoughts remain with Peter, his parents, family, and friends.

"I commend the significant efforts of the Australian diplomats who are working so hard on this matter."

The case, in which 17 others are also charged, has sparked an international outcry and fuelled fears of a crackdown on the press by Egypt's military-installed authorities.

Greste's trial resumes next Monday. If found guilty, he could face seven years in prison.

Peter Greste case: Tony Abbott urges Egyptian president to free Australian journalist - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Egypt unrest: Court sentences 529 Muslim Brotherhood members to death

 

Photo: A protester taking part in a 2012 rally holds a picture of Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted in July

Related Story: Mohamed Morsi's jailbreak trial begins

Related Story: Morsi trial postponed due to weather: officials

Related Story: Several killed as Egyptians vote on new constitution

An Egyptian court has sentenced 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death on charges including murder, a defence lawyer said, in a sharp escalation of a crackdown on the movement.

"The court has decided to sentence to death 529 defendants and 16 were acquitted," lawyer Ahmed al-Sharif said.

Islamist backers of ousted president Mohamed Morsi are facing a deadly crackdown launched by the military-installed authorities since his ouster in July, with hundreds of people killed and thousands arrested.

Of those sentenced on Monday, 153 are in detention, while the rest are on the run, judicial sources said, adding that the verdict can be appealed.

A second group of about 700 defendants will be in the dock on Tuesday.

They are accused of attacking both people and public property in southern Egypt in August, after security forces broke up two Cairo protest camps set up by Morsi supporters on August 14.

They are also charged with committing acts of violence that led to the deaths of two policemen in Minya, judicial sources said.

The accused include several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme guide Mohamed Badie.

Morsi is himself currently on trial in three different cases, including one for inciting the killing of protesters outside a presidential palace while he was in office.

Morsi was removed after just 12 months as president following mass street protests against his rule amid allegations of power grabbing and worsening an already weak economy.

Reuters/AFP

Egypt unrest: Court sentences 529 Muslim Brotherhood members to death - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

What happens to democracy if the CIA goes rogue?

By David Forman

 Photo: A senior US politician has accused the CIA of spinning out of control. (Saul Loeb: AFP)

If the CIA is ignoring democratic oversight in its engagement with countries with whom it shares intelligence - including Australia - can we really have any idea what is being done in our name? David Forman writes.

A healthy democracy is built in part on a constant power struggle between institutions.

It is the arm wrestle between almost equal and occasionally opposing institutional forces that creates compromise, balance, transparency and prevents the system sliding into dictatorship.

It is inelegant, it can be messy, but it conforms to the idea that a contest of ideas and everyone looking over everyone else's shoulder is the best way of maintaining honesty and integrity in government.

Which makes the extraordinary stand-off and public brawling presently gripping the US Senate and intelligence community a frightening state of affairs.

This is a debate, in the most powerful country in the world, about nothing less than who is in charge and who answers to whom - the Congress or the CIA.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the most senior and experienced members of the Democrats' Senate team, this month made a blistering attack on the CIA in the Senate, accusing it of interfering with and impeding the work of the Senate Committee created to oversee its activities.

The very existence of secret intelligence services presents a challenge to the principles of democracy. If democracy works on the basis that citizens make individual, informed choices about who they want to run the country via open and fair elections, how can the system countenance publicly funded agencies running around engaged in secret activities within and outside the jurisdictional borders?

Democracies resolve this problem by having institutional oversight of the agencies.

There is the executive - ministers and senior public servants - which usually keep their interactions under wraps. And there is the legislature, which usually has overseeing committees receiving some evidence in public and some in camera.

Many have argued that these arrangements are inadequate - too "clubby" and too full of like-minded, powerful people too ready to accept the proposition of the nation's spies.

In the wake of revelations in recent years about the extent of surveillance in western democracies of their own citizens, these criticisms have a new cogency.

Feinstein chairs the Senate Intelligence committee in the US Senate. She is in the mainstream of politics, and regarded as a supporter of the intelligence community. She is not a notorious conspiracy theorist or vocal anti-CIA activist.

Her committee is investigating the detention and interrogation programs run by the CIA since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 - specifically whether they have been legally conducted.

But she has accused the CIA of:

• Deliberately searching for and removing documents from secure computers containing information the committee had been provided by the CIA, but which indicated that the CIA had found wrongdoing in an internal review of its behaviour;
• Destroying information, including video tapes, despite being told not to by the Bush White House;
• Breaching the Constitution and the doctrine of the Separation of Powers; and
• Engaging in an "un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation".

She also went on to call the events a "defining moment" that will determine whether the Senate can perform its duty of providing independent oversight of intelligence agencies without being "thwarted by those we oversee".

Powerful, even shocking, words.

Words that suggest one of the most senior politicians in the US believes the intelligence community has spun out of control.

And words with global implications. If the CIA has no regard for the democratic oversight mechanisms in its own country, why would they be expected to have regarded to the rights of the citizens of other countries or even of other nations?

And if the CIA is acting in this way in its engagement with the intelligence agencies of other countries with whom it shares intelligence - including Australia's - can we really have any idea what is being done in our name?

And if we can't, what does it say about the health of our democracy itself?

David Forman is managing director of government relations at issues management firm Communications and Public Relations. View his full profile here.

What happens to democracy if the CIA goes rogue? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Syrian jet shot down: Turkey says plane violated its airspace

 

Turkish fighter jets shot down a Syrian plane that crossed into Turkish airspace in a border region on Sunday, Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan said.

Video: Matt Brown reports on the shooting down of the Syrian jet (ABC News)

Photo: A Syrian MIG-21 jet (File photo)

The incident happened in the area of the Kasab crossing, which has been the scene of fighting between rebels and Syrian regime forces.

"A Syrian plane violated our airspace," Mr Erdogan told an election rally of his supporters in north-west Turkey.

"Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard."

The rebels had been fighting for control of the Kasab crossing since Friday, when they launched an offensive Syrian authorities said was backed by Turkey's military.

Syria has responded to the incident by accusing its northern neighbour of "flagrant aggression".

It said Turkish air defences shot down the MIG-23 jet while it was attacking rebel forces inside Syrian territory.

Syrian state media quoted a military source as saying the pilot managed to eject from the plane.

The Turkish military said two Syrian MIG-23 planes approaching its airspace were warned "four times" to turn away and it scrambled fighter jets when one refused to do so.

In a statement, Turkey said the plane breached its airspace by about 1 kilometre and flew over the country for another 1.5 kilometres.

"One of the patrolling F-16 jets fired a missile at the Syrian plane ... in line with rules of engagement, and the plane fell into the Kasab region on Syrian territory," it said.

'Turkey's determination should not be tested': defence minister

Turkish president Abdullah Gul congratulated the country's armed forces following the incident and defence minister Ismet Yilmaz said Turkey had the "strength" and "capacity" to protect its borders.

"Turkey's determination should not be tested," Mr Yilmaz said.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said initial reports from the area said the plane came down on the Syrian side of the border.

Most border fighting between Syria and Turkey has been further north and to the east of the incident site.

Al Manar, the television station of the Syrian regime's Lebanese ally Hezbollah, said two rockets had been fired from Turkish territory at the Syrian jet.

