Actions review: nerve wracking play

UKRAINE - In Brief 02 Mar 2014 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Though Putin already was granted permission to act officially, real military actions did not start yet. Russian troops keep teasing Ukrainian forces in Crimea trying to provoke more aggression. In particular, through the day Russian soldiers have been entertaining themselves by taking into besiege Ukrainian military bases, announcing ultimatums to surrender under threat of attack and then… retreated. In some cases, Russian soldiers managed to enter Ukrainian bases but all they tried to do was to steal ammunition. All this looks like that Putin really lacks a solid excuse to start killing Ukrainians and he is in desperate search of at least something. Since Ukrainian army took a strong position not to open fire first, we see huge danger for peaceful people in Crimea. Without a lot of innocent Russian blood to show on TV the Crimean campaign would be a fail for Kremlin. Put it different we anticipate more provocations from Russians over the upcoming days at the peninsular. Against this backdrop a reputable sociological institute Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) today revealed results of survey that were really surprising. Though it was generally believed that Crimea is pro-Russian, KIIS reported that according to their survey only 41% of Crimean inhabitants are supporting integration with Russia. In other words, we suspect that all the show with Russian troops might be arranged to put under control referendum process at the peninsular. To make matters worse (for Russia), the survey was arranged before Viktor Yanukovych escaped the country and before Russian military occupied Crimea. We suspect that after all the events pro-Russian support has significantl...