Chasing out the U.S.

Sevastopol, Ukraine

Crimean protestors claimed victory this week when 200 U.S. Marines left Ukraine without completing their mission. Two weeks ago, the Marine reservists arrived in Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine, to upgrade a Ukrainian military base for next month’s Black Sea war games. The games, code-named Sea Breeze, are a multinational exercise not affiliated with NATO. But Crimean residents, largely ethnic Russians, mistakenly believed that the Marines were preparing to establish a NATO base. Hundreds of people staged noisy daily protests, blocking the Marines’ access to the port where their equipment was stored, and shouting, “Yankee go home!” Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, is seeking to join NATO; Russia strongly opposes the plan.

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