After the Syrian air force downed a Turkish fighter jet in June 2012, Turkey toughened its rules of engagement to say any military approach of its border from Syria would be considered a threat.

Turkish warplanes last year downed a Syrian helicopter, which Ankara said was detected 2 kilometres inside Turkish airspace.

A staunch opponent of the regime in Damascus, Turkey hosts more than 750,000 refugees from the three-year Syrian conflict, many of them in camps along the border.

Syrian jet shot down: Turkey says plane violated its airspace - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Twitter ban in Turkey ahead of national elections triggers public outcry, international condemnation

By Europe correspondent Mary Gearin, wires

Photo: Mr Erdogan has come under mounting pressure since audio recordings that spread across Twitter appeared to put him at the heart of a major corruption scandal. (AFP: Adem Altan)

A Twitter ban in Turkey just days before national elections has triggered a public outcry and international condemnation.

Turkish courts blocked the social media platform a day after Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to wipe it out.

Ahead of bitterly contested national polls, Mr Erdogan has been battling claims of corruption, with alleged audio evidence of government wrongdoing being published on Twitter.

Mr Erdogan's spokesman says the site has been blocked because it refused a court order to remove some links.

Turkish industry minister Fikri Isik said talks with Twitter were taking place and the ban would be lifted if the social media platform appointed a representative in Turkey and agreed to block specific content when requested by Turkish courts.

A company spokesman declined to say whether it would appoint someone in Turkey, but said it was moving forward in talks with the government.

"We stand with our users in Turkey who rely on Twitter as a vital communications platform. We hope to have full access returned soon," the company said in a tweet.

But opposition parties have launched legal action saying the ban violates personal freedoms.

Turkish president condemns shutdown

The shutdown has been condemned by Turkish president Abdullah Gul, as well as Britain, the United States and the European Union.

Some Turks quickly found ways to circumvent the ban, with the hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey among the top hashtags trending globally.

"One cannot approve of the complete closure of social media platforms," Mr Gul tweeted, voicing his hope that the ban would be short-lived and setting himself publicly at odds with the prime minister.

Turkey's main opposition party said it would challenge the ban and file a criminal complaint against Mr Erdogan on the grounds of violating personal freedoms.

The White House said it was "deeply concerned" about the ban, calling it contrary to democratic governance.

"The United States is deeply concerned that the Turkish government has blocked its citizens access to basic communication tools," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"We oppose this restriction on the Turkish people's access to information, which undermines their ability to exercise freedoms of expression and association and runs contrary to the principles of open [governance] ... that are critical to democratic governance and the universal rights that the US stands for around the world."

Mr Erdogan's ruling AK Party has already tightened internet controls, handed government more influence over the courts and reassigned thousands of police and hundreds of prosecutors and judges as it fights the corruption scandal, which the prime minister has cast as a plot by political enemies to oust him.

ABC/Reuters

Twitter ban in Turkey ahead of national elections triggers public outcry, international condemnation - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Vladimir Putin signs treaty making Crimea part of Russia, despite threat of further sanctions

 

Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a treaty making Crimea part of his nation, despite the threat of further punitive sanctions by the West.

Photo: Russian president Vladimir Putin says the people of Crimea clearly "want to be with Russia". (AFP: Kirill Kudryavtsev)

Mr Putin made a fiercely patriotic address to a joint session of parliament in the Kremlin, punctuated by standing ovations, cheering and tears.

Britain responded by announcing it would suspend all bilateral military cooperation with Russia, while the US warned of further sanctions against Moscow.

The address came as the conflict entered a military stage, with Ukraine permitting its soldiers in Crimea to use weapons to protect their lives following the death of a Ukrainian soldier during an attack on a Crimean base.

During his speech Mr Putin lambasted the West for what he called hypocrisy, saying Western nations had endorsed Kosovo's independence from Serbia but now denied Crimeans the same right.

"You cannot call the same thing black today and white tomorrow," he declared to applause, saying Western partners had "crossed the line" over Ukraine and behaved "irresponsibly".

He said Ukraine's new leaders, in power since the overthrow of pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych last month, included "neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites".

In the hearts and minds of people, Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia.

Vladimir Putin

Mr Putin said Crimea's disputed referendum vote on Sunday, held under Russian military occupation, was in full accordance with democratic procedures and international law.

He said the results show the overwhelming will of the people to be reunited with Russia after 60 years as part of the Ukrainian republic.

"People in the Crimea clearly and convincingly expressed their will. They want to be with Russia," he said.

To the Russian national anthem, Mr Putin and Crimean leaders signed a treaty that will be ratified within the next few days.

Photo: Crimean PM Sergei Aksyonov (right) and parliamentary speaker Vladimir Konstantinov (left) celebrate signing the treaty. (AFP: Kirill Kudryavtsev)

During his address, Mr Putin was interrupted by applause at least 30 times.

"In the hearts and minds of people, Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia," Mr Putin said.

He thanked China for its support, even though Beijing abstained on a United Nations resolution on Crimea that Moscow had to veto on its own.

He said he was sure Germans would support the Russian people's quest for reunification, just as Russia had supported German reunification in 1990.

Mr Putin also sought to reassure Ukrainians that Russia did not seek any further division of their country.

Fears have been expressed in Kiev that Russia might move on the Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine.

"Don't believe those who try to frighten you with Russia and who scream that other regions will follow after Crimea," Mr Putin said.

"We do not want a partition of Ukraine. We do not need this."

Ukraine's foreign ministry said it does not recognise the treaty.

"The signing of the so-called agreement on Crimea joining the Russian Federation and the corresponding address by the Russian president has nothing in common with law or democracy or common sense," ministry spokesman Evhen Perebynis said on Twitter.

"Putin's address very clearly demonstrates just how real the threat is that Russia poses to international security."

UK suspends military cooperation, US warns of further sanctions

Photo: Pro-Kremlin activists rally at Moscow's Red Square to celebrate the incorporation of Crimea into the country. (AFP: Dmitry Serebryakov)

Russia began seizing the region after Mr Yanukovych was ousted last month, following a violent uprising in which nearly 100 people were killed.

The US and the European Union foreign ministers condemned the move, and labelled the weekend referendum illegal.

On Monday, the United States and the European Union imposed personal sanctions on a handful of officials from Russia and Ukraine accused of involvement in Moscow's military seizure of the Black Sea peninsula.

After Mr Putin's speech, British foreign secretary William Hague announced that all bilateral military cooperation with Russia would be suspended.

"We have suspended all such cooperation," he told parliament, saying a technical cooperation agreement and joint naval exercises with Russia, France, Britain and the US had been put on hold.

Sanctions imposed on officials

The EU and US have frozen the assets of Russian, Crimean and Ukrainian officials.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said Russia's absorption of Crimea violated international law.

"The so-called referendum breached international law, the declaration of independence which the Russian president accepted yesterday was against international law, and the absorption into the Russian Federation is, in our firm opinion, also against international law," she said.

US vice-president Joe Biden condemned Russia's actions, calling them nothing more than a "land grab" and warning of further sanctions against Moscow.

"Russia's political and economic isolation will only increase if it continues down this path and it will in fact see additional sanctions by the United States and the EU," he said.

