Drag in the completely unrelated Kosovo, and that was a pan-NATO move... typical of an obfuscating Rooskiette.
It would have been easy for Russia to have had class if Crimea really wanted to be independent.
Especially with Barack Obama a do-nothing. What’s he going to do, freeze a few assets that can be more than repaid with Russian oil money?
But no, Russia had to show what a punk it was.
Even China has more class. Why is it almost impossible to find Russian items for sale in the USA? They’ve been sulking in a corner while China has gotten busy doing something actually useful.
“Drag in the completely unrelated Kosovo”
I do because it created a precedent in international law!
US supported every secessionist group that wanted to break away from Yugoslavia, they bombed Yugoslavia, and they declared the Yugoslav Army to be an occupier on its own territory.
The Assembly of Kosovo, a province of Serbia, approved an unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Kosovo was soon recognized as a sovereign state by the United States, Turkey, Albania, Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and others ...
According to Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: “A precedent is objectively created not just for South Ossetia and Abkhazia but also for an estimated 200 territories around the world. If someone is allowed to do something, many others will expect similar treatment.”
The West can’t have it both ways. They can’t say, for example, that the right of Albanians to self-determination in Kosovo trumps Serbia’s right to territorial integrity, and then turn around and say that Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity trumps the right of Russians in Crimea to self-determination.