BBC News - World media offer divergent views on Ukraine crisis - 0 views
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Speaking of Syria, comparisons between its civil war and the situation in Ukraine dominate commentary throughout the Middle East. "At a time when the drums of war are beating in Ukraine and the Crimea Peninsula, the Russians should note that they should not vote for the death of diplomacy because they won the Syrian crisis with the same trump card," writes Jalal Barzegar in Iran's conservative daily Iran. "If diplomacy backs down in the face of militarism, or in fact be forced to retreat, its consequences will not be limited to Ukraine; it will rather affect the international atmosphere." He argues: "Russia's insistence on going down the same road could have unpredictable consequences for Crimea, other areas in Ukraine and even other parts of the world such as Syria." Yosef Mowlai in the reformist Iranian daily Sharq also draws comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan, predicting that things aren't going to end well for the Russians. "The main concern of Russian officials is not international law; rather it is their country's security in its own backyard which comes at the expense of ignoring the independence and sovereignty of other nations," he writes. "It seems that the Russian Federation has not learned enough from its costly defeat in Afghanistan and has not learned from America's struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq's quagmire. Russia has made another serious mistake and got involved in a dangerous game again."
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Could Syria and Ukraine be horse-traded in some sort of geopolitical diplomatic deal? Urayb al-Rintawi in Jordan's Al-Dustur doesn't think so. "Some people think there is a chance of trading Syria for Ukraine if the Kremlin were to abandon Al-Assad in return for Washington and Brussels's abandonment of their allies in Kiev and vice versa," he writes. However, such a trade-off is not possible because in America's strategic calculations, Syria is relegated to bottom position compared to Ukraine."
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Meanwhile, the Syrian government's daily Al-Thawrah sees the situation as chickens coming home to roost for US President Barack Obama's foreign policy. "Perhaps it has not crossed America's mind that the terrorism it manufactures and exports to the rest of the world, including to Syria as is the case today, will in the end bounce back. But lately, this fact started to rob Obama's administration's sleep," they write. "Amid the feverish US -Western race to target Syria, developments in Ukraine have started to steal attention as the eyes of the world turn to the Russian Caesar and wait for his final decision on the issue."
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In Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News, Verda Ozer notes comparisons between the Ukrainian uprising and her nation's Gezi protests, but she contends that there are "many differences". She calls Ukraine an "authoritarian democracy" without Turkey's record of recent stability. Turkey's government, she writes, has been in an ongoing dialogue with protesters, which has prevented the sort of escalation that happened in Kiev.