The White House said the US and its G7 allies would gather next week at The Hague to consider a further response.

Japan also joined the mild Western sanctions, announcing the suspension of talks with Russia on investment promotion and visa liberalisation.

Russian politicians have dismissed the sanctions as insignificant and a badge of honour.

The State Duma, or lower house, adopted a statement urging Washington and Brussels to extend the visa ban and asset freeze to all its members.

Echoing comments from Mr Putin, Russia's foreign ministry sharply criticised the sanctions and said it will retaliate.

"Attempts to speak to Russia in the language of force and threaten Russian citizens with sanctions will lead nowhere," it said in a statement.

"The adoption of restrictive measures is not our choice; however, it is clear that the imposition of sanctions against us will not go without an adequate response from the Russian side."

Ukrainian soldier killed in attack on Crimean base

Photo: A soldier stands guard at the Ukrainian defence ministry in Kiev. Ukraine's PM says his country's conflict with Russia is entering a "military stage" after a Ukrainian soldier was shot dead in Crimea. (AFP/Ukrainian presidential service: Mykhalo Markiv)

Meanwhile, Ukraine's prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk says the conflict with Russia has entered a military stage following the death of a Ukrainian soldier during an attack on a Crimean base.

It is the first such death since Russian forces took control of the region in February.

A Ukrainian military spokesman says the warrant officer was killed by unknown forces who were fully equipped and had their faces covered.

He says another serviceman was injured in the attack.

The spokesman says the Ukrainians had their weapons, money and identification confiscated.

Ukraine has now issued orders permitting its soldiers in Crimea to use weapons to protect their lives following the soldier's death, acting president Oleksander Turchinov's press service said.

Until now forces deployed on the Black Sea peninsula had been told to avoid using weapons.

A defence ministry order issued after the incident said: "In connection with the death of a Ukrainian serviceman... Ukrainian troops in Crimea have been allowed to use weapons to defend and protect the lives of Ukrainian servicemen."

More on this story

• Crimea declares independence from Ukraine and applies to join Russia
• Crimea secession poll closes, Russia claims 93 per cent approval
• Russia vetoes UN Security Council draft resolution on Crimea
• 'Yanukovych says he is still legitimate president, expects return to Kiev
• The Drum opinion: Provokatzia: behind Russia's audacious land grab

Vladimir Putin signs treaty making Crimea part of Russia, despite threat of further sanctions - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The West poked the Russian Bear

By Tom Switzer

Photo: The West is not entirely blameless when we consider why Russia has soldiers in Crimea. (Reuters: Baz Ratner)

The conventional wisdom among western pundits and politicians says the Ukrainian crisis is entirely Vladimir Putin's fault and the West is blameless.

Russia's military incursion in Crimea, warns the Wall Street Journal, is a "blitzkrieg" that "brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe". Putin, according to Hillary Clinton is acting just like Hitler in the late 1930s. Moscow, editorialises the Financial Times, has started a "new Cold War". Now, it is widely argued, President Barack Obama must get tough with the Kremlin and intensify political, economic and strategic relations with the new Ukrainian Government.

Throughout this crisis, however, there has been very little attempt to take into account Russia's susceptibilities and its attempt to protect what it perceives as its vital strategic interests. If anything, as several distinguished professors of international relations, such as John Mearsheimer (Chicago University) and Stephen Walt (Harvard University), have made clear, this crisis stems from decisions made by Washington and Brussels since the collapse of the Soviet Empire more than two decades ago.

Start with the expansion of NATO eastwards and Washington's decision to deploy ballistic missile defences in Russia's neighbourhood.

The Atlantic Alliance was a magnificent achievement in containing a real and formidable enemy. But the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War meant there was no clear and present danger to justify NATO expansion during the past two decades. Post-Communist Russia, remember, was not hostile, not an ideological rival and not militarily formidable. Yet the Clinton administration led the effort to extend alliance guarantees to nations that had been in Moscow's orbit for generations. As many sound observers from different political and ideological stripes argued in the 1990s, the NATO expansion was bound to create the very danger it was intended to prevent.

It was provocative enough for the West to expand NATO to Poland and the Baltic states in the 1990s. It was even more provocative to try to push NATO to Russia's next door.

It was provocative enough for the West to expand NATO to Poland and the Baltic states in the 1990s. It was even more provocative to try to push NATO to Russia's next door. Which is precisely what happened in April 2008 when Brussels declared that Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO.

Not surprisingly, Moscow objected; and that set the scene for its incursion in Georgia in August of that year. By clashing with South Ossetia, the emotion-charged Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, gave the Russians an excuse to meddle in its former constituent republic on its critical southern frontier.

Which brings us to the current crisis. Last November, Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych signed an EU deal that was designed to deepen his nation's integration with the West. Faced with limited Russian involvement in an area that it had long deemed its own sphere of influence, Putin offered Kiev a better deal that included $15 billion aid and subsidised gas and oil. That agreement sparked protests in western Ukraine, where there are pro-western sympathies.

But, as Mearsheimer and Walt point out, it was here when Obama and his advisers miscalculated badly: Washington actively backed the protestors, so much so that Obama's assistant secretary of state in the region, Victoria Nuland, was handing out pastries to the anti-government protestors on the streets. Such interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state helped escalate the crisis and led to Yanukovych, the democratically elected (albeit corrupt and thuggish) prime minister, being ousted from power. A pro-western government, with no democratic legitimacy and ties to ultra-nationalists, took over in Kiev.

This recent history is important in understanding the Russian response. Sure, the West did not start the protests that led to Yanukovych's downfall. But the fact that the US and the EU thought they could encourage the protestors and help engineer the removal of a democratically elected and pro-Russian leader in Ukraine and then expect Putin to accept this state of affairs indicates what Walt has called a "remarkable combination of hubris and naiveté" on the Obama administration's part.

This error was compounded when one considers Washington's very few options to counter Russia's intervention. It can't embrace the Kosovo strategy in 1999 of bombing Moscow into submission: Americans, much less the Europeans, have no stomach for another war. Nor are many European nations enthusiastic about costly sanctions against Russia.

Photo: Expecting Putin not to react to the West's involve near Russia took hubris and naiveté on the part of Obama. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)

Once again, the US and the EU failed to look at the events from Moscow's perspective, and how they represented a serious threat to Russian strategic interests. That is why so many people in the West have been so shocked by Putin's military incursion in Crimea and his attempts to use Moscow's leverage to undermine any government in Kiev that was pro-US in Russia's near abroad.

However unsettling, Russia's actions are not irrational. Nor are they akin to Hitler's march through Europe. In fact, from a diplomatic history perspective, Russia's conduct is understandable.

Why? Because, notwithstanding claims that a new world order heralded the triumph of national self-determination, the international system remains anarchic. As foreign policy realists all too often argue, there is no world government to protect states from each other. The United Nations does not replace power politics; it disguises them. So when great powers are sensitive to dangers in their backyard, so to speak, they will sometimes respond ruthlessly to address those threats. This is especially the case when vital interests are at stake.

And for Russia, unlike the US, there is a vital issue at stake in Ukraine. Leave aside deep historical ties between the two countries. Ethnic Russians number nearly 60 per cent of the population in Crimea. Russia's naval base for the Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol, Crimea. And Ukraine is a next-door neighbour that is a conduit for Russian trade.

