JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.
OTHER RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWS I DONE
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/malaysia-airlines-plane-with-239-on.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-invasion-of-crimea-continues.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/crimea-russia-ukraine-situation-this-day.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/crimea-wants-independence-not-russian.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-blamed-for-deaths-in-ukraine.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russian-forces-tighten-grip-on-crimea.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-ukraine-situation-today.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-has-this-crimea-situation-well.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/eu-leads-diplomacy-on-ukraine-crimea.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/putin-pulls-back-from-brink-of-world.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russias-stock-market-fell-11-and-lost.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/watch-stock-markets-oil-today-from-this.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russian-troops-surround-ukraines-army.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-unanamously-approves-troops-in.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/russia-troops-copters-in-crimea-and-kiev.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/watch-for-afghanistan-to-have-next-arab.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/is-this-ukraine-situation-beggining-of.html
THE RUSSIA - UKRAINE SITUATION AT 8:57AM FRI MAR 14,14
NOW THE REPORTS HAVE IT RUSSIA IS READY FOR AN ALL OUT INVASION OF CRIMEA.
14 Mar. 2014-Visit to NATO by the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Moldova
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, will meet with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Moldova, Mr. Valeriu Chiveri on Monday, 17 March 2014.
14 Mar. 2014-Visit to NATO by the Leader of the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Member of the Parliament
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, will meet with the Leader of the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Member of the Parliament, Mr. Mustafa Cemilev Kirimoglu on Friday 14 March 2014.
Russia ships troops into Ukraine, repeats invasion threat
By Andrew Osborn and Lina Kushch 1 hour ago-MAR 14,14-Yahoonews
SEVASTOPOL/DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia shipped more troops and armor into Crimea on Friday and repeated its threat to invade other parts of Ukraine, showing no sign of listening to Western pleas to back off from the worst confrontation since the Cold War.Russia's stock markets tumbled and the cost of insuring its debt soared on the last day of trading before pro-Moscow authorities in Crimea hold a vote to join Russia, a move all but certain to lead to U.S. and EU sanctions on Monday.The Russian Foreign Ministry, responding to the death of at least one protester in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk, repeated President Vladimir Putin's declaration of the right to invade to protect Russian citizens and "compatriots". "Russia is aware of its responsibility for the lives of compatriots and fellow citizens in Ukraine and reserves the right to take people under its protection," it said.Ukrainian health authorities say one 22-year-old man was stabbed to death and at least 15 others were being treated in hospital after clashes in Donetsk, the mainly Russian-speaking home city of Ukraine's ousted President Viktor Yanukovich.Organizers of the anti-Moscow demonstration said the dead man was from their group.Moscow denies that its forces are intervening in Crimea, an assertion Washington ridicules as "Putin's fiction". Journalists have seen Russian forces operating openly in their thousands over the past two weeks, driving in armored columns of vehicles with Russian license plates and identifying themselves to besieged Ukrainian troops as members of Russia's armed forces.A Reuters reporting team watched a Russian warship unload trucks, troops and at least one armored personnel carrier at Kazachaya bay near Sevastopol on Friday morning. Trucks drove off a ramp from the Yamal 156, a large landing ship that can carry more than 300 troops and up to a dozen APCs.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in London later on Friday in a last-ditch effort to head off the referendum in Crimea, now seen as all but inevitable.Russian troops seized the southern Ukrainian region two weeks ago as a pro-Moscow regional government took power there. The new regional authorities intend to secede from Ukraine and join Russia in a vote described in the West as illegal."What we would like to see is a commitment to stop putting new facts on the ground and a commitment to engage seriously on ways to de-escalate the conflict, to bring Russian forces back to barracks, to use international observers in place of force to achieve legitimate political and human rights objectives," a U.S. State Department official said ahead of Kerry's talks.But Russia has shown no sign of veering from President Vladimir Putin's plan to annex Crimea.Putin declared on March 1 that Russia had the right to invade its neighbor, a week after its ally Yanukovich fled the Ukrainian capital following three months of demonstrations that ended with about 100 people killed in the final days.In further signs of Moscow's belligerent posture ahead of the Crimea vote, the Defence Ministry announced on Friday it would hold exercises with fighter jets and helicopters over the Mediterranean Sea. On Thursday it announced artillery drills near Ukraine's border.U.S. and EU sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes on Russian officials and their firms, are now seen as inevitable. The only mystery remaining is who will be on the lists of targets when they are agreed at the start of next week.U.S. and European officials say the targets will not include Putin or Lavrov, but will include senior figures in the government and members of parliament in an effort to impose hardship on Russia's elite for backing Putin's policies.The initial list would be just a start, with more individuals and companies to be added later, and further trade sanctions could follow. Germany's Bild newspaper said the initial EU list would include at least 13 officials including top ministers and people around Putin.
