Right, so Russia has invaded Ukraine.
It's got troops in Crimea who have seized government buildings and an airport.
There was a treaty signed in 1997 that allows Russia to have troops protecting its military
bases in Crimea but it does not allow them to encroach on Ukraine's sovereignty - see
section 6/1 of the treaty for that.
But it has been bloodless.
It's hardly been the incredible act of aggression that US Secretary of State John Kerry called
it.
It isn't exactly on the same scale as Iraq now is it?
And no, we will not let that one go.
But while we totally disagree with Russia's actions - and will continue to refer to it
as an invasion, because that's what it is, let's not let our politicians get too carried
away with their rhetoric.
What's happened since the last update we put out?
Sanctions have been imposed Crimean local representatives and some Russians could well
be added to it - just not President Putin.
They'll be subjected to visa bans and asset freezes.
That's partly because MPs in Crimea have voted to join the Russian federation, subject to
a referendum on March 16th.
But Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk has declared the move as illegitimate and
Barack Obama has said that any decisions about the future of Crimea must involve the Ukrainian
government in Kiev.
Quite why the will of the people in that region isn't enough isn't entirely clear.
Just a thought, but the Scottish are voting on independence from the UK soon.
If they say yes, will Barack Obama say it doesn't count unless the rest of the UK votes
too?
I highly doubt it.
The whole thing is coming across as an attempt by both sides to hide the fact that this is
a massive geo-political fight between two dying superpowers and their allies.
The US, Europe, Canada and Austalia have been accusing Russia of interfering on a jumped
up pretext.
But, let's not forget that the west were pretty clearly interfering in the protests.
Remember Victoria Nuland?
She's the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe - the one with the leaked eff the EU
phonecall - in that phonecall she was heard discussing the make up the government that
would replace Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the protests.
The current government pretty much conforms to those outlines in that it's peppered with
super-rich oil oligarchs and leaders of extreme right, neo-fascist groups.
That and the people involved in the Orange Revolution.
And those Neo-Nazi's have the backing of Europe and the US.
Which is interesting.
In fact the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been telling Ukraine's government they
must sign an agreement with EU asap.
There's a link to an article explaining exactly who all of the members of the Ukrainian government
are in the video description.
Now, one of the first actions of the government was to remove Russian as an official language.
They've also arrested the leader of the most persistent pro-Moscow protest movement in
Eastern Ukraine.
Pavel Gubarev was arrested at home in Donetsk this afternoon.
All in all, it looks bound to get the majority ethnic-Russian population in Crimea well onside.
But then there's Russia, and specifically Vladimir Putin, who's called the pronouncements
of the EU and US a "primitive distortion of reality", accusing them of cynicism and double
standards.
Which, is probably fair, but equally massively hypocritical.
Putin's still trying to get us all to believe that the incursion in to Crimea is being done
on humanitarian grounds, a selfless act by Russia to protect ethnic Russians in the region
and I'm going to call BS on that one too.
The fight to see who's got the biggest cajones over Crimea is all about who controls oil
and gas.
It's hugely important as a route for energy pipelines.
That's why George Bush's government provided sixty five million dollars for so called "democracy
training" to opposition leaders in Ukraine, that's why Victoria Nuland confirmed the US
had invested over five billion dollars in making sure there is a secure and democratic
Ukraine.
And in a publication titled Nato's relations with Russia and Ukraine, Professor Craig Nation
referred to the region as being "critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate
energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin".
So we know it's important for the West but what about Russia?
Well there's obviously Gazprom, which is owned by the Russian state and controls one fifth
of the world's natural gas supplies.
It also supplies Europe with 30 percent of it's annual gas supply.
So it's pretty important for Russia too.
So, let's not be under any illusion here, this isn't a humanitarian mission, it isn't
about safeguarding democracy.
It isn't about who controls the territory, it's about who controls what runs through
it.