Some western pundits on left and right insist that Russia lost the Cold War, so it should simply get over its loss. Yet it is the US and NATO themselves that have been unable to leave the Cold War behind. By expanding NATO eastwards, deploying American missiles into Eastern Europe, interfering in the internal affairs in Russia's near abroad, Washington and Brussels have treated Russia as a potential threat and failed to understand how those decisions look from Moscow's perspective.  Imagine how Washington would respond if another great power extended its military alliance to Central America or interfered in the internal affairs of northern Mexico.

Lest I be accused of being soft on Russia, let me stress I am not defending Moscow's unilateral violation of international law. Nor am I indulging in some kind of moral equivalence that all too often discredited western intellectuals during the Cold War. Putin is a thug and dictator whereas America remains, as Lincoln declared, "the last best hope of earth".

I am merely pointing out that Washington and the West are far from blameless in this crisis. They have violated Winston Churchill's principle: "In victory, magnanimity." The British prime minister was no softy, but he recognised the folly of grinding the face of a defeated foe in the dirt. Obama should bear that wise maxim in mind and tone down the bombast as he prepares to respond to Putin's moves.

Tom Switzer is research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and editor of The Spectator Australia. View his full profile here.

The West poked the Russian Bear - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Ukraine crisis: why Russia sees Crimea as its naval stronghold

Alan Yuhas and Raya Jalabi theguardian.com, Saturday 8 March 2014

We explain what's up with Russia's naval base in Crimea, a brief history of the peninsula, the Tatars and Peter the Great

A view of the Russian navy Frigate 'Pytlivyy' docked in the port of Sevastopol. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte /AFP /Getty

On Thursday, Crimean ministers held a vote in their regional parliament to join the Russian Federation and secede from Ukraine, and to organize a referendum on the issue for 16 March. The move comes as international tensions continue to mount over the presence of Russian troops in the peninsula, which reportedly now number 30,000.

Ukraine's interim prime minister warned the Crimean parliament that "no one in the civilised world" would recognize its referendum, calling the vote "unconstitutional" and "illegitimate". But the referendum has the support of the Russian parliament, with the speaker of the upper house saying that Russia would "unquestionably back" the referendum's choice.

The EU and US are mulling sanctions – so far targeting a small number of individuals with visa bans and asset freezes. This comes as a team of OSCE observers has been prevented for a second day from entering Crimea by unidentified armed men.

Why does Russia have a naval base in Crimea?

• Geographic limitations and ambitions: Russia's capacity to reach the sea is limited by geography, so ports in the north and south seas, leading to larger waters, are crucial.

As the map below illustrates, Sevastopol is a strategically important base for Russia's naval fleet, in addition to being Russia's only warm water base. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a 1997 treaty with Ukraine allowed Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet pretty much intact (with 15,000 personnel currently stationed) and lease the base at Sevastopol (extended to expire in 2042).

The Black Sea and Sevastopol. Photograph: /Wikimedia

As Orlando Figes, author of Crimea: The Last Crusade, wrote last week:

Crimea was bound to be the focus of the Russian backlash against the Ukrainian revolution. ... For more than 20 years, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its rule by Kiev has been a major source of Russian resentment – inside and outside Crimea – and a major thorn in Ukraine's relations with Russia.

The Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation – by which Russia rents its naval base at Sevastopol from the Ukrainian government – is so far-reaching in the rights it gives the Russians to exercise their military powers that it is seen by many in Ukraine to undermine the country's independence. In 2008 the Ukrainians said they would not renew the lease when it expired in 2017. But they buckled under the pressure of a gas-price hike and, in 2010, extended the Russian navy's lease until 2042.

• Projecting power: Sevastopol has been an important hub to project Russia's naval power on a global platform. The Black Sea Fleet has seen a flurry of activity since 2008: during the war with Georgia that year, the fleet staged blockades in the Black Sea. The Russian navy was actively engaged with Vietnam, Syria and Venezuela (and up until March 2011, Libya) "for logistics and repair services in their principal ports". It has also been alleged that Sevastopol has served as the main source in supplying the Assad regime during Syria's civil war and proved useful with Russia's role in dismantling Syria's chemical weapons last year. After Syria's civil war forced Russia to stop using its naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus last year, Sevastopol became even more crucial.

You can find our explainer on the issue of Ukraine's territorial integrity here, and the on the diplomatic deal that's at stake here.

A brief history of Crimea and Crimean Tatars

• Before Tsarist subsumption: For five hundred years – roughly the middle ages in Europe – Turkic and Tatar tribes traded rule of Crimea. The peninsula spent a few hundred years as a Muslim Khanate and then an Ottoman vassal state, until Russia annexed it in 1783, under Catherine the Great, who thought the region symbolized Russia's links to antiquity. (She proceeded to parcel out land to aristocrats and build classical-style palaces and gardens.)

By 1900, the Crimean Tatars, once the majority, had been halved by wars and campaigns of Russification. Their population was halved again in 1917, and shortly after that, Stalin forcibly deported most of the remaining Tatars to central Asia. Unsurprisingly, Tatars have largely held fiercely anti-Russian sentiments for a very long time. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tatars have been returning, and though they number upwards of 200,000, they're still a minority.

• Crimean War: With its Black Sea fleet based in Sevastopol, Tsar Nicholas I knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the region – a hugely symbolic feat considering Russia's tricky relationship with its Muslim population and its centuries in need of a fleet.

Pro-Russian Cossacks share a laugh next to a war monument in Simferopol. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

But Nicholas' overconfidence in Crimea in part led to the Crimean war with Britain and France, whose leaders sought to stop Russia's expanding borders and to slow its influence in the Middle East. The allies won the war, bestowing British culture with the Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale and Timothy the Tortoise. The Russians lost, but Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches made sure that the 11-month siege of Sevastopol stuck in the national memory. (Between Sevastopol in 1854 and Leningrad in the second world war, the notorious Russian "siege mentality" may begin to make sense.)

• Khrushchev to Yeltsin: Crimea was given to Ukraine by premier Nikita Khrushchev (himself born at the border with Ukraine) to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's inclusion in the Russian Empire, a "donation" many in Russia still see as illegitimate. Surprisingly, Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, didn't propose an acquisition of Crimea during negotiations to dissolve the Soviet Republics.

Peter the Great gets his own section

• Let's build some boats: Peter the Great changed the course of history in countless ways, and was an extremely strange man and very serious about boats. (He supposedly said "A great leader who has an army has one hand, but he who has a navy has two." As a child, he would order around the children of other noblemen as "regiments" pretending to prepare for war. As an adult, he built a small boat by hand and used it to sail across the Neva, the river that runs through St Petersburg.) After a long trip in his youth to western Europe, in particular Amsterdam, where he studied shipbuilding, he returned to Moscow obsessed with dragging Russia into modernity – and making it a rival of the nations he saw in Europe.

