Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
Unless the people of Crimea don't want to be part of the Ukraine anymore.
Key word being "the people".
Quote:
So really whomever is in Kiev is irrelevant. It would be just like the Republic of Texas going back to being its own thing, or any of the states in the US.
Sure. And if they declared their intention to do so only while their leaders are being held by foreign soldiers, one might just suspect that it's not an honest desire for separation.
Quote:
They can leave whenever they want. If people in Crimea didn't like it, they wouldn't be out in the streets waving the ole tribar and flying it from their windows, and off their businesses, and on their state buildings.
The people of Crimea who aren't pro Russian are likely hiding in their homes because there are armed soldiers on the streets who probably wont appreciate their position. Get it? It's really easy to talk about how free speech is until there are armed people walking the streets who oppose what you want to say.
Quote:
In the Crimean capital of Simferopol, around 6,000 people marched, chanting “Russia!†and “No to Fascism!†and carrying a huge Russian flag.
You can get 6,000 people to assemble for almost anything. That's meaningless. Crimea has a population of approximately 2 million people. 6 thousand isn't significant.
Quote:
Thousands were also demonstrating with Russian and Soviet flags in Odessa, the third-largest city in the country. According to police, around 5,000 people took part in the gathering, while organizers insist there were up to 20,000.
Yeah. Same thing. There are very good reasons why we don't decide who should run a country based on the number of protesters at events. It's called voting.
Quote:
Spin it however you want though. People of Crimea elected their officials, they elected the new PM, they are very happy with the choice. Or at least as happy with it as the couple thousand who spoke on behalf of all Ukrainians when they torched Kiev last month.
And if there had been foreign troops surrounding the Parliament building while they voted to remove the current president and PM (and a few others) and replace them, you'd have a point. There's a huge difference between the citizens of a nation deciding to do something themselves, and soldiers from another nation walking in and forcing them to do it at gunpoint. The fact that a smallish percentage of citizens think it's a good idea doesn't make it ok at all. You can't possibly know what "the people" of Crimea really want, or what they're happy with. Again, there's a reason why we have rule of law to determine these things.
I'll also point out that the Council of Crimea (their Parliament) doesn't elect the Prime Minister of Crimea by itself. The PM must be approved by the president of Ukraine. This never happened. Not only that, but the current acting president specifically declared Aksyonov's placement as PM illegal and in violation of the country's constitution (which it is). So it's not remotely the same thing. Even if we assumed this was the will of the people (which seems ridiculously unlikely), it would still be illegal.
Edited, Mar 3rd 2014 7:42pm by gbaji