The situation in Ukraine nears a boiling point. On March 1, Russian military assets were ordered into the Ukraine’s Crimea region.
   “We perceive Russia’s actions as a direct aggression towards the sovereignty of Ukraine,” said acting President Oleskandr Turchynov. This kind of talk and action between leaders of two nations, which have a combined population of 189 million, gives more than enough reason to be concerned.
     This provocation by Moscow is a product of a situation that has grown colder every day over the last several months. Ukraine sits in a symbolic location. It rests between four North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland) and the rest of pro-Western Europe and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This location sheds light on one of the foundational issues that caused the Ukrainian situation to spin out of control last November.
     On Nov. 21, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych opted to make a deal with President Putin and Russia instead of the European Union. The citizens of Ukraine opted to protest in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital. After weeks of escalating protest, Yanukovych ordered government forces to oust the opposition, which included snipers taking aim at protesting citizens in the public square. According to Ukraine’s Health Ministry, 95 people were killed in the anti-Yanukovych protests from Nov. 30 to March 3.
   On Feb. 22, Yanukovych was removed from power when the Ukrainian parliament opted for new elections. All of these events lead to the central crisis in Ukraine. On March 1, an estimated 6,000 Russian troops entered in Crimea, a sovereign Ukrainian territory with a large makeup of ethnic Russians. Since then, the Ukrainian envoy to the United Nations claim that number of troops has risen to 16,000.
    Russia’s military incursion into the Crimean peninsula must be met with a firm response from the Obama administration. Idle talk and feeble action will encourage and embolden President Putin to continue down this path that threatens the stability of all of Eastern Europe. This is an excellent opportunity for the Obama administration to exert this much needed and recently absent leadership in global affairs. President Putin has taken President Obama to school in geopolitical matters in the past few years. This is clear in the Syrian civil war, where Moscow has been a step ahead of Washington since the first shots rang out nearly three years ago.
    In a March 1 piece for the Washington Post, David Kramer, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia and Ukraine, laid out several actionable movements for the Obama administration to consider. His options include “imposing sanctions against Russian state-owned banks, terminating all negotiations with Russia on possible trade agreements and pushing for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s aggression against its neighbor.” Russia would certainly veto any action taken at the U.N., and this would expose the hypocrisy of Putin.
    The current condition of Ukraine has all of the trappings of a power vacuum where Putin would enjoy nothing more than to pour raw Russian influence and expand the Kremlin’s arm of influence further west to strengthen its buffer zone, which would distance itself from those neighboring NATO member states. Russian troops have effectively taken control of the entire Crimean peninsula without firing a shot.  A weak response now will further damage the perception of United States power abroad and allow Russia to slowly bring surrounding nations under its control, much like it did in Georgia in 2008. The international community cannot stand for Putin’s preference of ethnicity over sovereign international borders.
   The situation is truly dynamic and reports from the field will continue to shape perceptions of the events. History suggests the best way to predict Putin’s actions is to view the options available through the most pessimistic lenses you can find. I encourage you to take notice of what is going on in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula. The implications of this Russian action are serious and should be met with a serious response.