End Rule: End Sanctions

From Yahoo:
"US to maintain Crimea sanctions until Russian rule ends"

Washington vowed Monday to keep sanctions on Moscow for the annexation of Crimea as long as the peninsula remains under Russian rule, urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the occupation"On this one-year anniversary of the sham 'referendum' in Crimea, held in clear violation of Ukrainian law and the Ukrainian constitution, the United States reiterates its condemnation of a vote that was not voluntary, transparent, or democratic," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Russia has kicked off three days of celebrations in Crimea to mark a year since it annexed the peninsula following a referendum in a historic shift blasted by the West and Ukraine as an illegal takeover. Pro-Russian authorities said nearly 97 percent of Crimeans voted to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia, but with no independent observers allowed the poll was widely dismissed abroad. "Russia used its military to forcibly seize and occupy Crimea, sovereign Ukrainian territory, and then staged an illegal so-called referendum in a feeble attempt to justify its actions," Psaki told reporters. "Over the last year, Russia has instituted repression on a mass scale in Crimea, driving out NGOs and leaving non-Russian minorities, including the Crimean tatars, to flee or go into hiding," she added. In a separate statement, Psaki vowed that "this week, as Russia attempts to validate its cynical and calculated 'liberation' of Crimea, we reaffirm that sanctions related to Crimea will remain in place as long as the occupation continues." She also pointed to a documentary broadcast on Sunday in which Putin explains how he gave "direct instructions" to the Russian armed forces for a swift and bloodless mission to take back the peninsula from Ukraine that had been transferred from Russian to Ukrainian jurisdiction in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. "A year ago President Putin told the world that Russian military forces were not intervening in Crimea. He now acknowledges to the world that Russian forces did in fact intervene, and those are his own words," Psaki told reporters. "So it certainly brings into question the credibility of claims being made today that the Russian military is not intervening in eastern Ukraine."

^ I fully support this yet I have a feeling that it won't last as long as promised. Officials (especially in the government) tend to talk big for the time and then when people start forgetting they back off. Putin and other Russian officials have just admitted they were going to invade and occupy the Crimea before the Crimeans were allowed to vote. It would be one thing if the Crimeans had voted to leave the Ukraine and join Russia before the Russian military was on the ground and pointing guns at them, but the latter happened and so any sense of "democracy" with the invasion, occupation, annexation or vote are gone forever. The Russians even waited until they occupied the Crimea before dissolving the 1954 Soviet agreement that transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (both part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.) ^

http://news.yahoo.com/us-maintain-crimea-sanctions-until-russian-rule-ends-203921226.html