Ukraine Is A 'Complicated Circumstance,' Putin?

It's fair to say that things aren't going well between Russia and Ukraine, not to mention America having its fair share of headaches trying to mediate talks over Crimea. Many countries, including the U.S. and Britain, didn't send delegations to last week's Winter Paralympics in protest. But Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't all that fussed, calling the Russian military presence in Crimea just "complicated circumstances."

Right. According to the Associated Press, Putin said the following in Russian as he stood next to International Paralympic President Philip Craven:

I would like to thank you for the Paralympic Games staying out of politics and the complicated circumstances, which you all know about very well, had no impact on the Games. And I would like to assure you that Russia did not initiate, it was not an instigator, of these difficult circumstances which you know and we are talking about here.

Hmmm.

First to put it as a "complicated circumstance" is an understatement. Secondly, to say Russia was not an instigator of any of this is laughable, given that Russia had a military intervention in Crimea — or, as one Russian news anchor put it, invasion.

That said, Crimean lawmakers did vote to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia, but that doesn't change the fact that Russia intervened well before the political change happened.

We'll have to see what comes next in the Ukraine-Russia saga — or, as Putin calls it, those "circumstances" that Russia didn't "instigate."