Chaotic in Crimea, Ctd

#BREAKING 2,000 Russian soldiers land in “armed invasion” of Crimea: Kiev official

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 28, 2014

#Crimea
RT @markmackinnon: Russian troop trucks on road north of Sevastopol: pic.twitter.com/P7K91JR45b

— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) February 28, 2014

Armed men seize Ukrtelecom building in Sevastopol, cutting off phone & Internet access to 80% of local population. gazeta.ru/politics/news/…—
Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) February 28, 2014

Russian fighter jets are flying CAPs over the Sea of Azov. Mi-24s and APCs (also Russian) have been seen within Crimea. 1/3—
Collin Fisher (@CollinFisher) February 28, 2014

And attack helicopters:

Special representative to Crimea: thirteen Russian aircraft land at base near Sevastopol with 150 people on each—
Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) February 28, 2014

This is not good – Russian consulate in #Crimea ordered to hand out citizenship to #Ukaine riot police Berkut. itar-tass.com/politika/10123…—
Dan Peleschuk (@dpeleschuk) February 28, 2014

Crimean airspace now closed and reports telecoms have been cut too – events accelerating fast in Ukraine and still no word from Putin—
Tony Halpin (@tonyhalpin) February 28, 2014

If gunmen in Crimea are not acting on Kremlin's behalf, it would calming for Russian govt. to say so. Silence fuels uncertainty, instability—
Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 28, 2014

BREAKING: White House: Russian intervention in Ukraine would be grave mistake http://t.co/BZhOPl2RHe #ukraine #crimea pic.twitter.com/SJnCNQNDvy

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) February 28, 2014

Obama: “There will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine”

— Ilya Mouzykantskii (@ilyamuz) February 28, 2014

The Interpreter continues to see Russia’s actions as a prelude to war:

For days we’ve been reporting rumors that the Russian government was expediting passports for ethnic Russians wishing to flee Crimea. There was a draft law debated to this effect in the Russian State Duma. Now, this announcement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Facebook page:

Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Simferopol urgently requested to take all necessary steps to start issuing Russian passports to members of the “Berkut” fighting force.

In other words, Russia is now urging the nationalization of Yanukovych’s riot police. Why is this important? Before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 they issued passports to ethnic Russians.

Some background on that invasion:

[In 2008], Moscow was accused of stirring up tensions in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and goading Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president, into ordering his armed forces to retake control of South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in troops and warplanes and crushing the Georgian military in the five-day conflict.

Putin will never let go of Crimea, especially the great Russian base of Sebastopol. By comparison South Ossetia was a minor matter.—
Christopher Meyer (@SirSocks) February 28, 2014

But Jonathan Marcus doesn’t think comparisons to Georgia are appropriate:

Georgia was a small country that had deeply irritated Moscow and one that could do little to respond against Russia’s overwhelming military might. … Given the size of Ukraine and the divisions within its population, it would simply saddle Russia with involvement in what might rapidly become a bitter civil war. Russian pressure at the moment serves a different goal. Ukraine is heading towards bankruptcy. It needs outside funding. Moscow knows that Western financial institutions must play some kind of role. Its concern is to underline in as clear terms as possible that any future Ukrainian government should tilt as much towards Moscow as it does to the EU. Russia’s bottom line is that Kiev should resist any temptation to draw towards Nato.

Actually, I agree. Putin doesn't want to invade Ukraine right now. He wants to start a Ukrainian civil war. And THEN invade.—
Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 28, 2014

Joshua Tucker sides with Marcus:

Ukraine is a much bigger country, with a much bigger population, and a much bigger military. Georgia has 37,000 active military personnel and 140,000 active reserve personnel.  Ukraine has 160,000 active, and 1,000,000 reserve.  A war with Ukraine would look very different from a war with Georgia. …

What’s really in it for Russia?

Say everything goes as best as it possibly could for Russia: Crimea secedes, Ukraine goes along with it without a fight, and Crimea eventually joins Russia.  Russia gets some nice new beaches, but do they really want a Ukraine as a neighbor which now (a) regards Russia as the biggest external threat it has, and (b) has just lost lots of Russian-speaking voters?  Wouldn’t that seem to guarantee a hostile Ukraine for years and years to come?  And would another region of Russia with a potentially restive ethnic minority, [the Turkey-backed Crimean Tatars,] be worth that price?

Leon Mangasarian adds that a full military conflict remains unlikely:

[Eastern European analyst Anna Maria] Dyner said economic concerns are an even bigger reason discouraging Russia from overt intervention in Ukraine. The Kremlin doesn’t have “a huge amount of money to spend on such a big operation,” she said. More fundamentally, she added, Russia’s slowing economy is a factor.

“Ukraine is an important gas transit country to Europe and a conflict would probably damage pipelines, further harming ties with the West,” Dyner said. “This would damage the Russian economy, which is the last thing Putin wants right now, just as they’re thinking about reforms amid weak growth.”

But Luke Harding believes that “Moscow’s military moves so far resemble a classically executed coup” in Crimea:

[S]eize control of strategic infrastructure, seal the borders between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, invoke the need to protect the peninsula’s ethnic Russian majority. The Kremlin’s favourite news website, Lifenews.ru, was on hand to record the historic moment. Its journalists were allowed to video Russian forces patrolling ostentatiously outside Simferopol airport. …

From Putin’s perspective, a coup would be payback for what he regards as the western-backed takeover of Kiev by opposition forces – or fascists, as the Kremlin media calls them. The Kremlin argument runs something like this: if armed gangs can seize power in the Ukrainian capital, storming government buildings, why can’t pro-Russian forces do the same thing in Crimea?

Meanwhile, Josh Rogin reports that the troops in Crimea may not be official Russian forces, but rather soldiers working for the equivalent of Russia’s Blackwater, probably under the direction of Russia’s military:

[Analyst Dimitri] Simes cautioned that information about the fast moving events in Crimea is hard to verify, but the message coming out of Moscow is that these security contractors were deployed by the Russian military for two purposes; first of all they want to secure the airport to ensure that thousands of pro-western protesters don’t descend into Crimea to push back against the Crimean population’s effort to establish a new government and seek some autonomy from the new government in Kiev, which most Crimeans see as illegitimate.

Second, the forces could be paving the way for Yanukovich to travel to Crimea, where he will maintain that he is still the president of all Ukraine. In fact, Yanukovich was involved in the decision to deploy the security contractors to the airport, he said. …

[T]he private security forces provide a loophole for Vladimir Putin; he can claim there is no Russian “military” intervention while using Russian-controlled forces to exert influence inside Ukraine. The plan would be to give the new Crimean government a space to hold a referendum and then elections, thereby establishing a province with some autonomy from Kiev.

Keating doesn’t think anybody would be able to stop Russia from having its way with Crimea:

The fragile new Ukrainian government, which has other problems, not the least of which is keeping other parts of the country from splitting off, doesn’t really seem like it’s in a position to retake Crimea by force, risking a full armed intervention by the Black Sea Fleet. These moves likely violate the 1994 agreement between the U.S. and Russia under which Moscow agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty within its current borders in return for Kiev giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Beyond verbal warnings, the United States certainly seems extremely unlikely to intervene.

He nonetheless warns against assuming this would a big win for Putin:

[G]aining de facto control over yet another dysfunctional pseudostate, essentially ensuring long-term tension with Kiev in the process, certainly doesn’t seem as good an outcome as what Russia thought it was getting a month ago: a government of the whole of Ukraine tied economically and politically to Russia rather than Europe. This isn’t really a great outcome for anyone.