Putin Ignores Obama's Threatened Sanctions, Recognizes Crimea

by JASmius

Funny thing about having no stick - people tend to pay little attention to what you say, no matter how loudly you say it:

Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a decree recognizing Crimea as an independent state following its vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia in a referendum that has fanned the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

The Kremlin's official website quoted Putin's decree as recognizing "the Republic of Crimea... as a sovereign and independent state."

It was issued "considering the expression of the will of the people of Crimea at the general Crimean referendum" on Sunday, it said.

But, but, but didn't John Wayne Kerry give Putin to the end of last week to completely withdraw from Ukraine, including Crimea, and restore the status quo ante, "or else"?  I mean, there are certain rules in life in The Age Of The One: you don't tug on Red Barry's cape; you don't eat red meat unless you're invited to a White House barbeque; you don't piss into the wind unless you're creating a wetland on the property of the Koch brothers; and you do not, under any circumstances, cross Lurch.  The consequences will be unimaginable.

Unfortunately, it would seem that Vlad doesn't have much use for imagination:

Putin has thus far signaled no intention to turn back on what he describes as his defense of ethnic Russians who have come under attack from ultra-nationalists who have been given free rein by the new Ukrainian leaders.

The Kremlin said Putin "emphasized" to President Barack Obama in a phone call on Sunday that the Crimean referendum "was fully in line with the norms of international law and the UN charter".

You have to admire how deftly Vlad feeds O's faculty lounge lizard jargon back to him.  He's doing nothing different to Ukraine via Crimea than Adolph Hitler did to Czechoslovakia via Sudetanland seventy-five years ago, except now it's Putin that's triumphantly waving the piece of paper, while False Messiah is left holding the bag.

Which is what makes the ensuing two paragraphs such an unwitting punchline:

The reaction from both the Unites States and the European Union to Russia's refusal to call off the Crimean poll or pull back its troops on the peninsula back to their barracks has been both swift and tough.

Obama on Monday slapped sanctions on two top aides to President Vladimir Putin and nine other people linked to Russia's military incursion into Crimea as tensions increased between the two countries over the Ukraine crisis.

Um, aren't sanctions typically imposed upon governments?  Or at least organizations, like businesses?  Hell, O's been gleefully and sadistically slapping sanctions on American businesses for over five years now.  But individuals?  Couldn't that be described as a foreign policy version of the ObamaCare Individual Mandate?  Since the dictator has deferred that set of domestic sanctions for another two and a half years, is anybody confident that he won't do the same favor to these Putin aides?  And isn't it mewlingly pathetic that such a flaccid rebuke isn't even aimed at the neoCzar himself?

Almost as much as The One's oblivious-to-the-point-of-being-autistic reply to Putin's amused contempt:

Facing one of his toughest foreign policy tests yet, Obama made clear the United States was prepared to impose more sanctions if Russia formally annexed Crimea in response to a weekend referendum in the region that Washington and its allies called illegitimate.

"Going forward, we can calibrate our response based on whether Russia chooses to escalate or to de-escalate the situation," Obama said....

The U.S. sanctions came in an executive order signed by Obama a day after a Crimea referendum aimed at allowing Russia to annex the autonomous region.

"If Russia continues to interfere in Ukraine, we stand ready to impose further sanctions," Obama said....

Amid fears that Russia might move into eastern Ukraine, Obama said provocations will achieve nothing except to "further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world."

So O is pre-emptively conceding the initiative to Vlad, he is not very implicitly admitting that he and his ocean-lowering, planet-cooling, mesmerizing powers of oratorical persuasion have zilcho influence over the one-time KGB spook, and he still thinks, despite a now-mountain of evidence to the contrary, that the Russian ruler gives a bleep about the "international community" and "isolation" and all that sort of esoteric, highbrow, ivory tower, quasi-aristocratic conceit.

Although it is true that Putin does care a great deal about Russia's place in the world.  And by his eminently practical lights, taking Crimea, followed by the rest of Ukraine, will not have "diminished [Russia's] place in the world" at all; to the contrary, as he sees it, Russia's place in the world will have been significantly enhanced.  And he'll be right about that.

And just think: he has Barack Hussein Obama [mmm-mmm-mmm] to thank for it.  The proverbial gift that keeps on giving.  The crisis that won't let itself go to waste.

It's like the scene in Jaws where the shark eats Quint: I dread seeing what comes next, but the horrified fascination of seeing another set of warnings about Barack Obama vindicated before our very eyes will keep our attention riveted in a death-vise-grip.

At least until the nuclear air raid sirens go off - right Jay Carney?:

Carney shrugged off a Russian TV anchor's comment that only Russia had the power to reduce the United States to radioactive dust.

"People say crazy things on TV all the time," he said.

You would know.