edwardspoonhands:

pyrrhiccomedy:

rebelgoatalliance:

randomthingieshere:

RUSSIA HAS DECLARED THAT THEY’RE INVADING UKRAINE OFFICIALLY. NOT EVEN HIDING BEHIND OLD AGREEMENTS. Britain has to aid the Ukrainians against the Russians now,  America warned Russia not to, with consequences if they did, so now they’re involved,  Canada was looking into what Russia was doing to see how bad it was and they to have to get involved even more.
WHAT PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND IS THAT IT COULD ACTUALLY DRASTICALLY ESCALTED INTO SOMETHING RESEMBLING A WORLD WAR.

So: Crimea!

Crimea is a part of Ukraine which was a part of Russia until 1954. It is an autonomous parliamentary republic within Ukraine, and is governed by the Constitution of Crimea. It wants to be more independent from Ukraine, perhaps entirely independent, as in, its own independent nation, an initiative which Russia supports. Crimea has a majority of ethnic Russians. They speak Russian, politically they lean towards Russia, and they have no desire to align themselves with any political body which is generally seen as being in political and ideological opposition to Russia, such as, for example, the European Union. However, regional efforts to move back into alignment with Russia have been consistently blocked by Ukraine.

This is the part of Ukraine that Russia has “invaded.” There is a fair-to-good chance that the Crimean people actually invited the Russians to secure the airfields, as protection from the unrest which as we all know is gripping Ukraine right now. And they have secured the airfields: there are no Russian tanks rolling through the streets of Simferopol, shots are not being fired, the whole thing appears to be quite orderly, and the Russian army is being assisted by local Crimean volunteers.

Is this still illegal? Oh, yeah, sure. But one imagines the Russians might point out that it’s no more illegal than about three dozen things the United States has done in the past ten years. Are the Russians taking the opportunity to assert their sphere of influence over Crimea while Ukraine is disorganized and in crisis? I mean, yeah, probably. Is that a dick move? For sure. Is Ukraine going to be super, super pissed about it, when they finally get their government sorted out? You bet.

Is it an act that has even the smallest chance of leading to war? Christ, no.

So everybody relax. Russia is not going to start World War Three over a penninsula in Ukraine that’s like, almost entirely agricultural. Penis-fencing over Crimea has been going on for decades now, and it will most likely continue for decades to come.

OK Aria, everyone…Aria…for when the Vlogbrothers are too busy to understand WTF is going on in the world because we were out of touch for the last week.