If Not a Cold War, a Return to a Chilly Rivalry - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/if-not-a-new-cold-war-a-distinct-chill-in-the-air.html?emc=edit_th_20140319
WASHINGTON — A month ago, most Americans could not have found Crimea on a map. But its lightning-quick takeover by Moscow has abruptly redrawn the geopolitical atlas and may have decisively ended a 25-year period of often tumultuous yet also constructive relations between the United States and Russia.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Washington and Moscow had struggled to replace their Cold War rivalry with a new form of partnership, one that was tested by crisis after crisis but that endured in its own peculiar way. After each rupture, whether over Kosovo or Iraq or Georgia, came another reset that put the two powers back onto an uneasy equilibrium.
Putin Reclaims Crimea for Russia and Bitterly Denounces the West - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html?emc=edit_th_20140319&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=67617143&_r=0
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed Crimea as a part of Russia on Tuesday, reversing what he described as a historic injustice inflicted by the Soviet Union 60 years ago and brushing aside international condemnation that could leave Russia isolated for years to come.
In an emotional address steeped in years of resentment and bitterness at perceived slights from the West, Mr. Putin made it clear that Russia’s patience for post-Cold War accommodation, much diminished of late, had finally been exhausted. Speaking to the country’s political elite in the Grand Kremlin Palace, he said he did not seek to divide Ukraine any further, but he vowed to protect Russia’s interests there from what he described as Western actions that had left Russia feeling cornered.
