Today we’re witnessing a giant media propaganda war against Russia, particularly against Crimea and against the Russians in Ukraine. There are many lies circulating in the media. There is a kind of media fantasy that imagines that we are seeing a rerun of the Cold War and a tendency to see the worst in every move that Russia makes. And there is a lack of sympathy or empathy or understanding, whichever side you’re on, whatever your interpretation of events in 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.

Brussels, 6 March 2014

As laid out by many CNN expert analysts

In the eyes of many ethnic Russians, it is the Ukrainian nationalists who are the Nazis. The Russians have asserted quite accurately, that the revolution that overthrew a pro-Russian, democratically elected leader has resulted in the elevation of Russophobe fascists into key government positions. For example, the new secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council is Andriy Parububiy. He was appointed after leading the anti-government riots. In 1991, he co-founded the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) together with Oleh Tyahnybok.

Here after are extracts of the Speech delivered by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov at the Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels on 15 October 2013

This speech sets forth the vision of Russian foreign policy and makes for interesting reading in the midst of the Ukraine crisis and the emerging 'cold war thinking' that seems to prevail in some quarters.

The demonstrations in Kiev began on the night of 21 November 2013, when protests erupted after the Ukrainian governmernt suspended preparations for signing an Association Agreement and a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union in order to seek closer economic relations with Russia. The president has asked for 20 billion USD in loans and aid. The EU was willing to offer 610 million euros in loans, while Russia was willing to offer 15 billion USD in loans. Russia also offered Ukraine cheaper gas prices.

The European Union should not match the United States in threatening sanctions against Russia. Russia is the EU's most important trading partner after the United States and China , with 123 billion euros of goods exported there in 2012. It is also the EU's most important single supplier of energy products, accounting for more than a quarter of all EU consumption of oil and gas. If the EU were to move with any punitive actions like sanctions, it is important to consider what it would take to reverse any of them down the road.

Russia is the 3rd largest trading partner of the EU and the EU ranks as Russia's number one trading partner, accounting for almost 41% of all trade.  Europe needs Russia’s gas, and Russia is a major market for EU-based companies that supply the bulk of Russia’s imports.

Here below is the situation for some key EU Member States:

As divisions deepen between the eastern and western regions of Ukraine, the backers of the putsch regime in Kiev portray Russia as a reckless aggressor to absolve their own responsibility for engineering the crisis.