SUMMARY: Eight hundred American and NATO soldiers, attack helicopters and tank busters are deployed in a military exercise of extraordinary complexity in Poland, preparing for trench warfare against an army with a level of sophistication the U.S. military hasn't seen in decades. Special correspondent Ryan Chilcote reports on the most recent of the tit-for-tat exercises between NATO and Russia.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Russia sent mixed signals today on Ukraine, following a weekend meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Paris. Russia did pull back one battalion from the border region.
However, Kerry said last night he is looking for more than that.
JOHN KERRY, Secretary of State: Any real progress in Ukraine must include a pullback of the very large Russian force that is currently massing along Ukraine’s borders. We believe that these forces are creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine.
GWEN IFILL: Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited Crimea today and promised increased spending on infrastructure and boosts to pensions and salaries.
Joining us to talk about where things stand today is chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner, who just returned from Ukraine.
SUMMARY: Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with President Obama on the phone Friday about a possible diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine. Despite the development, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have deployed near the border of Ukraine with no sign of pulling back. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Anthony Cordesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
SUMMARY: The Russian Navy agreed to pull out of the Black Sea around Crimea on March 30. Not March 30, 2014, but 158 years ago in 1856. NewsHour's Hari Sreenivasan reflects on the history of the region that is again at the center of a geopolitical crisis.
SUMMARY: Former President Jimmy Carter sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss Russia’s annexation of Crimea, progress and limitations of working with Israel for the Obama administration and his own commitment to fight discrimination and violence against women and girls around the world. Carter has written his 28th book, “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.”
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including how President Obama’s response to the Crimea annexation will be evaluated, the latest media push to promote the health care law, the outlook for midterm elections and remembering former DNC chair Bob Strauss.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): With a stroke of his pen, Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed a treaty, adding Crimea to the map of Russia. It followed an emotional address, as a defiant Putin told his Parliament he acted legally to right a historical wrong.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia (through interpreter): Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia. Both time and circumstances could not erase it. Dramatic changes that our country went through in the 20th century could not erase it either.
MARGARET WARNER: Putin dismissed Western claims that Crimea’s referendum Sunday, to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, was illegitimate. He also rejected any suggestion that Russia means to seize other parts of Ukraine.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN (through interpreter): Do not believe those who try to scare you about Russia. Who is shouting that Crimea will be followed by other regions? We do not want the division of Ukraine. We do not need it.
MARGARET WARNER: It was only two weeks ago that Putin made similar comments, denying any plans to take over Crimea. Today’s speech was watched with great interest in the Crimean capital, Simferopol.
Immediately afterward, workmen removed all references to Ukraine from the part of the parliament building.
SUMMARY: What does Russia’s swift claiming of Crimea portend for the region and Russian ambitions? How should the U.S. and the international community respond? Judy Woodruff gets views from Dimitri Simes of the Center for the National Interest, Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations.
SUMMARY: President Obama and leaders in the European Union announced new penalties against Russia a day after citizens in the Ukrainian region of Crimea voted to secede. But Russia appeared unfazed in the face of its toughest sanctions since the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile the Ukrainian government vowed to oppose the annexation, with force if necessary. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
SUMMARY: After Sunday's referendum, Crimea's parliament dispatched a delegation to Moscow to work out details of joining Russia, reflecting the jubilation of that region's ethnic Russian majority. But not everyone in Crimea is happy about the results. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner talks with Judy Woodruff from Simferopol about the reactions on the ground.
SUMMARY: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has declared Crimea independent from Ukraine. How quickly will Russia move to annex the region, and will Moscow stop there or push to neutralize the whole country? Judy Woodruff talks to Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group and Nikolas Gvosdev of the Naval War College for perspectives on Putin’s goals and the standoff between Russia and the West.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For more about the situation in eastern Ukraine we’re joined now via Skype by James Jones who is in Kharkov reporting for Frontline. Again, the Russians call it Kharkov, the Ukrainians call it Kharkiv, just an indicator of how tense the situation is on the ground. This is the second largest city. This is where Yanukovych ran to for support. What’s happening on the ground as this vote takes place in Crimea?
JAMES JONES, Frontline: Here the situation is incredibly tense. And as a way of kind of showing their solidarity with Crimea, and their own desire to perhaps gain independence, and join Russia; they had this kind of unofficial and actually illegal referendum on the square here today. It seemed like about 10,000 people came. And they were chanting “Russia, Putin save us,” slagging off the new government in Kiev who they see as kind of fascists and thugs, effectively. And so then they had this big vote, which frankly is meaningless it’s not an official referendum and has no consequences , but it’s just a show of strength. And then just outside, about 200 meters from where I’m sitting now, they are trying to storm the government building. And it’s very hard to tell what proportion of the population here support what they’re doing, but certainly this minority is incredibly vocal and sometimes can be violent.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So this is a city where neighbor is fighting neighbor on this particular issue.
JAMES JONES: That’s right. On the streets there are constant arguments breaking out between people, some of whom know each other, but simply they are miles apart. Some of these people are desperate to become part of Russia, in fact even going back to the Soviet Union. You know there are hammers and sickles – flags showing hammers and sickles on the square – enormous flags and people chanting about the Soviet Union. It’s kind of a weird time warp we’re in here. And yet the other half of the city are incredibly supportive of the revolution in Kiev so it feels very, very tense here. On Friday night a couple of people were killed by Ukrainian nationalists. And that potentially is the kind of provocation that gives Putin legitimate reasons, or at least the pretext, to send Russian troops in.
