Reflection of Farage/Clegg Debate - and the EUs peacocks.

It seems that Nigel Farage and I are in step in our thinking on the Sevastopol issue - the EU has to be careful not to tread deeply into the Russian sphere of influence. At least Obama and the EU are now tacitly acknowledging that military options must be ruled out.
In his debate with Clegg, Farage is reported to have accused the EU of having blood on its hands over the Ukraine. Clegg on the other hand praised the bloc's influence in Eastern Europe; he is reported to have said "It was the British governments that pioneered the enlargement of the European Union so we'd have more peace, more democracy and more rule of law in our European neck of the woods."

Mr Farage responded by saying "we can all hang our heads in shame. We've given a false series of hopes to a group of people in the west of Ukraine; So 'geed' up were they that they actually toppled their own elected leader. That provoked Mr Putin and I think the European Union frankly does have blood on its hands in the Ukraine and I don't want a European army, navy, air force or a European foreign policy."

I think that the way ahead now surely lies in the EU and the USA recognising Crimea as part of Russia, with Russia withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and all parties, the USA, the EU's member states, Ukraine and Russia agreeing on Ukrainian neutrality, recognised and guaranteed by all.

Otherwise, we are set for a Black Sea Freeze, if not a wider Cold War II.

EU peacocking is a danger.

The EU is wrong to perform its current diplomatic sabre -rattling routine. 

The reality is that the interest which Russia has in Sevastopol, and hence Crimea, is vital to her; more vital to her than Portsmouth is to the UK. 

The old arrangement, the one put in place by Khrushchev at a time when no one dreamt that the USSR would ever fall or fail, gave Russia all she needed and let Ukraine have her place on the world stage.

The EU has disturbed that when Baroness Ashton (The English Woman) carried out her pas de deux with Kiev.  It is the EU which has the expansionist mindset.

So why all this EU peacocking?  Is it because it takes the eye off the Eurozone crisis?  

I think so: It is an old ploy, and a dangerous one at that.

Sevastopol

The EU has forgotten (or more likely, its unelected bureaucrats are ignorant of) the fact that Russia will hold her need for her Black Sea naval base - and the access that gives her - as vital to her interests - it is within what used to be recognised as the Russian (USSR) sphere of influence.

 

Stupid of the EU and unbelievably naive of Obama to not realise that.

 

A nation does not easily forget 25 million war dead nor which near neighbour was influential in that.

 

Putting it diplomatically.