How Ukraine Will Shape the Future of the Middle East

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE

BY DENNIS ROSS

Vladimir Putin has done it again. Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, and now Crimea; wherever there are potentially ethnic Russian areas in former Soviet republics that are not prepared to toe the Russian line, there will be separatist movements that will break away as in the case of Moldova, Georgia, and now Ukraine -- and Russia will support them. It matters not that there is an international agreement -- in this case the Budapest Memorandum -- in which Russia, along with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine are all signatories and that Russia has pledged its respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine; that was 1994 and Russia, in Putin's eyes, was weak, and now it is 2014, and it is not, and it can impose its will with little concern for the consequences.

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