Peter the Great: an odd duck

Peter saw Russia's limited access to the ocean as one of its greatest weaknesses, and though it meant tens of thousands of dead serfs to build a city on a unforgiving swamp, he had St Petersburg built on the Gulf of Finland for this very reason: he would reach the sea at every opportunity. With his new northern capital giving access to the Baltic, Peter countered the power of his arch-rival, King Charles XII of Sweden. (To give you an idea of how deep-seated the contest over Ukraine is, Peter defeated Charles' attempt to conquer Ukraine at the 1709 battle of Poltava.) To the south, Peter fought wars against the Tatars (who else) to gain access to the Black Sea, and built Russia's first naval base in Taganrog in 1698.

Ukraine crisis: why Russia sees Crimea as its naval stronghold | World news | theguardian.com

Putin's show of power pays off

By Amin Saikal  Friday 7 Mar 2014,

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin has positioned himself to be a powerful world player. (AFP: Anthony Devlin)

Regardless of the outcome of the Ukraine crisis, Putin has positioned himself as an influential foreign policy actor and the US will not be able to ignore him, writes Amin Saikal.

For the time being, Russian President Vladimir Putin has checkmated the United States and its allies. The vote by the Crimean Parliament to hold a referendum to join Russia strongly reinforces his position. He has methodically used America's decline in world politics to elevate his and Russia's position as a major player on the world stage. If he succeeds in dismembering Ukraine, he will set the tone for a new post-Cold War Europe and, for that matter, world order, with Russia being a critical actor.

The US and its allies rejoiced over the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991, which was a serious blow to "mother" Russia, and a piercing experience for someone as authoritarian and nationalist as Putin. The US and its allies celebrated the demise of the USSR as the triumph of liberalism over communism and capitalism over socialism. Washington entertained the idea of a one-superpower world, and rapidly sought to shape a post-Cold War world order that would be in accord with its ideological and geopolitical preferences, and NATO embarked on a process of expanding right up to Russia's borders.

The 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States helped in the process. The born-again Christian, Republican president George W. Bush, stimulated by American neo-conservatives and ultra-nationalists, set out on a series of foreign policy ventures, ranging from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq and the general "war on terror", with none of them succeeding in achieving their desirable objectives to the extent that had been projected.

His Democrat successor, President Barack Obama, found it appropriate to retreat from Bush's bellicose approach and to pursue a more nuanced foreign policy to disentangle the United States from the ongoing conflicts and avoid involvement in any more. Hence his decisions to make a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011; to terminate America's combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of this year; to avoid an intervention in Syria; to find a place for the US between different friendly and adversarial forces in an ever growing turbulent Middle East; and to engage in a policy of collaboration and containment towards China and Russia.

Just in the same way that Bush's policy behaviour had failed to produce the desired results, Obama's approach has equally proved to be unproductive and confusing. They have critically contributed to the generation of a strategic situation in which an increasingly powerful China and assertive Russia have been able to exploit it in support of their respective strategic and security interests.

Putin has drawn on these and America's inaction on the Russian military takeover of Russian-dominated Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008, to make his boldest move yet: a serious military incursion into Crimea, part of the politically volatile Ukraine and home for Russia's Black Sea naval base, and to eye most of eastern Ukraine along the border with Russia.

He has rationalized his move on the need for stability in Crimea and for protecting Ukraine's Russian citizens, who make up 17 per cent of the country's total population of 45 million. He has also indicated that Russia has the right to safeguard Russians wherever they are - this means in all of the former non-Russian Soviet republics and East European satellites, which contain Russian minorities. His Ukraine adventure signals a clear warning, as his Georgia campaign did, to all these former republics and satellites, especially those that have not joined NATO yet, not to engage in domestic and foreign policy activities that may be perceived as jeopardizing Russia's strategic and security interests.

Putin's actions may well be in violation of international law, as touted in the West. But this does not seem to concern him. He has already made it clear that the US and its allies have flaunted international law whenever it has suited them, mentioning the US-led invasion of Iraq and NATO intervention in Libya as prime examples. Nor does he appear to be troubled by the threat of Western sanctions. He knows that there is not as much unity of purpose across the Atlantic on the issue as to make such sanctions really effective, and that Europe needs Russia more than the other way around, given Russia's supply of energy to Europe.

Regardless of the outcome of the Ukraine crisis, Putin has now positioned himself as an influential foreign policy actor. The US and its allies will not be able to ignore him when it comes to generating a stable European or Middle Eastern or world order, unless they manage to ease him out of Ukraine. The chances are now that the world could easily revisit the Cold War era.

Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Fellow at the Australian National University. View his full profile here.

Putin's show of power pays off - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Vladimir Putin tightens grip on Crimea, bringing region to 'brink of war'

Ian Traynor in Brussels, Shaun Walker in Simferopol and Jon Swaine in New York 

The Guardian, Monday 3 March 2014

Ukraine mobilises troops as Kerry attacks 'incredible act of aggression' by Russia after hundreds of soldiers surround base

Ukrainians hold a placard reading 'Putin Stop', as they attend a rally on the Independence Square in Kiev on Sunday. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA

The fledgling government in Kiev put the country on a war footing on Sunday as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, tightened his grip on the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and western powers were left scrambling to find a response to the escalating crisis.

"We are on the brink of disaster," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's acting prime minister, as Kiev called for help from Washington and London, co-signatories of a 1994 pact with Russia guaranteeing Ukraine's security and its borders.

"This is actually a declaration of war on my country," he said. "We urge Putin to pull back his troops from this country and honour bilateral agreements. If he wants to be the president who started a war between two neighbouring and friendly countries, he has reached his target within a few inches."

As John Kerry, the US secretary of state, described Russia's gambit as "an incredible act of aggression", western powers pondered their limited options. Nato ambassadors met in Brussels, with Lithuania and Poland arguing that Russia's actions threatened them as Nato members bordering Russia and Ukraine, and pushing for appropriate action.

However, Kerry ruled out a military response. "The last thing anybody wants is a military option in this kind of situation," he said. Instead, leading western countries dropped out of preparatory work for a G8 summit hosted by Russia in June, with Kerry saying Moscow could be expelled from the organisation and economic sanctions aimed at the Russian elite, moves unlikely to have much impact.

Kiev ordered a call-up of military reserves, but also instructed its troops not to respond to Russian military "provocations" for fear of triggering a bloodbath as Russian forces in Crimea restricted Ukrainian units' movements and demanded they surrender their weapons. "The ministry of defence is calling on all the reservists. We are asking all those who have been called to show up at the mobilisation stations," said Andriy Parubiy of Ukraine's security and defence council.

As Yatsenyuk spoke, hundreds of Russian troops surrounded a Ukrainian base just outside the Crimean capital, Simferopol, in the latest military manoeuvre on the peninsula indicative of a move by Moscow to annex the peninsula in all but name.

The Guardian saw crowds of Russian civilians gathering outside the base at Perevalnoye. Russian units have already secured the parliament building in Simferopol and two airports in Crimea in moves that have provoked the gravest crisis in post-Soviet areas since the 2008 Russian-Georgian war and have the potential to turn into Europe's worst conflict since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

"Their aim is to stop Ukraine's economy and to start chaos," said the acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov. "That is why they try to start panic."

Officials in Kiev said that outside Crimea, in eastern Ukraine, up to 200 Russian citizens had attacked regional administration offices in three cities. "Everyone should do everything to mobilise over the idea of an independent Ukraine," Vitali Klitschko, a Ukrainian presidential contender, told a rally in Kiev.