SHARES FALL, DEBT INSURANCE COSTS RISE
Russia's MICEX stock index was down 2.9 percent at 0930 GMT, having lost more than 16 percent of its value in the two weeks since Putin declared his right to invade. At one point in the morning it had fallen 5 percent to its lowest since 2009.The cost of insuring Russia's debt against default for five years rose 18 basis points to 285 - a rise of nearly 7 percent - and is now up by half since the crisis began.Although Russian public opinion, fed by overwhelmingly state-controlled media, is still solidly behind the plan to annex Crimea, Western countries believe sanctions could undermine support for Putin among the wealthy elite.Goldman Sachs lowered its prediction for Russian economic growth for this year to 1 percent from 3 percent on Thursday, blaming the Ukraine crisis for sparking capital flight that will destroy investment.Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Russian media that the threat of Western sanctions was already imposing higher borrowing costs on Russian businesses and that further sanctions would push capital flight to $50 billion a quarter.Renaissance Capital estimated capital outflow in the first quarter would exceed $55 billion, compared with $63 billion for the whole of 2013.The ruble has declined only slightly despite the rout in share prices, held aloft by a central bank that raised its lending rates on March 3 and has been spending reserves to keep the currency from falling.Putin's March 1 declaration of the right to invade was accompanied by demonstrations across the south and east by groups who raised Russian flags, seized buildings and convened regional legislative sessions demanding secession, in what Kiev called Kremlin-orchestrated bids to repeat the Crimea scenario.The most persistent pro-Moscow agitation has been in Donetsk, where the Russian flag was flown above the regional government headquarters for nearly a week and pro-Russian protesters occupied the building for days. Their leader, who had declared himself "people's governor" and demanded police report to him, was finally arrested last week.(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Will Waterman)
EU diplomats start putting names on Russia blacklist
13.03.14 @ 14:36-By Andrew Rettman-EUOBSERVER
BRUSSELS - EU countries have started talks on who to blacklist for Russia’s invasion of Crimea, but few think it will make Russian leader Vladimir Putin retreat.The EU on Wednesday (12 March) agreed to impose visa bans and asset freezes on “persons responsible for actions which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine … and entities associated with them.”Talks on who to name have so far taken place outside EU structures.The British foreign office, for one, has been speaking with officials from the American, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Swiss, and Turkish embassies in London on who to designate.But on Thursday, EU countries’ diplomats began to collate each other’s ideas in an all-day meeting in Brussels.
The draft lists of names are confidential.
But diplomats say the EU will not name the one man who took the Crimea decision - Putin - or his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for now.Meanwhile, Wednesday’s sanctions text indicates they will first target Putin’s executive branch.Russia watchers say officials associated with the Crimea operation are: Alexander Bortnikov (Putin’s intelligence chief); Sergey Glazyev (a senior aide); Sergei Ivanov (Putin’s chief of staff); Nikolay Patrushev (the head of Putin’s security council); Sergei Shoygu (defence minister); Vladislav Surkov (another aide); and Alexander Vikto (the commander of Russia’s Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet).
If the EU decides to make the sanctions more political, it could target MPs.
Valentina Matvienko (the speaker of the Russian senate) shepherded a resolution to authorise Russian troops to invade Ukraine. Alexey Pushkov (the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house) and Dmitry Rogozin (deputy PM) also championed the idea. Vladimir Zhirinovsky (an MP) visited Crimea and called for it to join Russia.
EU states could target Putin’s business allies.
Alexey Miller (chairman of Russia’s gas monopoly, Gazprom) has waged economic warfare against Ukraine. Igor Sechin (one of Putin’s oldest friends) now runs state oil firm Rosneft. Vladimir Yakunin (Russia’s multi-millionaire railway chief) is a Putin confidante in a Kremlin culture in which decisions are not necessarily made by the official hierarchy.
EU countries also have more colourful options.
