From a commentary by Marcel Michelson in "Forbes" online today titled "Ukraine's Fragile Truce Is Thin Veneer For Uneasy Truth":
Any outcome of the explosive situation would hinge on a compromise and needs to take account of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s psychological make-up. Putin cannot be seen as “losing” this chess game. Whatever person is lurking in the background to replace Putin in Russia, it is not in Europe’s or the United States’ interest to stick their noses in that hornet’s nest. There also is no guarantee that any successor to Putin will be less nationalistic.
Putin cannot “win” either and get international backing for his land grabs.
The end-game needs to be focused on the continued territorial integrity of the countries bordering with Russia. It also needs to grant as much autonomy and self-determination as possible to the regions in those countries – and not just the trouble regions.
Above all, there has to be recognition and freedom for the Russian speakers. The non-citizenship issue in Latvia, and Estonia, is a disgrace for those countries and for the European Union. It smells of a kind of apartheid or other special status that western democracies fought hard against in other decades and centuries.
Read the full commentary here.
An excerpt from Tom Parfitt's piece in "The Telegraph" on the plight of Crimean Tatars:
This spring, two tragedies hit Ilmi Umerov in one week. First his father died suddenly after a short illness. Then his homeland of Crimea was wrenched from Ukraine and absorbed by Russia.
Mr Umerov is one of 240,000 indigenous Crimean Tatars who live on the Crimean peninsula, which dangles from Ukraine into the Black Sea but which was annexed by the Kremlin in March. His father, Rustem, survived Joseph Stalin’s brutal deportation of the Tartars to Central Asia in 1944 and a ten-year stint in the gulag to return home from exile to his native Crimea as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Now, six months on from the annexation, the Muslim Tatars are facing a new wave of cruelty as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, brings his own brand of authoritarian rule to this newly-minted Russian republic.
Read his full report here:
Today is Russian President Vladimir Putin's 62nd birthday. He is spending the day in the Siberian taiga, according to his spokesman -- "some 300 to 400 kilometers from the closest inhabited place." He may not have the Internet there, so it's unclear whether he'll be able to see this vaguely unsettling, hagiographic birthday video that was prepared for him by some young performers in St. Petersburg: