A few additional comments

Is it not extraordinary how many people who would not be able to tell the difference between Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv, let alone place them on the map, have now become experts on Ukrainian matters? It takes all my time just to avoid having discussions with them as these can lead nowhere.

Rumours about what is going on in Crimea abound with the Kremlin insisting the troops moved in to protect Russian civilians though no evidence of any attacks has been offered. Plus there was this:

Russia's military has given Ukrainian forces in Crimea until dawn on Tuesday to surrender or face an assault, Ukrainian defence sources have said.

The head of Russia's Black Sea Fleet Aleksander Vitko set the deadline and also threatened two warships, Ukrainian officials said.

However, Interfax news agency later quoted a fleet spokesman who denied that any ultimatum had been issued.

Whom to believe? I suppose we shall know by tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, here are a few links worthy following up. An interesting analysis by Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian history and security. Having written before that he did not think Putin would take the Crimea because that would not be in his interests, he is now wondering whether the man has actually gone too far to draw back.

What, one might ask, is Moscow’s endgame? What does it want, and how likely is it to get it. The more it radicalises Kyiv, the less likely it is to get some wider political settlement. Instead, it might be forced to take Crimea if for no other reason than that it has to be seen to accomplish something, even if this is a pyrrhic victory, one which will only hurt Russia.

Here, after all, is the perverse and twisted irony of the situation. Strictly from a coldly logical position (and I am not advocating this, I should add), in many ways it is in Kyiv’s interests for Moscow to steal Crimea, and turn it into some pseudo-state or new part of the Russian Federation. Ukraine loses a sunny peninsula, but also a distinct drain on the state’s coffers (the Crimean economy is not great, and the region receives net subsidies from the centre). It sheds the most troublesome and Russophile of its regions, one which has been a turbulent locus of trouble for Kyiv for most of post-Soviet Ukraine’s history. It also gets concrete proof of the threat it faces from Russian bullying and probably accelerated and solicitous assistance from the US, EU, NATO, etc. It also validates every Ukrainian fear about Russia.

The question "what is Moscow's endgame" has been asked with increasing bewilderment by many people who actually do know where all those Ukrainian cities are.

Vladimir Kara-Murza's piece is a few days old but is still worth reading though I suspect there is a certain amount of wishful thinking there. Also a reminder by Timothy Snyder, who has been writing the best informed articles on the subject, that rearranging borders, hardly an unknown event in history, is fraught with difficulties, not least because other people might get the same idea. In this case, China might decide something not dissimilar in Siberia.

So what else is happening? The UN Security Council is meeting as we speak and NATO intends to have another meeting tomorrow. The EU is sending various threats though the UK for one has announced that it has no intention of breaking business relations with Russia and, presumably, of denying various visas to people who had voted to give the President the right to send troops into Ukraine.

The market has reacted though, as Russia is not the Soviet Union and is not outside world economy and the market forces. The rouble has hit a new low and the value of stocks and shares on the Moscow stock exchange has plummeted. Again.

As it happens, there is another player on the scene, one with historic connection to Crimea and that is Turkey. Various members of the Turkish government have been calling for the continued existence of a united Ukraine and for a restoration of stability. According to the Foreign Ministry, Turkey will do everything possible to ensure that Crimea remains in Ukraine. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has visited Kyiv, and has held meetings with the acting President, various other politicians and Former Chairman of The Crimean Tatars National Assembly and Ukrainian Deputy Mustafa Abdulcemil Kirimoglu. Apparently, it was a closed meeting so anything could have been decided. Will Turkey suddenly emerge as the protector of the Crimean Tatars?

Hard to keep up

Events in Ukraine and, especially, in Crimea have been developing too fast for anyone to keep up except as a live blog, which I am in no position to do. It would appear that few people are even when they say they are live blogging.

So, here are a few thoughts and a few links:

Firstly, I think putting out the bunting for Ukraine the new democracy of Europe is a little premature. We have no real idea what the government is going to be like and who the President will be. Let me remind all my readers of the last successful Ukrainian democratic revolution, the Orange one around a decade ago. For the time being there is no particular reason to suppose that this one will fare any better than that one. Of course, it might, but we need to be a little wary and, above all, less demonstrative with our offers of cash for unknown purposes. Nor must we forget that among the many disparate opposition groups there are some very nasty ones and, at this stage, we do not know how much power or influence they will have. As to the latest heroine, Yuliya Tymoshenko, she is not an unknown quantity and was not a huge success in any way in her last reincarnation as a politician. In fact, as Edward Lucas points out, she was ruthless but incompetent and corrupt.

