Ukraine removes military from Crimea, demands release of naval commander

By End the Lie
[Mar 19, 2014]

Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (Image credit: U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine/Flickr)

Ukraine announced that they would pull their military forces out of Crimea while demanding the release of a naval commander after he was captured by armed men who seized a base in Sevastopol, Crimea, without resistance.

Read our latest: “Ukrainian PM calls Russian annexation of Crimea ‘robbery on an international scale’” and “Putin recognizes Crimea as independent state as Crimea moves closer to joining Russia”

Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov warned that his country would take “appropriate measures” if Rear Admiral Sergei Haiduk and others are not released.

“If by 21:00 (local time) all provocations against Ukrainian troops are not ceased, and Admiral Haiduk and all other hostages, civilian and military, are not freed, the authorities will take appropriate measures,” Turchynov said in a statement, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The measures were not explained, though Turchynov said they would include ones “of a technical and technological nature.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said they would begin evacuating troops from Crimea, with head of the Ukrainian National Security Council Andriy Parubiy saying that demilitarization “is the best way to de-escalate the situation.”

“Troops from both Ukraine and Russia” should leave Crimea, Purubiy said to reporters in Kiev, according to a Bloomberg report.

Purubiy would not say when the evacuation would take place.

“We are working on a plan to quickly and effectively transport not only military servicemen but also their families to the territory of mainland Ukraine,” he said, according to NBC News.

Purubiy said that the Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs has asked the United Nations to classify Crimea as a demilitarized zone and call for the removal of Russian troops from the region.

NBC reports that Purubiy said the country will hold military maneuvers with the signatories to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum without elaborating. The Russian Federation signed the memorandum, along with the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama said that Russia violated the memorandum by moving troops into Crimea.

However, Ukraine said they are going to reinforce troops patrolling the eastern regions of the country over concerns about Russia.

The Ukrainian government says that there are 22,000 Russian forces currently in Crimea along with civilian self-defense forces, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Russian parliament is reportedly finalizing legislation to formally absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation. The first Russian passports were also reportedly handed out to people in Crimea on Wednesday.

Senior Ukrainian officials said they plan to travel to Crimea as part of their effort to avert a further escalation of hostilities, but Crimean officials want no part of it, according to New York Daily News.

“They are not welcome in Crimea,” Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov said, referring to Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and defense minister. “They will not be allowed to enter in Crimea. They will be sent back.”

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March 21, 2014 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, Russia, sovereignty, tyranny, Ukraine, US | 2 Comments

What the Western Media Won’t Tell You: Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians Also Voted to Join Russia

by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Mar 18, 2014

16 марта мы выбираем

или

Image: “On the 16th of March We Choose”: neo-Nazi Ukraine “Or” Russia?

Media reports acknowledge that 83.1 percent of eligible Crimean voters cast their ballot in the March 16th referendum.

The final tally of the vote was 96.77 percent in favor of joining the Russian Federation, and 2.51 percent against.

The Western media has underscored that both the Crimean Tatars as well as the Ukrainian population of Crimea were against joining the Russian Federation. The Non-Russian population constitutes 41.7 percent of the Crimean population.

According to official data, Russians constitute 58.32% of the population of Crimea, 24.32% are Ukrainians and 12.10% are Crimean Tatars.

The Guardian, in a slither of media disinformation intimated that the Tatars feared a wave of repression if Crimea were to join the Russian Federation:

Now, as Crimea faces a referendum that is likely to seal its fate as a province or satellite of Russia, ethnic tensions are reaching boiling point. In a chilling echo of history, Tatar houses in the Crimean city of Bakhchisarai have been marked with an ominous X, just as they were before the Soviet-era deportations. On Monday two Tatar businesses were firebombed.

…. The prospect of a return to living under Moscow’s rule is disturbing. “People are in panic. “We are trying to keep people calm but they are scared of the Russian soldiers and Cossacks that come here,” he said.” (Crimea’s Tatars fear the worst as it prepares for referendum | World news | theguardian.com

Contrary to the reports of 135  international observers from 23 countries, the Western media in chorus has suggested without a shred of evidence that the elections were rigged and that Crimea was under Russian military occupation.

The observer mission reports which include members of theEuropean Parliament have been casually ignored by the mainstream Western media:

Mateus Piskorkski, the leader of the European observers’ mission and Polish MP:  “Our observers have not registered any violations of voting rules.”

Ewald Stadler, member of the European Parliament, dispelled the “referendum at gunpoint” myth:  “I haven’t seen anything even resembling pressure… People themselves want to have their say.”

Pavel Chernev: Bulgarian member of parliament:  “Organization and procedures are 100 percent in line with the European standards,” he added.

A woman is reflected in a mirror as she casts her ballot during voting in a referendum at a polling station in Simferopol March 16, 2014.(Reuters / Thomas Peter)

Johann Gudenus, member of the Vienna Municipal Council:  “Our opinion is – if people want to decide their future, they should have the right to do that and the international community should respect that. There is a goal of people in Crimea to vote about their own future. Of course, Kiev is not happy about that, but still they have to accept and to respect the vote of people in Crimea”.

Serbian observer Milenko Baborats “People freely expressed their will in the most democratic way, wherever we were… During the day we didn’t see a single serious violation of legitimacy of the process,”

Srdja Trifkovic, prominent and observer from Serbia: “The presence of troops on the streets is virtually non-existent and the only thing resembling any such thing is the unarmed middle-aged Cossacks who are positioned outside the parliament building in Simferopol. But if you look at the people both at the voting stations and in the streets, like on Yalta’s sea front yesterday afternoon, frankly I think you would feel more tense in south Chicago or in New York’s Harlem than anywhere round here,” he said.   (For more details see Crimean ‘Referendum at Gunpoint’ is a Myth – International Observers By Global Research News, March 17, 2014)

Yet according to Time Magazine, without acknowledging the reports of the international observers, the ballot had to have been rigged and the vote was held under the gun of the Russian military:

“95 percent voted in favor of becoming a part of Russia. That may seem like an impossible result, the mark of a rigged election. And in some ways it was. The vote was held during a Russian military occupation of Crimea and the ballot did not offer voters the option of keeping their current status in Ukraine. ( Time, March 17, 2014)

In chorus, Western media reports have stated that both Ukrainians and Tatars were firmly against seceding from Ukraine. They also intimated that the Tatar community had decided not to vote.

According to the Washington Post, “a vote in favor of seceding” was inevitable because “ethnic Russians make up 60 percent of Crimea’s population”. But the result was not 60 percent in favor, it was 97 percent in favor, indicating that all major ethnic groups in the Crimea voted in favor of seceding from Ukraine.

The figures do not add up:  The Russians constitute 58 percent of Crimea’s population, yet 97 percent of the vote was in favor of joining Russia. If Ukrainians and Tatars had refused to participate in the referendum, voter participation would have been substantially less that 83.1.

The referendum was also a vote against the US-EU sponsored Coup d’etat.

The results confirm that the Tatars and Ukrainians who did cast their ballot, also voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia.

What this 97 percent vote also indicates is a rejection of the illegal Neo-Nazi government in Kiev.  The Election poster (image above) reads:

16 марта мы выбираем или

“On the 16 of March we choose”: neo-Nazi Ukraine “Or” the Russian Federation?

March 20, 2014 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, Russia, sovereignty, tyranny, Ukraine, US | Leave a comment