These include Ramzan Kadyrov (the leader of Russia’s semi-autonomous Chechen Republic), said to have sent paramilitaries to Crimea.They also include Alexander Zaldostanov (a Putin friend who leads the Night Wolves, a biker gang which went to Crimea to drum up support for secession) and Dmitry Kiselyov (a propagandist who heads Russia’s RT news channel).
The likely sequence of events is as follows.
Crimea votes to join Russia in a referendum - deemed illegal by the EU and US - on Sunday; Putin endorses the result; EU foreign ministers trigger the blacklist in Brussels on Monday; EU leaders discuss further sanctions at a summit on Thursday.
Looking stupid?
For his part, Andrew Wood, the British ambassador to Russia between 1995 and 2000, believes the EU has no better option than to impose the blacklist. He told EUobserver on Wednesday: “We’re in a situation where some bold gesture is needed and has become inevitable. If we don’t do it, we’ll look a bit stupid.”He does not believe Putin will back down: Wood said it would be “political suicide” for the Russian leader to cede Crimea due to Western pressure. “We know in advance that he’s not going to listen.”
But he believes Putin will try to limit the international fallout.
He said Russia is unlikely to formally annex Crimea at this stage. He also said Moscow might offer to join a "Contact Group" on Crimea conflict resolution, even though a Contact Group risks “serving Russian purposes” by institutionalising the partition of Ukraine.The former UK ambassador added that international opprobrium will undermine Putin in the long term.“It [the Crimea invasion] is a huge mistake,” he noted.“ Russians will rally round him in the initial aftermath, but in the end he will face a blowback from his own people … What he has shown is that he can do whatever he wants. This will discourage international investors and hurt Russia’s economy and future development. It will harm him morally as Russian people realise they are living in an ever-less liberal regime.”Unlike Russia's oligarchs, the Kremlin officials are not believed to hold significant financial assets in Europe.But the US also thinks that stigmatising Putin’s top cadre will harm his authority.“Putin depicts himself as someone who is capable of protecting his loyalists, down from the janitor in the building to the top chain of command, but the sanctions will show that he cannot guarantee their impunity,” a US contact involved in drawing up Washington’s Russia blacklist said.The US source added that EU naming and shaming of notoriously corrupt oligarchs like Sechin or Yakunin would stimulate the Russian opposition.
Realpolitik
The inclusion of Turkey and Switzerland in the UK deliberations indicate that London is willing to go pretty far to discourage Moscow from escalation.Swiss banks and low-tax cantons are considered a safe haven by Russia’s economic elite, while Turkey is a popular holiday destination for its middle class.But despite the strong rhetoric, there are cracks in the European facade.The Swiss foreign ministry told EUobserver its main interest in the London meeting was asset freezes on the former Ukrainian regime, not Russia.A Turkish diplomatic source indicated that Ankara is wary of Moscow: “Turkey gets 60 percent of its gas from Russia. A Russian company is building Turkey's first nuclear power plant. Turkish contractors have won contracts worth billions. In that sense, our position is no different from that of Germany: Realpolitik.”At the same time, the Russian opposition has a long way to go to challenge Putin’s rule.Vladimir Ashurkov, a spokesman for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Moscow-based NGO linked to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, told this website on Wednesday: “It is of course inspiring for me to see that people [in Ukraine] can overthrow a corrupt and authoritarian government … and we believe this can be an inspiration for Russian society.” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oligarch-turned-reformer, in Kiev this week told crowds: “This [the Ukrainian revolution] makes the Russian government nervous.”Very few Russians have so far come out on the streets to protest Putin’s actions in Crimea, however.For one, the Kremlin has cracked down on NGO financing and frightened people by throwing critics in prison.Navalny himself is under house arrest and cannot meet, phone, email, or tweet his contacts. He is only allowed visits by close relatives and lawyers. “The situation for civil society in Russia is quite different to Ukraine,” Ashurkov said.But for some Ukrainians, the lack of solidarity is also linked to nationalist sentiment in the Russian opposition.Roman Sohn, a Ukrainian civil society activist, noted that Khodorkovsky in his Kiev speech quibbled whether Russia was right or wrong to give Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.“I don't expect anything from Khodorkovsky,” he said.“Russian democracy stops at the matter of Ukraine … The miniscule number of people in Moscow protesting against the war speaks loudly to the rest of the world that even the Russian opposition has the same imperialistic mentality as Putin,” he added.
