Putin describes the moment when he decided to get Crimea back

Interesting,he does admit to bringing in soldiers to help with the take over,but still says that it was decided to take Crimea after an all night meeting.4 days later they acted.

news.yahoo.com...

a reply to: Dimithae

Basically it's like this ... when the Soviet Union fell apart ... since ALL borders prior to the soviet union were reinstated ...

well ... that part also applies to Chrimea ...

What some subjective opinions think about that part, is irrelevant.

This story isn't news to me as I'd heard that Putin made a pretty snap decision to take over Crimea and acted on it very quickly long ago.

The real scary thing is that a decision to take over part of another country can be made and implemented so quickly. The Russian government has no checks and balances. No 'sober second thought' to carefully consider the long term implications that would result from a military take over like this. This is a real problem for the World, especially when combined with a large, nuclear enabled military.

a reply to: Dimithae

If this happened anywhere else, like if Russia tried to annex Italy for example, then there would be cause for worry. To me, this is a civil matter and should be left alone by everyone else. Let them sort out their own mess.

As for thinking that they made a rash, knee-jerk reaction........that country has a history much longer than ours (USA). They have a lot more experience to draw on than we do. True, the decision didn't take long to be made, but they had a lot more information to go on by which to base their decision than we Americans may realize, simply because we haven't been around dealing with the world nearly as long as they have.

If America got off it's ego, it might see that countries like Russia may actually know what they're doing with their internal affairs......and that they don't need a 200 year old country made from a bunch of rag-tag tax evaders to tell them how they should conduct their business.

a reply to: noeltrotsky

Lets see, we have over 1000 bases in the world and we are in Libya,Syria,Iraq,now we are starting to get in to it with Venezuela,we have been in Afghanistan ,wash rinse and repeat. I would say if anyone WE need to make better decisions. Russia pulled it off without a shot fired. Kudos to them.

Read about this earlier. They probably always planned on taking Crimea, but after the President was ousted, Putin realized he could lose control of Crimea, therefore Black Sea access, so they sped things up a bit.

I wish Russia and America were more like friends then what we are politically. I mean the way I see it is that Americans people non politicians etc and Russian regular citizens probably don't have any issue with one another and only look one way or the other because of what their governments tell them. That being what it is I wonder what citizens of Crimea and citizens of Russia feel about each other truly, not what you see espoused on television?