Russia: Defending its legitimate interests?

How can the West be surprised that Russia is aiding the Crimeans? asked Vladislav Vorobyev in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Western media portray Russia’s action as unprovoked aggression, ignoring the “open provocations” by the violent forces that overthrew the elected government in Kiev. The coup regime outlawed Russian—the native language of most Ukrainian citizens in the east—as an official language. Then it sent armed militants to block roads and take over government buildings in the Crimean capital of Simferopol. Crimean authorities “were forced to turn to Moscow with a request for assistance in assuring peace.”

The West was behind the coup, said Alexander Alexandrov in Krasnaya Zvezda. It has sought regime change in Ukraine ever since Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was elected. “For this purpose, the Baltic states and Poland prepared militants, many of whom participated in terrorist acts.” These foreign-trained insurgents, many of them Nazi sympathizers and fascists, “were a major driving force behind the Kiev unrest.” Now the very movement that came to power “on a wave of riots, massacres, and lawlessness by extremist groups” is calling for national unity. Our brethren in Crimea and the rest of eastern Ukraine are understandably skeptical.

We’ve heard such propaganda before, said Vedomosti in an editorial. The trumped-up message that “compatriots are in danger and Russia will not abandon them” may play well at home and in Crimea. But Crimeans should beware. Russia starts disputes under such pretexts—for example, in Georgia in 2008—but it doesn’t finish them. “The risks of remaining a nonstate in a gray diplomatic and economic zone are extremely high.”

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But this is no replay of 2008 Georgia, said Alexander Goltz in The Moscow Times. It’s 1968 Czechoslovakia—an invasion, pure and simple. “I am afraid that when we wake up tomorrow, we will find ourselves in different country. I even know the name of that country: the Soviet Union.” President Vladimir Putin plans to use this war to squash “internal enemies who ‘undermine morale,’” said Georgy Satarov in Yezhednevny Zhurnal. A few days before the Crimean invasion, opposition leader Alexei Navalny and dozens of other activists were arrested for demonstrating their support for the revolution in Ukraine. Now anyone protesting Putin can be “branded as champions of the Nazis” and “fed into the meat grinder.”

The world can still avoid conflict, said Georgy Bovt in Komsomolskaya Pravda. But we need an international conference on the future format of Ukrainian statehood, probably reconstituted as a federal system with significant autonomy for Russian-speaking areas. There would have to be “legal guarantees preventing NATO forces from ever using Ukrainian territory,” and certainty about the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s future in Sevastopol. Such a conference would be “a triumph of Russian diplomacy”—and at this point the best hope for peace in Europe.