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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