OTHER RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWS I DONE
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/malaysia-airlines-plane-with-239-on.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-invasion-of-crimea-continues.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/crimea-russia-ukraine-situation-this-day.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/crimea-wants-independence-not-russian.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-blamed-for-deaths-in-ukraine.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russian-forces-tighten-grip-on-crimea.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-ukraine-situation-today.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-has-this-crimea-situation-well.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/eu-leads-diplomacy-on-ukraine-crimea.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/putin-pulls-back-from-brink-of-world.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russias-stock-market-fell-11-and-lost.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/watch-stock-markets-oil-today-from-this.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russian-troops-surround-ukraines-army.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-unanamously-approves-troops-in.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/russia-troops-copters-in-crimea-and-kiev.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/watch-for-afghanistan-to-have-next-arab.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/is-this-ukraine-situation-beggining-of.html
THE RUSSIA - UKRAINE SITUATION AT 8:57AM FRI MAR 14,14
NOW THE REPORTS HAVE IT RUSSIA IS READY FOR AN ALL OUT INVASION OF CRIMEA.
14 Mar. 2014-Visit to NATO by the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Moldova
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, will meet with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Moldova, Mr. Valeriu Chiveri on Monday, 17 March 2014.
14 Mar. 2014-Visit to NATO by the Leader of the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Member of the Parliament
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, will meet with the Leader of the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Member of the Parliament, Mr. Mustafa Cemilev Kirimoglu on Friday 14 March 2014.
Russia ships troops into Ukraine, repeats invasion threat
By Andrew Osborn and Lina Kushch 1 hour ago-MAR 14,14-Yahoonews
SEVASTOPOL/DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia shipped more troops and armor into Crimea on Friday and repeated its threat to invade other parts of Ukraine, showing no sign of listening to Western pleas to back off from the worst confrontation since the Cold War.Russia's stock markets tumbled and the cost of insuring its debt soared on the last day of trading before pro-Moscow authorities in Crimea hold a vote to join Russia, a move all but certain to lead to U.S. and EU sanctions on Monday.The Russian Foreign Ministry, responding to the death of at least one protester in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk, repeated President Vladimir Putin's declaration of the right to invade to protect Russian citizens and "compatriots". "Russia is aware of its responsibility for the lives of compatriots and fellow citizens in Ukraine and reserves the right to take people under its protection," it said.Ukrainian health authorities say one 22-year-old man was stabbed to death and at least 15 others were being treated in hospital after clashes in Donetsk, the mainly Russian-speaking home city of Ukraine's ousted President Viktor Yanukovich.Organizers of the anti-Moscow demonstration said the dead man was from their group.Moscow denies that its forces are intervening in Crimea, an assertion Washington ridicules as "Putin's fiction". Journalists have seen Russian forces operating openly in their thousands over the past two weeks, driving in armored columns of vehicles with Russian license plates and identifying themselves to besieged Ukrainian troops as members of Russia's armed forces.A Reuters reporting team watched a Russian warship unload trucks, troops and at least one armored personnel carrier at Kazachaya bay near Sevastopol on Friday morning. Trucks drove off a ramp from the Yamal 156, a large landing ship that can carry more than 300 troops and up to a dozen APCs.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in London later on Friday in a last-ditch effort to head off the referendum in Crimea, now seen as all but inevitable.Russian troops seized the southern Ukrainian region two weeks ago as a pro-Moscow regional government took power there. The new regional authorities intend to secede from Ukraine and join Russia in a vote described in the West as illegal."What we would like to see is a commitment to stop putting new facts on the ground and a commitment to engage seriously on ways to de-escalate the conflict, to bring Russian forces back to barracks, to use international observers in place of force to achieve legitimate political and human rights objectives," a U.S. State Department official said ahead of Kerry's talks.But Russia has shown no sign of veering from President Vladimir Putin's plan to annex Crimea.Putin declared on March 1 that Russia had the right to invade its neighbor, a week after its ally Yanukovich fled the Ukrainian capital following three months of demonstrations that ended with about 100 people killed in the final days.In further signs of Moscow's belligerent posture ahead of the Crimea vote, the Defence Ministry announced on Friday it would hold exercises with fighter jets and helicopters over the Mediterranean Sea. On Thursday it announced artillery drills near Ukraine's border.U.S. and EU sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes on Russian officials and their firms, are now seen as inevitable. The only mystery remaining is who will be on the lists of targets when they are agreed at the start of next week.U.S. and European officials say the targets will not include Putin or Lavrov, but will include senior figures in the government and members of parliament in an effort to impose hardship on Russia's elite for backing Putin's policies.The initial list would be just a start, with more individuals and companies to be added later, and further trade sanctions could follow. Germany's Bild newspaper said the initial EU list would include at least 13 officials including top ministers and people around Putin.
