Crimea had a referendum. Opinion polls and independent studies in the time since have shown that the referendum results match other forms of polling, it was not rigged. They wanted to join Russia, mostly because since the fall of the Soviet Union Russian salaries are now 10x higher than Ukraine despite starting in the same place.
People who try to argue that the cold war is still running don't get anywhere with me.
That's absurd, there was no referendum if special forces and unlabeled army forces of an invading country is there to "enforce peace" - and the rest of the world doesn't share that naive view and continues to punish Russia for it through trade deals and embargoes, lowering the quality of life of Russians and devaluing the ruble while increasing import costs for them. Tell me, how's that been going for Russia?
Well, I agree we shouldn't be encouraging it, but when I pay attention to the shadow government players like Kissinger and Brzenski, they seem hell bent on bringing back the Cold War (I call it the neocold-war), mostly because while no one really speaks about it publicly, resource wars are on the horizon.
Referendum was organized under supervision of Russian special forces and Russia acknowledged this. By all laws it was a military operation which is normally called annexation. Hitler made the same annexation in his times.
Interestingly, the survey conducted in 2013 in Crimea doesn't show any sign of Russian language discrimination at that time.
Which proves one more time that all Russian propaganda was just lie.
And you intentionally or unintentionally support Kremlin propaganda.
This was after the democratically elected president of Ukraine was overthrown by undemocratic means (protests) and went into exile in Russia. This subtext is conveniently ignored because the president was pro-Russia.
The Ukraine is not Europe (at least not if you contrast Europe and Russia like that) and the Crimean Peninsula has a disputed past.
Calling Ukraine "Europe" (again: in contrast with Russia) really just masks the power struggle that was going on before the annexation and the (Russia-supported) civil war. Ukraine was originally part of the "buffer zone" between Russia and the NATO. Both EU and NATO (i.e. US) were trying to change that (not that Ukrainians really complained or anything -- the prospect of EU membership was obviously exciting for many of them).
Does nobody remember the infamous "F### the EU" wiretap? It may have been published by Russia (though that was never confirmed AFAICT) but it was authentic.
Certainly. It was a part of the Roman Empire, state language is French, and most money flows from France. Its apity, that geographically its Africa. I propose to rename Northern Africa the Special European Economical Interest Area.
Israel, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (and now even Australia!) participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. So I guess the concept of Europe is flexible enough to allow for that.
