Photo Credit: CNNBiden links Russia’s anti-gay laws to incursion into Ukraine
By Kevin Liptak.
Russia’s “gay propaganda” law that makes it illegal to tell children about gay rights is linked to the nation’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea, Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday night.
Speaking at a gala in Los Angeles for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Biden suggested countries that don’t respect the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people also disregard borders.
“As the great Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov said, ‘A country that does not respect the rights of its citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbors,’ and we’re seeing that today, we’re seeing that today in Ukraine,” the vice president said.
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Vladimir Putin, Russia’s spy in chief
By Jim Hoagland.
Shake hands with Vladimir Putin, as I have three times, and you do not feel you are in the presence of a master strategist or a visionary ready to change history with his ideas. Putin comes across in conversation as vain and petulant, with a taste for cruelly needling others.
This is key to understanding where the Crimea crisis goes next. The Russian Supreme Spy will probe for weaknesses and exploit them by buying, bullying or backstabbing his adversaries. Like all spies, he assumes there is a little treachery, and a lot of larceny, in us all. Proving that is what makes him tick.
Russia’s move to slice Crimea from Ukraine was an example of “black ops,” as Tom Donilon, President Obama’s astute former national security adviser, put it over the weekend. The White House may be going to school on the espionage novels of John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum rather than the memoirs of Dean Acheson and George Kennan.
The available evidence suggests that the former KGB colonel did not set out to restart the Cold War. He is not operating from a grand design to dismember Ukraine, though he would greedily pocket that outcome if it happens.
For now, he intends to extend his invasion deep into Ukraine’s east only if events encourage or, in his view, force him to do so. He acts out of opportunism and an obsession with inflicting payback on his professional rivals. He is, however, containable if confronted with consistency and clarity.
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Photo Credit: AP / Sergei GritsUkraine fears Russia ‘ready to attack’
By Dmitry ZAKS.
Ukraine’s Western-backed leaders voiced fears on Sunday of an imminent Russian invasion of the eastern industrial heartland following the fall of their last airbase in Crimea to defiant Kremlin troops.
Saturday’s takeover involving armoured personnel carriers and stun grenades provided the most spectacular show of force since the Kremlin sent troops into the heavily Russified peninsula three weeks ago before sealing its annexation Friday.
Alarm about a push outside Crimea by Moscow’s overwhelming forces — now conducting drills at Ukraine’s eastern gate — were fanned further Sunday by a call by its self-declared premier for Russians across the ex-Soviet country to rise up against Kiev’s rule.
The interim leaders in Kiev fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin — flushed with expansionist fervour — is developing a sense of impunity after being hit by only limited EU and US sanctions for taking the Black Sea cape.
“The aim of Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine… His troops massed at the border are ready to attack at any moment,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy told a mass unity rally in Kiev.
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MOSCOW (AP) – Kissing his boyfriend during a protest in front of Russia’s parliament earned Pavel Samburov 30 hours of detention and the equivalent of a $16 fine on a charge of “hooliganism.” But if a bill that comes up for a first vote later this month becomes law, such a public kiss could be defined as illegal “homosexual propaganda” and bring a fine of up to $16,000.