How will the crisis over Crimea ‘end’?
“We know where this is likely to end. We will accept Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea. Sanctions will be quietly dismantled, Moscow will reassure Kiev with a deal on neutrality. Nato will agree no further eastward expansion. The G7 will again become G8; and Crimea will join Tibet, Kosovo, East Timor, Chechnya, Georgia and other territorial interventions which history students will struggle to remember. But how do we get from here to there?”
This is a the opening to a column in today’s “Guardian” by Simon Jenkins which presents a nuanced and hard-headed look at the crisis over the Crimea.
Jenkins asserts:
“Putin emerges from this crisis not as clever and calculating but as an emotional, scary figure, lonely and alarmingly bereft of checks or balances. His seizure of Crimea has been popular and, in the scheme of things, no big outrage against international order. But the sabre-rattling along Nato’s eastern border is as provocative as were the careless antics of Nato and the EU in Kiev over recent years. Putin too needs a bridge over which to retreat.”
You can read the column by Simon Jenkins here.