ANNEXED!: It's Official. Crimea Exists Ukraine and Joins Russia — 'Pro-Russian' Troops Storm Base Held By Ukraine Troops

The Neocons in Obama's administration who meddled in Ukraine's affairs were
thoroughly out-maneuvered by Putin. (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)

By VOA
Russian President Vladimir Putin and officials from Crimea signed a treaty Tuesday to make the Black Sea peninsula part of Russia, just two days after it voted to secede from Ukraine in a referendum the United States and the European Union call "illegal."

Mr. Putin signed the document with the prime minister of Crimea's regional government, the speaker of Crimea's parliament, and the mayor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, where Russia's Black Sea fleet is based.

Hours later, Russian and Ukrainian news media quoted a Ukrainian military spokesman as saying that Russian forces had attacked Ukrainian troops at a base in Crimea's main city, Simferopol, killing one serviceman.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Putin said told Parliament that Crimea has always been an "inalienable" part of Russia.

RELATED STORY: Ukrainian Military Base Stormed by 'Pro-Russian' Troops in Simferopol, Crimea — Shots Fired, Soldier Killed

He said Sunday's referendum complied with democratic and international norms.

In his speech, the president insisted Russia has always respected Ukraine's territorial integrity and neither wants nor needs to "partition" Ukraine.

But he criticized Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's decision to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, when both countries were constituent republics of the Soviet Union. When Crimea ended up as part of independent Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he said, Russia felt not simply "robbed," but "plundered."

Mr. Putin also said that after the Russian Revolution of 1917, "significant historical territory" of southern Russia, including "present-day southeastern Ukraine," was included in the Ukrainian republic of the Soviet Union "without regard to the ethnic composition of the population."

Mr. Putin described last month's ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, as a coup carried out mainly by "nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites".

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