Ukraine: Drums of war in the Crimea - similarity between Sevastopol and Guantánamo?

Diplomats scrambled Saturday to respond to the unanimous vote by Russia's upper house of Parliament to approve sending military forces into Ukraine.

The vote followed a request from President Vladimir Putin for approval to send troops into Crimea to normalize the political situation there.

Putin cited the "extraordinary situation in Ukraine" in making his request, adding that the lives of Russian citizens and military personnel based in the southern Crimea region had been threatened.

Late in the evening, Ukrainian acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in a televised address in Kiev that he had been told by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that no decision had been made on whether Russian military forces would indeed enter his country.

Yatsenyuk said his country was ready to mobilize its forces to protect strategic locations, including nuclear power plants.

The Ukrainian military is at the highest state of military readiness, Defense Minister Igor Tenyukh said. He credited negotiations during the day between the Ukrainian and Russian naval chiefs with easing tensions and said more negotiations were planned for Sunday.

Ukraine's new government condemned the move by Russia's upper house."We perceive Russia's actions as direct aggression towards the sovereignty of Ukraine," said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov on the Twitter account of his Fatherland party.

With the collapse of the pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine last week, Russia sees a threat to its larger goal of maintaining a sphere of influence over its "near abroad," what used to be the Soviet Union. It wants to protect its natural gas pipelines across Ukraine. And it has a specific concern with preserving its facilities in Sevastopol. It also wants to protect Ukraine's ethnic Russians from discrimination.

The danger is that Russia will use the situation of Ukraine's Russian speakers as a pretext to achieve its other goals. It did that in 2008 when it invaded the Republic of Georgia and gave official recognition to breakaway regions as independent states.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would defend Ukraine's Russians "uncompromisingly." At the same time, President Vladimir Putin ordered military exercises on Ukraine's border and put 150,000 troops on alert. Russia's Interfax news agency said the Defense Ministry reported that "constant air patrols are being carried out by fighter jets in the border regions."

Some 26,000 Russian troops are believed to be stationed in Sevastopol. Ukraine's new President warned Moscow that if Russian troops leave their bases "it will be considered military aggression."

In a way there is some similarity between  between Sevastopol and  Guantánamo. Both are foreign military/naval bases within an independent country  "leased" by another country. 

If this is the case, the question one could ask is : "what would the US do in case Cuba decided to kick the Americans out of  Guantánamo?"

EU-Digest