SHARES FALL, DEBT INSURANCE COSTS RISE
Russia's MICEX stock index was down 2.9 percent at 0930 GMT, having lost more than 16 percent of its value in the two weeks since Putin declared his right to invade. At one point in the morning it had fallen 5 percent to its lowest since 2009.The cost of insuring Russia's debt against default for five years rose 18 basis points to 285 - a rise of nearly 7 percent - and is now up by half since the crisis began.Although Russian public opinion, fed by overwhelmingly state-controlled media, is still solidly behind the plan to annex Crimea, Western countries believe sanctions could undermine support for Putin among the wealthy elite.Goldman Sachs lowered its prediction for Russian economic growth for this year to 1 percent from 3 percent on Thursday, blaming the Ukraine crisis for sparking capital flight that will destroy investment.Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Russian media that the threat of Western sanctions was already imposing higher borrowing costs on Russian businesses and that further sanctions would push capital flight to $50 billion a quarter.Renaissance Capital estimated capital outflow in the first quarter would exceed $55 billion, compared with $63 billion for the whole of 2013.The ruble has declined only slightly despite the rout in share prices, held aloft by a central bank that raised its lending rates on March 3 and has been spending reserves to keep the currency from falling.Putin's March 1 declaration of the right to invade was accompanied by demonstrations across the south and east by groups who raised Russian flags, seized buildings and convened regional legislative sessions demanding secession, in what Kiev called Kremlin-orchestrated bids to repeat the Crimea scenario.The most persistent pro-Moscow agitation has been in Donetsk, where the Russian flag was flown above the regional government headquarters for nearly a week and pro-Russian protesters occupied the building for days. Their leader, who had declared himself "people's governor" and demanded police report to him, was finally arrested last week.(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Will Waterman)
EU diplomats start putting names on Russia blacklist
13.03.14 @ 14:36-By Andrew Rettman-EUOBSERVER
BRUSSELS - EU countries have started talks on who to blacklist for Russia’s invasion of Crimea, but few think it will make Russian leader Vladimir Putin retreat.The EU on Wednesday (12 March) agreed to impose visa bans and asset freezes on “persons responsible for actions which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine … and entities associated with them.”Talks on who to name have so far taken place outside EU structures.The British foreign office, for one, has been speaking with officials from the American, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Swiss, and Turkish embassies in London on who to designate.But on Thursday, EU countries’ diplomats began to collate each other’s ideas in an all-day meeting in Brussels.
The draft lists of names are confidential.
But diplomats say the EU will not name the one man who took the Crimea decision - Putin - or his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for now.Meanwhile, Wednesday’s sanctions text indicates they will first target Putin’s executive branch.Russia watchers say officials associated with the Crimea operation are: Alexander Bortnikov (Putin’s intelligence chief); Sergey Glazyev (a senior aide); Sergei Ivanov (Putin’s chief of staff); Nikolay Patrushev (the head of Putin’s security council); Sergei Shoygu (defence minister); Vladislav Surkov (another aide); and Alexander Vikto (the commander of Russia’s Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet).
If the EU decides to make the sanctions more political, it could target MPs.
Valentina Matvienko (the speaker of the Russian senate) shepherded a resolution to authorise Russian troops to invade Ukraine. Alexey Pushkov (the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house) and Dmitry Rogozin (deputy PM) also championed the idea. Vladimir Zhirinovsky (an MP) visited Crimea and called for it to join Russia.
EU states could target Putin’s business allies.
Alexey Miller (chairman of Russia’s gas monopoly, Gazprom) has waged economic warfare against Ukraine. Igor Sechin (one of Putin’s oldest friends) now runs state oil firm Rosneft. Vladimir Yakunin (Russia’s multi-millionaire railway chief) is a Putin confidante in a Kremlin culture in which decisions are not necessarily made by the official hierarchy.
EU countries also have more colourful options.
