Russia accused of orchestrating a coup in Montenegro.

The plotters were allegedly going to dress in police uniforms to storm the Montenegrin parliament in Podgorica, shoot the prime minister, Milo Ðjukanović, and install a pro-Moscow party.

One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev


The U.S and European Union may want to save Crimeans from themselves. But the Crimeans are happy right where they are.

One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there -- be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tatars are mostly all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine.

Little has changed over the last 12 months. Despite huge efforts on the part of Kiev, Brussels, Washington and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit. At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea's right to self rule. Unless we are all to believe that the locals polled by Gallup and GfK were done so with FSB bogey men standing by with guns in their hands.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-after-russia-annexed-crimea-locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev/#285b8830510d

On Thursday, masked gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles seized the parliament building and government offices in Simferopol. The Russian flag was raised above the parliament.

[Overthrown by Ukrainians] Yanukovych gave a press conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday afternoon, saying Crimea should remain part of Ukraine and claiming he was still president. Russian government sources say they have offered "protection" to Yanukovych in Russia, though it remains unclear how he arrived in the country.

In further worrying signs for Kiev, Russia's parliament began considering two new laws on Friday. One of them offers eased citizenship requirements for Russian-speaking Ukrainians, removing the requirement that they should have lived in Russia for an extended period, while the other makes it easier for Russia to add new territories to its existing boundaries.

The latter law, which appears to be aimed pointedly at the Crimea situation, says territories can be added by a local referendum "in the case that a foreign country does not have effective sovereign state authority".
Unidentified gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms guard the entrance to the military airport at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 28, 2014.
Unidentified gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms guard the entrance to the military airport at Sevastopol in Crimea. Photograph: Ivan Sekretarev/AP

Sergei Aksenov, the new prime minister of Crimea, has said he does not recognise Kiev authorities and still believes Yanukovych to be the legitimate Ukrainian president.

They failed to do that which is why they annexed Crimea.

On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on January 28, 2014 was published on YouTube.[13][14] The State Department and the White House suggested that an assistant to the deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was the source of the leak, which he denied.[15][16][17]

In their phone conversation, Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should be in the government after Viktor Yanukovych's ouster and in what ways they might achieve that transition, with the name of Arseniy Yatsenyuk (whom Nuland refers to as "Yats") coming up several times. Specifically, the two spoke about which opposition leaders they would like to see in government, what pitches they would give each opposition leader in subsequent calls to achieve this, and strategies on how they would try to manage the 'personality problems' and conflicts between the different opposition leaders with ambitions to become president.[14][15] Yatsenyuk became prime minister of Ukraine on February 27, 2014.[18]

In the recording, Nuland makes an obscene reference to the European Union.[19] After discussing Ukrainian opposition figures Nuland states that she prefers the United Nations as mediator, instead of the European Union, adding "**** the EU", and Pyatt responds, "Oh, exactly ...."[14][20]
According to the Washington Post,

[Nuland] was dismissively referring to slow-moving European efforts to address political paralysis and a looming fiscal crisis in Ukraine. But it was the blunt nature of her remarks, rather than U.S. diplomatic calculations, that seemed exceptional.

Nuland also assessed the political skills of Ukrainian opposition figures with unusual candor and, along with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, debated strategy for their cause, laying bare a deep degree of U.S. involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland

What's piffle is when you refuse to accept reality.

Type Ukraine into search forums and you will find an array of threads started by Russian propagandists accusing the Ukrainians of being Nazis.

The latest project of the gold magnate Peter Munk is a seaside resort and tax haven for fellow billionaires in the post-Soviet backwater of Tivat, Montenegro. A delirious tour of a world of champagne-drenched parties, supersize yachts and the recession-proof Ultra-High Net Worth Individual