Putin Annexes Crimea

 With a sweep of his pen, President Vladimir Putin added Crimea to the map of Russia on Tuesday, describing the move as correcting a past injustice and responding to what he called Western encroachment upon Russia's vital interests.

While his actions were met with cheers in Crimea and Russia, Ukraine's new government called Putin a threat to the whole world and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned that the U.S. and Europe will impose further sanctions against Moscow.
"The world has seen through Russia's actions and has rejected the flawed logic," Biden said as he met with anxious European leaders in Poland.
In an emotional 40-minute speech televised live from the Kremlin's white-and-gold St. George hall, the Russian leader said he was merely restoring order to history by incorporating Crimea.
"In people's hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia," he declared.
He dismissed Western criticism of Sunday's Crimean referendum - in which residents of the strategic Black Sea peninsula overwhelmingly backed leaving Ukraine and joining Russia - as a manifestation of the West's double standards. Often interrupted by applause, Putin said the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine had been abused by the new Ukrainian government and insisted that Crimea's vote to join Russia was in line with international law and reflected its right for self-determination.
Putin said his actions followed what he described as Western arrogance, hypocrisy and pressure, and warned that the West must drop its stubborn refusal to take Russian concerns into account.
"If you push a spring too hard at some point it will spring back," he said, addressing the West. "You always need to remember this."
While Putin boasted that the Russian takeover of Crimea was conducted without a single shot, a Ukrainian military spokesman said one Ukrainian serviceman was killed and another injured when a military facility in Crimea was stormed Tuesday by armed men just hours after Putin's speech. As for the sanctions brought to bear on his country, he completely ignores them.
Joe Biden, visiting Poland, condemns Russian 'land grab'
The U.S. immediately fired back, with Vice President Joe Biden condemning Putin's actions and vowing to impose more sanctions against Russia.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Warsaw on Tuesday. During his trip to the region, Biden is set to speak about the Ukraine crisis with the leaders of Poland, Estonia and Lithuania.

Biden, speaking in Warsaw next to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said the world has seen through Russia's actions in Crimea, which he called "nothing more than a land grab."
Biden says virtually the entire world rejects the referendum in Crimea that cleared the way for Russia to annex the peninsula in Ukraine. The Crimea crisis is not just a problem for Ukraine ...but also for the 'global community'. Many leaders feel that the underlying motive for the grab is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, something that Russia would like to prevent.
G7 leaders to talk Ukraine at The Hague
The United States and its G7 allies will gather next week at The Hague to consider further response to Russia's attempt to absorb Ukraine's Crimea region, the White House said on Tuesday.

The meeting will take place on the margins of a nuclear security summit at The Hague that President Obama plans to attend.
"The meeting will focus on the situation in Ukraine and further steps that the G7 may take to respond to developments and to support Ukraine," said White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

On Monday, the White House imposed asset freezes on seven Russian officials, including Putin' close ally Valentina Matvienko, who is speaker of the upper house of parliament, and Vladislav Surkov,
one of Putin's top ideological aides. The Treasury Department also targeted Yanukovych, Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov and two other top figures.
The EU's foreign ministers slapped travel bans and asset freezes against 21 officials from Russia and Ukraine.
Despite Obama's vow of tougher measures, stock markets in Russia and Europe rose sharply, reflecting relief that trade and business ties were spared.
"I guess the market view is that Russia forced their case in Crimea, pushed through the referendum, and the Western reaction was muted, so that this opens the way for future Russian intervention in Ukraine," said Tim Ash, an analyst who follows Ukraine at Standard Bank PLC.
Biden is also set to meet with the leaders of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia while he's on the road.
New concerns in Ukraine as Russia ignores sanctions
Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in a televised statement that Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies have gathered "convincing evidence of the participation of Russian special services in organizing unrest in the east of our country."

Members of a 'Maidan' self-defense battalion take part in a training at a Ukrainian Interior Ministry base near Kyiv. Ukraine's parliament, seeking to boost the country's military force in the face of Russia's takeover of the Crimea peninsula, endorsed a presidential decree on Monday to carry out a partial mobilization involving 40,000 reservists.

Many in the ethnic Tatar minority in Crimea were wary of the referendum, fearing that Crimea's break-off from Ukraine would set off violence against them.

Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliyev seemed to confirm those fears, saying in remarks carried by the RIA Novosti news agency that the government would ask Tatars to "vacate" some of the lands they "illegally" occupy so authorities can use them for "social needs."

The Russian State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution condemning U.S. sanctions targeting Russian officials including members of the chamber. The chamber challenged President Barack Obama to extend the sanctions to all the 353 deputies who voted for Tuesday's resolution, suggesting that being targeted was a badge of honour. Eighty-eight deputies wishing to remain neutral left the house before the vote.

Putin's senior foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov blasted the new sanctions in an interview with Russian news agencies. “We are fed up with these sanctions,” Ushakov said.

“They provoke only feelings of irony and sarcasm.”