The claim that the Crimean referendum violates international law is undercut by the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence. In that opinion, the ICJ found (among other things) that general international law does not prohibit unilateral declarations of independence. The authors of the “unilateral” declaration of independence did not consult Serbian authorities (much less get its consent). Like the declaration of independence, the referendum does not by itself “secede” Crimea from Ukraine under international law.

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) was initiated by Poland and Sweden and was adopted as an eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2009. It comprises six post-Soviet states, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The initiative was designed to supplement the ENP and enable political and economic integration without the promise of enlargement.

This article was written by Stephen F. Cohen,( a professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University) and published in the March 3 edition of The Nation under the title ‘Distorting Russia: How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine'

By the late nineteenth century, U.S. commercial and military interests in Cuba and the wider Caribbean had deepened. When a Cuban uprising against Spanish control threatened to secure the island’s independence, American policymakers pursued military intervention, capitalizing on popular outrage at the mysterious explosion of the U.S.S. Maine, in Havana harbor, in February of 1898. In a nine-day battle for Guantánamo Bay, American soldiers, under Commander Bowman H. McCalla, and Cuban insurgents defeated the Spanish garrison.