And we are $17 trillion in debt, we are broke, war-weary, and we may get sucked into a situation involving a smei-regional spat with Ukrainian Communists vs Ukranian Nazis.
Didn’t we come close to getting sucked into siding with very bad Syrian elements vs Assad?
Putin is a thug and a monster, no doubt. In the end, like I told someone else, this will probably end with Crimea & Ukraine split down the middle, E. Ukraine going to Russia, Moldava joining with Russia, an that’s the end of it.
Any more than that from Putin and Russia will be wiped out economically with economic isolation, banking isolation, all remaining assets frozen - and then the oligarchs inside and outside of Russia would yank Putin from running Russia.
There is a bigger geo-political game being played here.
Ukraine has been in crisis for a long time. They haven’t paid a dime for any Russian gas since January 2013. Russia has been sending Ukraine billions to prop up the economy. Public Corruption is a way of life, and on such a scale that it would make an Oligarch blush.
When Obama got slapped down by Putin over Syria, they saw destabilizing Ukraine as a way of getting back at him, thus the US involvement and funding for the NGO’s, and Ukrainian radicals.
Putin moving to take advantage of a situation handed to him on a silver platter by the Obama Administration’s hubris and incompetence shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody.
This will not end well—war by next week.