The first president of an independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, said: "I'm 80, but I will take my gun and will be defending my land."

A febrile pre-war atmosphere gripped Kiev on Sunday as Ukrainians turned out in their tens of thousands to denounce Russia's moves in Crimea and signal a determination to resist any further incursions from their eastern neighbour.

A day after ugly confrontations in the eastern Russian-majority cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk, inhabitants of the capital said they were ready to respond to calls for mass mobilisation from the new leaders in Kiev. "I'm a lieutenant of the reserve," said Andry Cherin, a 29-year-old scientist. "I will go to the recruitment office. I'm against war, but there are no other choices, we need to defend our country. This is our land. Russians don't need war. I think these are only Putin's ambitions."

Ukrainians were shocked by Saturday's images from Kharkiv showing Ukrainian nationals being paraded through a crowd of Russians who beat them with sticks and kicked them. There were similar scenes in Donetsk. "What Russia is doing now in Ukraine threatens peace and security in Europe," said Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

EU foreign ministers are to meet in emergency session in Brussels on Monday, where Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, will report on his talks in Kiev on Sunday with the interim Ukrainian government, which has been in office only a matter of days.

Berlin said it was not too late to turn back from the abyss, without proposing any decisions or action. "A turnaround is still possible. A new division in Europe can still be prevented," said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister.

As the White House struggled to put pressure on Putin, Kerry accused the Russian leader of acting "in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pretext". "It is really a stunning, wilful choice by President Putin to invade another country. Russia is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations."

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a longstanding critic of Obama's foreign policy credentials, urged the president to "do something" rather than deliver what he called empty threats to "thugs and dictators".

"Every time the president goes on television and threatens someone like Putin, everybody's eyes roll, including mine," Graham told CNN. "We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression."

The diplomatic flurry followed a tense 90-minute phone conversation on Saturday night between Barack Obama and Putin. The Russian president told his US counterpart that Moscow had the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers not only in Crimea but also in east Ukraine. Tensions escalated into the night when two Russian anti-submarine warships appeared off Crimea's coast, violating an agreement on Moscow's lease of a naval base, a Ukrainian military source was quoted as saying. The two vessels, part of Russia's Baltic fleet, had been sighted in a bay at Sevastopol, where the fleet is based.

After several days of Russian stealth, the move to deploy forces came suddenly and decisively. The Kremlin said Putin wanted troops in Ukraine "until the sociopolitical situation is normalised". Less than an hour later, in a hastily convened extraordinary sitting of Russia's Federation Council that was laced with cold war rhetoric, senators voted unanimously to support Putin's plan, and proposed withdrawing Russia's ambassador to the US.

Vladimir Putin tightens grip on Crimea, bringing region to 'brink of war' | World news | The Guardian

Preserving the last remnants of Russian empire

By Matt Fitzpatrick

Photo: Armed men in military fatigues block access to a Ukrainian border guards base. (AFP: Genya Savilov)

What protesters in Kiev see as a movement for freedom and prosperity looks to Moscow like a hybrid US/German empire reaching into the Russian sphere of influence, writes Matt Fitzpatrick.

In 1783, Catherine the Great annexed the Crimean peninsula to Russia and established a naval base at Sevastopol. Thereafter, it became the seat of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which has clung on to this warm water naval outpost ever since, give or take some short term occupations by the Western victors of the Crimean war in the mid-nineteenth century and the Nazis during World War II.

Russia's current deployment of troops to buttress the pro-Russian elements of the population in Crimea looks like blatant Russian aggression. There is some truth to this. Russia has repeatedly signed agreements with Ukraine guaranteeing its territorial integrity. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Russia explicitly pledged not to use force against Ukraine except in self-defence. So too Article 3 of the 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine explicitly stated that both would observe the territorial integrity and inviolability of the borders of the other.

Since then, however, Russia, and in particular Putin, have repeatedly pointed out in international fora that Russia views a pliant Ukraine as a necessary condition for Russian security. As the world saw with Georgia in 2008, Russia is happy for independent states to exist on its doorstep, but these states must not join the Western security pact aimed at Russia: NATO.

Given their 1994 and 1997 assurances, Russia appears to have broken its obligations to Ukraine in international law. They may seek to exploit the wriggle room afforded by Point 6 of the Budapest memorandum, which offers a startling escape clause. Contrary to reporting in today's Daily Mail in Britain, the Budapest Memorandum does not oblige the UK and the US to intervene to forcibly throw the Russians back. Point 6 of the treaty simply states "Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom ... and the United States of America will consult in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning these commitments." Both Barack Obama and David Cameron have held long telephone discussions with Vladimir Putin since the recent crisis began, so consultation might be said to have occurred (after a fashion).

From the Russian perspective, Article 1 of the 1997 Treaty also insisted upon the "strategic partnership and cooperation" of Russia and Ukraine. While this is far from an ironclad commitment to join any formal Russian-led enterprise (such as Putin's recently mooted Eurasian Union), it does suggest a tacit understanding by the Ukrainians of Russian interests in the region. This is to say nothing of the naval base agreements for the Crimea. For the Russians, Ukraine's NATO aspirations clearly jeopardise this commitment to a strategic partnership.

A broader view of Russia's strategic position is also worth keeping in mind. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has determinedly pinned Russia back further and further to the east, with its Cold War satellite states in Central Europe now all under the NATO umbrella, to the extent that it is Latvia and Lithuania who have called NATO together to discuss the present crisis. What prior to 1989 was called "containment of the Soviet menace" has since been an incremental push to deny Russia any influence in its immediate region. Not content with peeling off ex-Soviet territories, NATO and the EU have denuded Russia of all its remaining buffer states. All that remain are Ukraine and Georgia.

In geostrategic terms, Russia is not interested in having either the German-dominated EU or US-controlled NATO directly outside its borders and it is willing to overstep the bounds of national sovereignty to ensure this doesn't happen. This is not new imperial thinking. Having had to fight for its existence against Germany twice in the first half of the twentieth century, the Soviets hung on grimly to a raft of buffer states in Eastern Europe for almost half a century. For the first time since the Wehrmacht was turned around at Stalingrad, Russia faces real frontier friction with the borderlands of an expanding EU and NATO. What for the protesters in Kiev is a vehicle for freedom, liberty and prosperity looks to Moscow like a hybrid US/German empire reaching into the Russian sphere of influence and towards the Russian border.

US and European plans to push the EU towards Ukraine via 'associational' status look like a provocation to Putin. Even worse from the Russian perspective were the moves towards Ukraine joining NATO, which were managed in 2010 by the installation of a pro-Russian president in Yanukovych. In lieu of any diplomatic or political option for preserving its centuries long primacy over Ukraine, Russia will fight to defend its position in the Crimea against further NATO or EU encroachments. 

Initially, the Crimea was key to Tsarist Russia's attempts to subdue the Ottoman Empire and expand its south-western territorial holdings towards the Mediterranean. During the Soviet era, particularly after WWII, the Black Sea fleet was a southern bulwark against NATO. In the post-Cold War era, it has served as a staging post for Russian military actions in the region, most notably in the 2008 war against Georgia. The Russians now rent the site from the Ukrainians, with their current lease lasting until 2042. As one Russian admiral said a couple of years ago, however, Russia intends to be there forever.

