The Russians are talking to the Ukrainians. Although it may have just been enraging yelling:
Russia's Foreign Ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin held a meeting in Moscow with Ukrainian Ambassador in Moscow Volodymyr Yelchenko.
It said the diplomats "discussed Russian-Ukrainian relations in a frank atmosphere," without giving any details.
"Frank" exchanges usually involve yelling, questions of birth legitimacy, and perhaps comments on the other's mother's footwear choices.
The Ukrainians and EU are rushing to sign an association agreement, too.
If Russia's Putin is at heart a cautious man who will bluff but take the safe victory, could Ukraine offer to sell Sevastopol to Russia--rather than lease the base to them--in exchange for Russia abandoning efforts to capture Crimea and reaffirm the Budapest Memorandum? And sell it for a number of years of cheap energy imports from Russia?
As I noted in this post, in the Russo-Georgia War of 2008, Putin won what he already started with--control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He seemed to want all of Georgia--or at least to march into the capital, Tblisi, before leaving--but ended up settling for what he already had.
If faced with enough outrage and acts to complicate Putin's attempts to seize Crimea, would he settle for Sevastopol only?
Note that in addition to Crimea voting (under questionable rules) for secession and annexation by Russia and the planned vote in a week, the city of Sevastopol voted separately to ask for admission to Russia:
The Ukraine city of Sevastopol has declared itself a subject of the Russian Federation, hours after the semi-autonomous parliament of Crimea voted to do the same.If a deal could be struck, Putin will instruct his parliament to reject Crimea's request while accepting Sevastopol's request.
The city, on the Crimean peninsula and home to the Black Sea fleet of the Russian navy, made the announcement late on Thursday.
Russia gains assurances that its base is secure, gets a little territory so he gets something out of this, and ends the potential for an escalation to a war that his army might look pretty sad in even if it wins.
Ukraine gets rid of a flash point of conflict, keeps terrain it already had since Sevastopol is under Russian control and would have been until 2042 under the 2010 lease, and keeps energy imports affordable and flowing from Russia.
America gets the end of the crisis with Ukraine largely intact and with the Budapest Memorandum ripped a bit but still intact, retaining hope for earning that Nobel Peace Prize the president was awarded in 2009 for his potential for nuclear disarmament.
The EU gets Ukraine moving to the west and the end to a crisis it can't fight.
And NATO can hold open the prospect if Ukrainian membership since Ukraine will no longer host a Russian military base on its territory.
And the West keeps the supply line through Russia intact, which Russia would really like to keep open since they want us to contain jihadis there as long as we are willing.
That might allow this crisis to settle down without a larger shooting war erupting. It would be a ceasefire until Russia attempts another annexation, but that might be in Kyrgyzstan where we are packing up as we wind down our campaign in Afghanistan. But that will be China's problem to worry about, I think.
UPDATE: Or, God help us, we'll make it about carbon footprints. Because apparently we have an ambassador to the carbon.
What the Hell, what else does our State Department have to do?
UPDATE: Our warning to Russia does seem to offer an opening to this approach:
"He (John Kerry) made clear that continued military escalation and provocation in Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine, along with steps to annex Crimea to Russia would close any available space for diplomacy, and he urged utmost restraint," the official said.
Just to say the obvious, purchasing Sevastopol is not the same as annexing Crimea.
We don't want to go to war over this. But Russia annexing Crimea really requires us to take notice. This is too big to ignore and go on with business as usual.
And since we've figured Russia was going to have the naval base at Sevastopol for several more decades via their 2010 lease, why not get something for formally recognizing Russian control? This isn't appeasement. It is making lemonade out of lemons.
We need to buy time to improve Ukraine's economy by integrating it with the West, and make Ukraine more capable of resisting Russia's armed forces and economic pressure.
UPDATE: Note that before the Russians started moving into Crimea, I speculated that assuring Russia of Sevastopol might dissuade Russia from seizing Crimea. And I wonder if Russian military weakness would tempt Putin to accept a small success rather than risk failure by pushing for more.
