With Sevastopol representing the only suitable deep water port for its Black Sea Fleet, it is obvious why Putin would see a sudden lurch towards the West taken by the revolutionaries in Kiev as a threat to his own strategic interests. However, having used the pretext of pseudo-democratic plebiscite to assimilate Crimea into a greater Russian Federation, the job remains only half done, since it's transport and supply lines including gas, power and water are routed via south eastern Ukraine. Also with an unfriendly government in Kiev his supply lines to the 2500 troops he has stationed in land locked Transnistria are severely compromised.



So the story continues, with the pro-Russian bully boys being encouraged if not actually helped to intimidate the general populace in the eastern most regions of Luhansk and Donetsk so as to provoke the interim government in Kiev into taking retaliatory action, thereby giving Putin a pretext to flex his military muscle. It seems clear that at the very least Putin seems bent on creating a vassal pro-Russian state in south eastern Ukrainian, along the lines of South Ossetia & Abkhazia gouged from Georgia and Transnistria from Moldova.



Unless a way can be found for Kiev to get ahead of Putin's game, having started down this route there seems little to prevent him from carrying on right across the whole of Southern Ukraine so as to create a contiguous fiefdom right across the shores of the Black Sea from Georgia to Moldova, thereby sorting out his own access/supply routes to Crimea as well as land-locked Transnistria.



By contrast, we in the democratic nations of the West have no real strategic interests at stake in this particular game, and apart from bolstering the defences of Poland and the Baltic States some, such as Frau Doktor Merkel, might prefer to wring their hands whilst allowing Putin to get on with it. However, I believe we do have a moral responsibility, not to the new regime in Kiev, but to the people of the region to ensure that their democratic voice is heard. Therefore, I believe we should put pressure on Kiev to have the courage of their convictions and pull the rug from under the feet of Putin and his bully boys by offering a free and fair plebiscite in each of the Ukrainian regions which have significant populations of Russian speakers. The question being whether or not they wish to cede from Ukraine and whether or not they wish to join the Russian Federation; this plebiscite, to be organised and policed jointly by the UN and OECD and based on a new electoral role with free and fair access to the media being guaranteed to all sides.



Given the degree of lawlessness now prevelant in the region, and amount of corruption believed to be prevalent throughout the Ukraine, such a project would require an absolute army of neutral observers, and maybe even UN troops, to guarantee success. But the prize for a such success would extend far beyond Ukraine itself, since it would demonstrate to the peoples of Russia, Belarus and numerous countries further east, the true meaning of the word democracy.