These include Ramzan Kadyrov (the leader of Russia’s semi-autonomous Chechen Republic), said to have sent paramilitaries to Crimea.They also include Alexander Zaldostanov (a Putin friend who leads the Night Wolves, a biker gang which went to Crimea to drum up support for secession) and Dmitry Kiselyov (a propagandist who heads Russia’s RT news channel).
The likely sequence of events is as follows.
Crimea votes to join Russia in a referendum - deemed illegal by the EU and US - on Sunday; Putin endorses the result; EU foreign ministers trigger the blacklist in Brussels on Monday; EU leaders discuss further sanctions at a summit on Thursday.
Looking stupid?
For his part, Andrew Wood, the British ambassador to Russia between 1995 and 2000, believes the EU has no better option than to impose the blacklist. He told EUobserver on Wednesday: “We’re in a situation where some bold gesture is needed and has become inevitable. If we don’t do it, we’ll look a bit stupid.”He does not believe Putin will back down: Wood said it would be “political suicide” for the Russian leader to cede Crimea due to Western pressure. “We know in advance that he’s not going to listen.”
But he believes Putin will try to limit the international fallout.
He said Russia is unlikely to formally annex Crimea at this stage. He also said Moscow might offer to join a "Contact Group" on Crimea conflict resolution, even though a Contact Group risks “serving Russian purposes” by institutionalising the partition of Ukraine.The former UK ambassador added that international opprobrium will undermine Putin in the long term.“It [the Crimea invasion] is a huge mistake,” he noted.“ Russians will rally round him in the initial aftermath, but in the end he will face a blowback from his own people … What he has shown is that he can do whatever he wants. This will discourage international investors and hurt Russia’s economy and future development. It will harm him morally as Russian people realise they are living in an ever-less liberal regime.”Unlike Russia's oligarchs, the Kremlin officials are not believed to hold significant financial assets in Europe.But the US also thinks that stigmatising Putin’s top cadre will harm his authority.“Putin depicts himself as someone who is capable of protecting his loyalists, down from the janitor in the building to the top chain of command, but the sanctions will show that he cannot guarantee their impunity,” a US contact involved in drawing up Washington’s Russia blacklist said.The US source added that EU naming and shaming of notoriously corrupt oligarchs like Sechin or Yakunin would stimulate the Russian opposition.
Realpolitik
The inclusion of Turkey and Switzerland in the UK deliberations indicate that London is willing to go pretty far to discourage Moscow from escalation.Swiss banks and low-tax cantons are considered a safe haven by Russia’s economic elite, while Turkey is a popular holiday destination for its middle class.But despite the strong rhetoric, there are cracks in the European facade.The Swiss foreign ministry told EUobserver its main interest in the London meeting was asset freezes on the former Ukrainian regime, not Russia.A Turkish diplomatic source indicated that Ankara is wary of Moscow: “Turkey gets 60 percent of its gas from Russia. A Russian company is building Turkey's first nuclear power plant. Turkish contractors have won contracts worth billions. In that sense, our position is no different from that of Germany: Realpolitik.”At the same time, the Russian opposition has a long way to go to challenge Putin’s rule.Vladimir Ashurkov, a spokesman for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Moscow-based NGO linked to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, told this website on Wednesday: “It is of course inspiring for me to see that people [in Ukraine] can overthrow a corrupt and authoritarian government … and we believe this can be an inspiration for Russian society.” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oligarch-turned-reformer, in Kiev this week told crowds: “This [the Ukrainian revolution] makes the Russian government nervous.”Very few Russians have so far come out on the streets to protest Putin’s actions in Crimea, however.For one, the Kremlin has cracked down on NGO financing and frightened people by throwing critics in prison.Navalny himself is under house arrest and cannot meet, phone, email, or tweet his contacts. He is only allowed visits by close relatives and lawyers. “The situation for civil society in Russia is quite different to Ukraine,” Ashurkov said.But for some Ukrainians, the lack of solidarity is also linked to nationalist sentiment in the Russian opposition.Roman Sohn, a Ukrainian civil society activist, noted that Khodorkovsky in his Kiev speech quibbled whether Russia was right or wrong to give Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.“I don't expect anything from Khodorkovsky,” he said.“Russian democracy stops at the matter of Ukraine … The miniscule number of people in Moscow protesting against the war speaks loudly to the rest of the world that even the Russian opposition has the same imperialistic mentality as Putin,” he added.
