Since the end of the Cold War the United States and its allies have breached the sovereignty and territorial integrity of numerous nations including the Former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and has no right to lecture Russia to protect citizens who are at risk from their own Ukrainian government. That’s said by Professor Lee Marsden, School of Political, Social and International Relations.

“The US and its allies have encouraged the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, East Timor from Indonesia and South Sudan from Sudan. The US breaches Yemeni, Somali, and Pakistani sovereignty each time it fires one of its missile into a sovereign country from a drone. If sovereignty and territorial integrity are concepts worth defending then they must be consistently rather than selectively applied or admit that the concepts only have resonance when western interests are at stake,” the expert believes.
Meanwhile, Russia’s peaceful efforts aimed to protect Crimean citizens are legitimate as Russian and Russian-speaking people of the peninsula are in danger from “the government which seized power on the back of antidemocratic protests by pro-EU and far right forces, encouraged by the West”.
The expert stresses that whatever mistakes the Yanukovych’s government has made, it was democratically elected, the issue that the current Ukrainian government lacks. The current leaders seized reins of power during a coup and can’t be called legitimate. And yet the West’s support for democracy is trumped by its desire to have pro-western governments in power.
He also notes that Crimea has only been part of Ukraine since 1954, a technical decision by Khrushchev, which made little practical difference as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was an integral part of the Soviet Union.
“If it should wish to re-join Russia then so be it. Similarly eastern provinces in Ukraine should be granted a similar referendum as part of the general elections called on 25 May. The division of Ukraine might be counter to western interests but as with the separation of Czechoslovakia may provide a long term solution to the intractability of a polarised country,” Prof. Marsden said.
Voice of Russia, Eastminster - politics blog