Roundtable: As Crimea Threatens Secession, Does East-West Split Hasten Ukraine’s Political Divide? | Democracy Now!

Roundtable: As Crimea Threatens Secession, Does East-West Split Hasten Ukraine’s Political Divide? | Democracy Now!:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is rebuffing warnings from the U.S. and European Union as the crisis in Ukraine threatens one of the worst east-west standoffs since the Cold War. The pro-Russian Crimean Parliament has voted to hold a referendum on splitting off from Ukraine and joining Russia. But the vote’s legitimacy has been called into question after the installation of a pro-Russian government in Crimea just last week. We host a roundtable discussion with three guests: Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian citizen and researcher at the University College London specializing in far-right movements; Jonathan Steele, former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian and author of "Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy"; and Keith Gessen, an editor at n+1 magazine who covered the 2010 Ukraine elections for The New Yorker.

 

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