SUMMARY: Defying international protests that called the process illegitimate, Crimea today went ahead with a referendum and voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. What was it like at the polls today? Hari Sreenivasan speaks with NewsHour’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner about today’s vote and what that could mean for Crimea in the coming days.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the significance of political turmoil in Crimea, allegations from the Senate about misconduct by the CIA, a move by the White House to revisit deportation policies and the midterm election outlook for Democrats.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): It’s been a week now since Russian forces occupied Crimea, an area that’s been part of Ukraine for the last 60 years. Publicly, at least, neither side seems to be giving ground. Russia may be on the verge of annexing the region and the West is imposing sanctions. One country might be uniquely positioned to help resolve the dispute — that country is Germany. For more about this we’re joined from Washington by Steve Szabo, he’s the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy and has written extensively about German foreign and security policy for many years. So Steve, why is Germany uniquely positioned here? How could they break this log jam?
STEVE SZABO, Transatlantic Academy: Well, they are by far the most important player in Europe on Russia and Russia policy. You really can’t have a European position without Germany on Russia and of course the European position is central to the American strategy because we can’t have a really effective strategy if the Europeans are not on board. Secondly, the Germans are a huge economic player in Russia, by far the largest foreign player. So they have a lot of impact on Russia, the Russians listen to them because of this close economic relationship and so the Germans can, I think, speak to Putin with a little bit more confidence, let’s say. He would have more confidence in them then talking to, let’s say, to Obama or to somebody from other countries. So they’re increasingly important interlocutor between the West and Russia.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Jeffrey Brown to discuss the week’s news, including the crisis over the fate of Crimea in Ukraine and criticism of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, as well as the evolution of political campaign financing.
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MARK SHIELDS: I think it was unfortunate that Senator Reid used the term un-American. I mean, that has echoes of the era of Joseph McCarthy, when careers were ended and lives were trashed by that epithet.
Is American public political financing is a disaster? It’s a disaster beyond a scandal, beyond a tragedy. It’s — we went through elections from 1976 to 2008 in this country where candidates for president accepted limits on what they could receive and what they could spend, and then accepted public financing in the general election.
And that was broken, let it be noted, by Barack Obama in 2008, under the myth that John McCain was going to raise more money than he did. And he raised twice as much as McCain did.
From that point forward, you knew public financing was over, because the Republicans had always been defensive about it. Add — bring in the Citizens United case that said, mistakenly — if any one of these judges had ever have run for sheriff, they might have known the truth — said that a corporation is a person, the total, diametric opposite of what — everything that Teddy Roosevelt and Republicans had stood for.
And we have now opened this up to people like the Koch brothers or anybody else with a billion dollars, the left, right. And I’m telling you, what it does is, it turns the candidates into mendicants, into supplicants, and basically into ideological eunuchs.
SUMMARY: The Crimean Parliament announced a referendum on whether the region should join Russia or remain part of Ukraine, but the newly formed government in Kiev pushed back, calling it illegal. President Obama criticized the upcoming vote and took action to restrict visas and place financial sanctions on Russians behind the Ukraine invasion. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
SUMMARY: UN ambassador Samantha Power points to the hope of greater economic ties as a critical leverage point for the United States in persuading Russia "pull back from the brink." She joins Gwen fill to discuss the new sanctions announced by President Obama against Russia and how giving that country an "off-ramp" to deescalate the Ukraine conflict could be more appealing than the cost of economic and political isolation.
Almost certainly orchestrated by Vladimir Putin, Crimea's appeal to join Russia pits the president directly against the West in a standoff that has increasingly high stakes and unpredictable consequences.
The vote by the Crimean parliament gives Putin the upper hand in the crisis over Ukraine, but risks antagonizing the pro-Western leaders in Kiev who have refused until now to resort to military action and increase tensions in Ukraine's Russian-speaking south and east.
"We are at a very dangerous point, and it threatens to push a political crisis in the direction of a military situation," said former Kremlin spin doctor Glob Pavlovsky.
He said there was now a greater danger of shots being fired in Crimea, a Ukrainian region with an ethnic Russian majority, adding: "Russia is encouraging the action of 'local forces'."
Putin has in effect thrown back in Western diplomats' faces their argument that the ouster of Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich as Ukraine's president on February 22 must be accepted because his removal was the will of the people.
Now they will have to accept the will of the Crimean people.
The former KGB spy looked serene as he chaired a meeting of his most senior officials in the Security Council on Thursday, seemingly oblivious to turmoil on Russian markets and Kiev's defiance that a referendum on Crimea's status would be illegal.
The 61-year-old appears to feel he holds all the cards.
After appealing for membership of the Russian Federation, Crimea's pro-Russian leaders, installed after Russian-speaking armed men took over the local parliament, said they would have to wait for Putin's answer to hold a referendum on status.
They plan to hold the referendum on March 16, asking Crimea's just over 2 million people whether they want to unite with Russia or stay with Ukraine.
Moscow's move to get a tighter grip on Crimea has been perfectly choreographed over the last few days.
Calls to help Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine's southeast defend themselves against "extremists" from western Ukraine, accused of trying to rid the country of Russians, have given way to draft laws speeding up citizenship requests from native Russian speakers.
Twinned with legislation to simplify the procedure for "parts of foreign states" to join the Russian Federation, this leaves Moscow better positioned to take control of a strip of land Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed to Kiev in 1954.
"Speaking plainly, this bill was introduced by me for the sake of Crimea," said Sergei Mironov, author of the bill.
