The Crimea: The home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Crimean peninsula has long been a subject of contention between Ukraine and Russia, with the latter deliberating whether it should have been kept by the Russian Federation in the 1991 split. Russia has been fanning those fires, handing out Russian passports to local residents, and there are reports that pro-Russian separatism is on the rise. And, given the number of Russian speakers in the area, these tensions could escalate. Watch, for example these Russians yelling at local activists who tried to set up their own Maidan in the Crimean city of Kerchi.
Russia: What will Russia do? Sending in troops is highly unlikely, unless they feel the need to “rescue” Russian citizens in a restive Crimea—much like they did with Ossetians and Abkhazians during the 2008 Russian-Georgian War. There are also economic measures Russia could take to give force to its rather vocal displeasure. Yesterday, it already froze the second tranche of a promised loan to Ukraine. Now that its ally Yanukovich is gone, it’s unlikely that tranche will ever get unfrozen. Before Yanukovich, when Ukraine was ruled by a pro-Western coalition, Russia often cut off the flow of gas to the country in order to exert political pressure. This tool remains in the toolkit.
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