Epstein Secrets

l. In a rare break with Russia on the U.N. Security Council, China refused to condone Russia's moves in Crimea. Moscow's annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia was recognized by Nicaragm, Venezuela and two island nations in the South Pacific. That might be as many as will recognize the annexa

ed by Moscow to listen to its diktats. That path is now blocked. Princeton professor Stephen Kotkin points out that in the last elections, in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, representing to some extent the pro- Russian forces, won Crimea by nearly a million votes, which is why he won the election overall. In other words

and Methods of Modern Authoritarians 7. Military invasions: Russian forces poured into Georgia through its two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, during a brief con- flict in 2008. In 2014, Russian troops occupied Crimea, oversaw a stage-managed referendum on annexation there, and unofficial

ine also zeroed in on Ukraine's sup- posed lack of respect for minority rights, a problem that Moscow had not raised during the administra- tions of Viktor Yanukovych or Leonid Kuchma. Neither Ukrainians nor informed observers in the outside world believed that Ukraine was faced with a civil war. This was entire

de by that promise is unclear. In 2008, he sent Russian forces into neighboring Georgia, ostensibly to protect the secessionist Georgian enclave of South Ossetia; the real goal was to weaken the pro-Western government in Tbilisi. Russia and the West both have legitimate interests in Ukraine and its future.

en it put 150,000 troops on high alert on Wednesday for war games near Ukraine's border and then on Friday allowed the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to give a news conference when he showed up in the Russian city Rostov-on-Don. The situation has now gone from chaos to the verge of military con

in Putin's equation the military risks would be EFTA00684330 negligible. Nothing happened in 2008 when Russia sent its military into Georgia and South Ossetia. In fact Georgia-South Ossetia 2008 might serve—with some modifications-as a blueprint. The main risks would be economic sanctions imposed by the W

planned "Eurasian Union" as the core of a new Russian mini-empire. Turns out, however, Ukraine had other ideas. It overthrew Moscow's man in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych, and turned to the West. But the West — the E.U. and America — had no idea what to do. Russia does. Moscow denounces the overthrow as the illegal w