واشنطن والاتحاد الاوروبي يفرضان عقوبات على مسؤولين روس وأوكرانيين لتوجيه "رسالة قوية" على خلفية القرم

There they go stealing peoples money again.

Oh and we won't worry about sanctioning Putin. What a farce. We shoud all sanction the US for it's bombing of Serbia. We should sanction them for bombing and INVADING Iraq and Afghanistan of which neither harmed the world or other nations as Al-Qadia was built by the Yankees themselves directly from Virginia.

pheonix... its not as if the US can do anything. They must make an attempt at punishing "pro russian" officials with sanctions that probably wont affect them one bit. Crimea and the Ukraine is Russian territory and area of influence. Its a red line for russia. Not a pretend red line for the media... but a real life, threat to the sovereignty of Russia red line! no one can do anything about it and the world knows it just like what happened in Georgia.

Yanukovych might have been a despot leader but the way the EU, US and NATO cheered and rushed to acknowledge a government that expelled 70% of the Ukrainian elected politicians and undermined and threatened russian speakers and the Russian military by neo nazis, is the reason the bear lost patience with the threats and attacks on its border. Do you know what the Ukraine translates as? "The border lands"! The Ukraine are the Russian border lands!

stop poking the bear and the bear will not have a tantrum.

US in league with House of Saud and now with Nazis. Sadness. American Foreign Policy consists of Bluffing, Bombs, and Bad Choices

anonymetexasusa, things are not as simple as you would like to make them be. When dealing with statistics and demographics, and specially populations, you should have a firm understanding of all 3 of them to make a credible interpretation, and I sense you do not since you're analysis is overly simplistic in all regards.

2. The point you should take home is that even so-called Ukrainians in Crimea do not see themselves as such, and the strong Russian sphere of influence encompasses Ukraine to such an extent that almost the entire populational representation characterized itself as more Russian than Ukrainian when provided a choice of either/or. I'd like to make a brief mention of my time in Ukraine where a lot of the times I'd hear people reminiscing about 'the good ol' soviet days' and going on about 'if this were Russia' and so on. It's all about the maturity and understanding that being part of the Russia Federation is magnitudes better than the current situation in Ukraine, and the country being under the Russian sphere of influence for at about a century and sharing a common history hat eclipses this figure by quite a margin tends to shape the values and beliefs held by the population, and that includes the predilection of wanting to go back to Russia.

3. I understand your (maybe perceived) frustration regarding the matter, but you must observe things with reasonable objectivity. Would it have made a difference if it was 60% or 70% or even 51%? Democracy rules, no double standards please; your presidents are chosen to lead the most powerful country on the planet by a difference of even 1%. Regardless of all this, I believe the reasons for opposing the Crimean referendum involves a couple of things worth mentioning:

First, Russia's the new kid on the block that needs some roughening up in order to subjugate itself to the current hierarchy of power (e.g. USA#1!! durr).

Second, this would set a bad precedent for the exact countries who are most vehemently against the referendum. You have Texas that wants to secede from the US, Quebec from Canada, Scotland from Britain, Brittany from France, even Tibet from China, and so on.

4. Third, it undoubtedly undermines US power, which is a good thing. I'm no US hater, in fact I know for a fact that most technological advances were conceived of in the US, but taking things down a notch politically wouldn't be a bad idea given the fact that the US has singularly destabilized the entirety of the Middle East and at least half of Latin America, and has always tried to enforce the 'right' choices in regards to democratic decisions and fruition thereof (e.g. CIA backed contras/revolutions/counter-revolutions/etc.) . Russia's not much better than the US in many cases, but having a unipolar world is not healthy nor productive for the world nor the future of mankind. I welcome this step as a correction of error.

texas, i already mentioned in a past post that the succession of crimea is a "good" thing for the pro-west Ukrainians. and that the pro-russians lost a good chunk of the votes. I do not believe any other area will secede as the heat is already too high with crimea alone.
Ukraine will join NATO, and so will Georgia... this will be the biggest "punishment" (even though russia actually did the west a favor in Ukrain) of Russia the west can hand out.
The economic union that Putin dreams of is also finished. there is too much distrust and fear in the ex-soviet states that have a substantial russian speaking population. many of the stans are already condemning russias actions.