Secondly, Crimea, the most recent addition to Ukrainian territory. Through some whim of Khrushchev's Crimea was attached to Ukraine in 1954 (the second latest addition is western Ukraine or eastern Poland, which was added to the country in 1939 and, more definitively, 1944). It is majority Russian in population though there is the complication of the Crimean Tatars, deported by Stalin in 1944 and gradually and grudgingly allowed back in the eighties. They appear to be pro-Ukrainian though it is not at all clear how most of the peninsula's population feels on the subject. There is also a Russian naval base there and one of the accusations levelled at Russia by the acting Ukrainian President is that sailors and officers have been taking part in illegal military activity in various cities, thus breaking previous agreements about their behaviour.

For anyone who is interested in the background, bearing in mind that Crimea has been a bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, here is a lengthy analysis by the Taras Kuzio, an expert on Ukraine, published in 2010. It has been suggested to me that the people of Crimea might not want to stay in Ukraine especially if some of the nastier elements of the opposition take over (unlike the nastier elements of Yanukovich's government). That is not impossible but why send in armed goons or organize some local ones to take over various important buildings in that case.

Who the armed goons are precisely still seems a little vague what with them wearing unarmed uniforms and coming up with different stories (this might clear up by the morning) but the idea that the Russian government is not involved at some level is very unlikely.

That leaves two questions: what on earth does Putin think he is doing and what on earth can the West do? The second question also includes such sub-headings as "did no-one (apart from Sarah Palin) anywhere near the top in politics think that something along these lines might happen? Apparently not, as there seem to be no plans at all and I do not think President Obama's vague threats show any planning. Before we go any further, let me announce quite categorically that I do not think we, any of us should consider going to war with Russia. But is there anything we can do? Well, yes, as it happens there is but I doubt we shall.

We can push Russia out of the G8 and return to it being G7. Oddly enough, that would hurt. Also, as several people have suggested, we should impose personal sanctions on various members of the Russian elite: no more visas, no more property buying in Britain or the United States, no more shopping in the West, no more places for their offspring in our boarding schools, which can probably survive without them. Other ideas will occur as we go along.

As to Putin's actions, I can only surmise that he really has gone off the rocker. Russia is in no condition to wage a war against Ukraine and what good would come of it, in any case? Even detaching Crimea and annexing it to Russia is fraught with future problems for Russia and it state. Timothy Snyder is well worth reading on the subject. Among other things he points out that it is Russian foreign policy that turned what was going to be a temporary demonstration into a full scale riot and, if not a revolution precisely, certainly an upheaval and a loss of a good ally in the shape of Yanukovich. (Mind you, I think Yanukovich's own stupidity did not help there.)

There is more.

If Russia excludes its own borders from the general international standard of inviolability, it might face some unwanted challenges down the road. If Russia's external frontiers are flexible zones, to be pushed in various ways with appeals to the rights of ethnic brethren and passport holders, then what will happen, down the line, in Russia's eastern Siberia? There, Russia holds major natural resources along its border with China, the world's longest. Some 6 million Russian citizens in eastern Siberia face 90 million Chinese in China's bordering provinces.

Beijing pays attention to Ukraine because it has a major stake in Ukrainian agricultural territories. It will likely note the developing Russian doctrine on the flexibility of Russia's external borders. China also has a stake in eastern Siberia. It needs fresh water, hydrocarbons, mineral resources such as copper and zinc, and fertile soil for its farmers. The Chinese economic relationship with eastern Siberia is a colonial one: China buys raw materials and sells finished goods. Beijing actually invests more in eastern Siberia than does Moscow. No one knows the exact number of Chinese citizens in eastern Siberia -- in part because the last Russian census declined to count them -- but it certainly dwarfs the number of Russians in Crimea, and is expected by Russian analysts to increase significantly with time.

In general, one would say that moving around borders is not a good idea unless you have worked out a number of steps ahead. The Russians are always described as chess players and many of them are but it does not appear that Vlad and his friends have looked at the board too carefully.

That is as far as one can go at the moment.