Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

The saber-rattling is getting pretty, well, rattling if you ask me.

Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

The United States, Great Britain and Russia agreed in a pact "to assure Ukraine's territorial integrity" in return for Ukraine giving up a nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union after declaring independence in 1991, said Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

"We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement," said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. "Now there's a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake."

His statements come as Russia raised the possibility it may send its troops beyond the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea into the eastern half of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said lawlessness "now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called 'right sector' with the full connivance" of Ukraine's authorities.

Rizanenko and others in Ukraine say the pact it made with the United States under President Bill Clinton was supposed to prevent such Russian invasions.

The pact was made after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and became Russia, leaving the newly independent nation of Ukraine as the world's third largest nuclear weapons power.

I'm hoping this is the opinion of a grumpy Soviet-era hardliner who's still kicking around Kiev's parliament some 25 years later.  But former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko and the Udar party have been arguably the highest profile players in Ukraine's revolution.  But it shows that the situation in Ukraine is getting increasingly perilous, and that Putin has raised the stakes considerably with his actions.

Good thing we have President Obama at the helm, and not McCain or Romney.