Yeah, I've started doing my reading too. Yesterday I was willing to say Russia was being prudent (if tactless) in staging military exercises across the border. A decent pre-text for bulking up the border against refugees or positioning for a quick response. I wasn't really ready to say it was the lead up to crossing the border without reason.
But today.....yeesh. Now it's starting to look like the build up to an invasion. Military personnel with no insignia blockading an airport? Communications going down between Crimea and the rest of the country, where armed men have already seized a municipal building and established their own interim government? Ethnic Russians in Ukraine saying they fear retaliation by other Ukrainians, or being unfairly legislated against by the new government?
I mean, it seems like the kind of setup that Russia would be all over exploiting. And I don't necessarily fault pro-Russian Ukrainians for being scared, or having a legitimate claim to wanting a Pro-Russian government. But it's leading to the situation where no one is wrong, everyone is wrong and Russia has a legitimate (if transparent) excuse to try to absorb the ethnically-Russian portion of Ukraine in the name of protecting them.
It's basically the last thing anyone needed in the latest cycle of populist uprisings. About the only thing I could imagine being more volatile is the same situation occurring over in China, either between China/Singapore or China/Japan over that island. When 1st world powers have a territorial interest in the outcomes of revolution is when shit starts getting seriously nasty. Syria might be bad, Venezuela might be bad, Egypt might be bad, but this has the potential to trump them all in terms of regional destabilization. I thought Obizie's statement today:
the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.
Is about 1 step removed from committing to military action against Russia if they violate Ukranian sovereignty. And again, who is right? The US and Europe is right if they're backing the Ukrainian goverment in the West, Russia is right if it's backing the other Ukranians in the East. What other options are there besides secession, that avoid military conflict?