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The Russian Military Involvement And The Actions Taken By The United States

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Although Russia formally denied any military involvement in Ukraine, soldiers in unmarked Russian fatigues entering the Crimean peninsula and the “accidental” placement of artillery pieces beyond the Russo-Ukrainian border didn’t make it very hard to figure out who was responsible for the invasion of Crimea. Everyone’s theories were proven true when Russian President Vladimir Putin officially announced that the Russian Federation was annexing the Crimean Peninsula from the Ukrainian government. In this paper, I will discuss the Russian military involvement in Ukraine and the actions taken by the United States and Canada in response to these activities from the perspective of Mearsheimer’s five tenets of offensive neorealism.
On November …show more content…

Protests and violence continue until mid February, when the leaders of both the government and the opposition agreed to create a new government, resulting in the diminishing of Yanukovich’s powers and his escaping out of Kiev when the protesters took control of the city and the former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, is installed as the interim leader. After these events, Aleksey Chaly, a pro-Russian leader, was elected as the new mayor of Sevastopol and supporters of the Russian Federation began to take control of buildings around the Crimean Peninsula and set in motion movements for Crimean separation. On February 28th, men in unmarked fatigues took control of the Simferopol airport and a Military airfield near Sevastopol, following which, the Russian government claimed that these military actions were in order to protect their fleet in the Black Sea. In March, Russian troops continued to spread across Crimea and the Crimean Parliament declared their wishes to join with Russia. At this time, the EU and the US gave their support to the Ukrainian government by creating trade agreements and rejecting the Crimean Referendum. On March 13th, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to create a national guard of 60,000 men that was whole-heartedly supported by the United Nations. Despite attempts by the EU and the UN, President Putin signed a treaty that annexed Crimea from the

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