Russia's current invasion of Crimea is aimed not at expanding and creating a new Russian Empire, but rather at preserving the last remnants of the last one. Although there is the chance that the Crimea will be incrementally absorbed if a political agreement with the new political leadership in Kiev cannot be found, the adage in Moscow presently is "informal empire when possible, formal imperialism when necessary". Like in the 2008 conflict with Georgia, Russia is seeking to preserve a threadbare system of peripheral states that has been placed under enormous stress in the past 25 years from an expanding European Union and NATO. Even if they agree to allow a rump Ukraine under revolutionary Kiev to move westward, the price will be Crimea.

Matt Fitzpatrick is Associate Professor in International History at Flinders University. View his full profile here.

Preserving the last remnants of Russian empire - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Russia will get Crimea (but the West still wins)

By Ken Fraser

Photo: There is only one solution acceptable to both sides. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)

Russia won't willingly withdraw from Crimea and the West seems unlikely to force the matter, so the question remaining is how this reaches what appears to be a foregone conclusion, writes Ken Fraser.

When responding to Russia's military engagement in Crimea, US president Barack Obama said: "There will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine."

This is the key to understanding the current situation. Leaving aside the point that this statement might well be as true for the US and NATO as they would be for Russian president Vladimir Putin, the core of the message here is that the US is not getting close to actually committing itself to protecting the eastern-leaning part of Ukraine.

What Obama is saying to Putin in this speech is that, as far as the US is concerned, Russia may go ahead and occupy Crimea and secure its access to the city of Sevastopol and basing for its Black Sea fleet. For the time being. In return for this effective partitioning of the country, NATO gets the installation of a friendly government in Kiev. This has the effect of clicking over another notch in the ratchet of encroachment of NATO influence into the former Soviet republics. Putin knows he has lost this notch, but everyone knows that asking him to give up Sevastopol is asking too much.

Of course, the US cannot simply agree to all this in public, which is why the message is coded in these terms. It will still have to protest, and strongly. It might boycott the G8 in Sochi. There may be cooling diplomatic relations and a certain amount of isolation. The UN will express "grave concerns". Fine statements of principal will be mandatory. Hence Obama's insubstantial statements that "any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be a profound interference in matters that must be determined by the Ukrainian people", and, "The Ukrainian people have also reminded us that human beings have a human universal right to determine their own future."

These are the "costs" to which Obama is referring. In a few years everyone will have forgotten about all this and relations can return to normal with the new reality in place. But Obama's speech - for its talk about "sovereignty, territorial integrity and democratic future" - falls well short of the specific actions implied by commitments like "everything possible", for which the new Ukrainian government is calling, or the standard "all necessary means", authorisation for war. The costs, in other words, will be bearable, and may be minimal.

Incidentally, note the terminology of the democratic future. The US supports the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future, as long as that future is democratic and broadly consistent with Western consumerist individualism. The Russians can make a similar claim about the self-determination of Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Hence Putin's statement that "Moscow reserved the right to protect its own interests and those of Russian speakers in the event of violence breaking out in eastern Ukraine and Crimea". These are classic irredentist tropes.

This whole discourse will be crystal clear in the Kremlin, which is part of the point. Everybody knows that it would be a bad idea to push Putin into a position where he has to resist. Russian withdrawal from what it has now occupied would be a potentially mortal blow to Putin's career and to his project of reviving the Russian Bear. He has everything to lose. He can't take a step back, and this makes him dangerous.

The decision, I suggest, has already been made. Why? Because it is the only solution acceptable to both sides, and, let's be clear: while the situation on the ground is messy, there are really only two sides in this grander game. One difficulty for both sides is to achieve the end result without having to go through the tedious and unpopular process of a bloody civil war. Such a scenario can be avoided by having the issue played out in civilised fashion among those who really decide what happens. But whether it comes about through war or diplomacy, the eventual outcome will probably be the same (though war remains a highly uncertain business).

And then, of course, there are all those intercontinental missiles. This is the end-game that really keeps policy-makers awake at night, and is the underlying structural imperative to settle the matter. This means no red lines from the White House. It means "costs", not "all necessary means". It means "support for", not a guarantee of, Ukrainian territorial integrity. It means the Russians know that, whatever the rhetoric from Western leaders, they are highly unlikely to go any nearer to the brink of war than Putin has already taken them. This means he gets Crimea, but the slow strangling of the Bear continues. NATO still wins. It is manoeuvring with knights and bishops. Putin has had to bring out his queen.

Ken Fraser is currently coordinating a course on International Relations Theory at the Australian National University. View his full profile here.

Russia will get Crimea (but the West still wins) - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The battle for legal legitimacy in Crimea

By Ben Saul

Photo: Russia, Ukraine and NATO are all vying to control the legal narrative. (Reuters: David Mdzinarishvili)

The legality of Russia's military incursion into Crimea is as much a question about power as it is about legal principle, and that's where the claims of legitimacy ultimately fall down, writes Ben Saul.

Is Russia's military deployment in the Crimea region of Ukraine illegal under international law? Russia claims to be protecting Russians at risk there. NATO and US president Barack Obama say it is an aggressive invasion in violation of international law.

Under the international law on the use of force, encoded in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945, countries are generally prohibited from using military force against other countries. There are narrow exceptions where a country uses force in self-defence against an armed attack, or where the UN Security Council has explicitly authorised the use of force to restore international peace and security.

Ukraine has not attacked Russia so Russia is not acting in self-defence as it is conventionally understood. The Security Council also has not authorised the Russian action. This is not, however, the end of the legal question.

In the first place, Russia claims to be protecting ethnic Russians, or Russian citizens, at risk in the Crimea. Some countries, including the United States, United Kingdom and Israel, have historically argued that the right to use force in self-defence includes the right to protect citizens at risk overseas, even when a country's own territory, military or government has not been attacked.

Most countries have never accepted this expansive legal argument. For most countries, danger to foreign citizens is not serious enough to equate to an 'armed attack', which is the legal threshold triggering the right to self-defence. Military force is only considered justified where the country itself is under attack. In policy terms, lowering the threshold of self-defence to protect nationals at risk overseas is thought to dangerously escalate international violence. Claims to protect 'ethnic' nationals (as opposed to 'legal' citizens) are even more dubious.

History also suggests that claims to protect nationals at risk overseas are also frequently abused, and become a pretext for other ambitions, such as the seizure of territory or wider political or strategic goals. There are, admittedly, some examples where actions have not been abusive, such as when Israel rescued hostages from a hijacked civilian aircraft at Entebbe in 1976, where Idi Amin's Uganda was harbouring terrorists. Even that example was controversial and said to be a violation of Uganda's sovereignty by many at the time.

In the view of most countries and international lawyers, there is no international legal right of self-defence to protect citizens in danger overseas. Even if there were, the Russian action in Crimea would not qualify. An armed attack requires actual military violence to be committed. Speculative risks that the unstable political climate in the Ukraine might endanger Russian nationals is not sufficient. If anything, the Russian intervention has magnified the dangers for ethnic Russians or Russian nationals there.

And Russia certainly has no right to use military force to annex the Crimea as sovereign Russian territory, regardless of whatever historical claims to the Crimea Russia might claim to have.

Russia also has no right to forcibly assist an ethnic minority inside the independent country of Ukraine to secede pursuant to any purported right of self-determination.

A second legal question is whether Russian forces were legitimately 'invited' into the Crimea by Ukraine. Under international law, the lawful government of one country is entitled to request military assistance from a foreign country to restore law and order or stabilise domestic political unrest. This was, for instance, one legal basis of Australia's deployments in places like Afghanistan, the Solomon Islands, or East Timor in recent years.

It is clear that the agreement between Russia and Ukraine to allow Russian military bases in the Crimea does not permit wider Russian deployments in Ukraine without Ukraine's consent.

But Ukraine's recently deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, has found sanctuary in Russia, insists he remains Ukraine's lawful president, and has reportedly requested Russia's assistance in re-establishing his authority. Under Ukraine's legal system, the president has powers in relation to defence and foreign affairs.

Yanukovych was, however, removed from power by Ukraine's parliament in late February 2014. Ordinarily that would remove Yanukovych's domestic legal authority to invite Russian forces into the Ukraine, and hence invalidate his authority under international law to request Russia's assistance.

The spanner in the works is that there is a legal dispute in the Ukraine over whether the parliament's removal of Yanukovych complied with the procedures under Ukraine's constitution. If Yanukovych's removal was unconstitutional, and he remains the lawful president of Ukraine, he may be entitled to invite Russian forces, despite the opposition of Ukraine's parliament and (probably) most of Ukraine's population.

The case illustrates a common dilemma that arises in international law, when a 'legal' government no longer seems 'legitimate' because it has lost the confidence of (most) of its people. International law's answer is eventually a pragmatic one: the international community usually recognises, or deals with, whichever domestic political entity has managed to firmly establish its authority.

This, of course, takes time, and in the meantime there is usually dangerous flux. The new Ukraine government is ascendant over most of Ukraine and Yanukovych has lost out. But Yanukovych is still in the game in the Crimea, with Russian backing. Now it is a struggle for power, as well as legal principle. The two are always intertwined. Law legitimates power, and discredits it. Russia, Ukraine and NATO are all vying to control the legal narrative.

Even if Yanukovych remains the lawful president and has invited Russian forces, it is extremely unlikely that he now controls the terms of Russia's engagement in the Crimea. This fact then provides the clearest legal answer. Russia has unilaterally invaded Ukraine's territory, and not by invitation, in self-defence, or with UN blessing. That is contrary to international law and the UN Charter, and amounts to the international crime of aggression.

Ben Saul is Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

The battle for legal legitimacy in Crimea - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Ukraine warns of war as Russia approves deployment of troops in region

 

Ukraine has put its armed forces on full combat alert and warned of war after Russian president Vladimir Putin won approval from parliament to officially deploy troops in the region.

Photo: Soldiers stand near Russian army vehicles outside a Ukrainian border guard post in the Crimean town of Balaclava on Saturday. (Reuters: Baz Ratner)

Related Story: New Ukraine PM rules out using force as Russian president readies troops

The vote gave the green light to Mr Putin's proposal to send troops into Ukraine's Crimea region, where the ethnic Russian majority is rejecting the new government in Kiev.

Ukraine's acting president Oleksander Turchinov has expressed concern, saying any Russian military intervention "would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations".

The move has also been greeted with alarm by the international community, prompting an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the president has not yet decided to use his new authority.

Seven things to know about Crimea

• The Crimean Peninsula is rich in arable land and occupies a strategically important location on the Black Sea.
• Crimea has a population of 2.3 million, 58 per cent of whom speak Russian and identify themselves as ethnic Russians.
• The Soviet Union transferred authority over Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.
• Ukraine retained control after the collapse of the USSR in a 1994 agreement brokered by the US, UK and France.
• Russia's major naval base is located in the capital of Sevastopol and is the base for their Black Sea Fleet. Russia's lease on the base expires in 2042.
• The lease states that Russian personnel may not remove military equipment or vehicles outside the base without permission from Ukraine.
• The region was a stronghold for ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.

"The president now has the full arsenal of mechanisms necessary for the regulation of the situation," he said.

"Of course he will take the decisions taking into account how the situation develops. It is to be hoped that the situation will not develop according to the scenario that is developing at the moment towards a threat for Russians in Crimea."

Troops with no insignia, but clearly Russian, have already taken over government buildings and positions in the autonomous republic of Crimea, within Ukraine, which has often voiced separatist aims.

It is the only part of the country with a Russian ethnic majority.

Ukrainian defence minister Igor Tenyukh says Russia has sent 30 armoured personnel carriers and 6,000 additional troops into Crimea since Thursday.

West expresses concerns as UN meeting held

Western powers including the United States, Britain, France and Germany have called for de-escalation of the tensions, while the UN Security Council has met for its second emergency consultation in as many days.

The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, told the meeting Russia's move is "as dangerous as it is destabilising."

"It is time for the Russian intervention in Ukraine to end. The Russian military must stand down," Ms Power said.

Ukraine urged the emergency session to act now to stop Russian "aggression" in Crimea, accusing Moscow of brutally violating the world body's charter.

Photo: The UN Security Council meets in New York to discuss the Ukraine tensions. (Twitter: UKUN_NewYork)

"We call on the Security Council now to do everything possible to stop aggression of the Russian Federation to Ukraine. There is still a chance," Ukrainian ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev said.

Meanwhile Mr Putin has spoken to his US counterpart Barack Obama by phone, telling him Russia reserves the right to protect its interests if there is violence in east Ukraine or Crimea.

In a statement, the Kremlin said Mr Obama expressed concern about the possibility of Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

The White House says Mr Obama warned Mr Putin that he was violating international law and called for troops to be pulled back to their bases in Crimea.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon is also set to express "grave" concerns directly to Mr Putin by telephone, his spokesman said.

"He calls for an immediate restoration of calm and direct dialogue between all concerned to solve the current crisis," Martin Nesirky told reporters in New York.

Crimea's pro-Russian protesters against Ukraine change of government

So far there has been no sign of Russian military action in Ukraine outside Crimea.

Dozens of pro-Russian armed men in full combat gear have patrolled outside the seat of power in Crimea's capital Simferopol.

Similar gunmen seized the city's parliament and government buildings on Thursday and took control of its airport and a nearby military base on Friday.

More than 10,000 people carrying Russian flags protested on Saturday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the stronghold of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.

Protesters declared they supported "the aspirations of Crimea to rejoin Russia".

"Russia! Russia!", they shouted, as demonstrators on the sidelines of the rally distributed leaflets calling on people "not to obey authorities in Kiev".

"We're aghast by what is happening in Kiev," said Oleksandr, a 40-year-old protester.

"We will not let nationalists enter our city."

On Friday, Mr Yanukovych made his first public comments since fleeing Ukraine and seeking protection in Russia.

He provoked mass protests in Ukraine in November by backing out of plans to sign landmark deals with the European Union and instead saying Kiev would seek closer economic and trade ties with its former Soviet master Russia.

AFP/Reuters

Ukraine warns of war as Russia approves deployment of troops in region - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)