Russia has no interest in any thing west of the Dnieper. It won’t annex Novorossiya; that will become another Kremlin client state linked up to Transnistria.
They’re resigned in Moscow to West Ukie independence. Wasting Russian lives retaking Kiev is not worth it.
This is a replay of Crimea but unlike Crimea, there is no good reason for Russia to annex Ukraine’s east outright. Putin also wants to keep Kiev on a short leash by keeping open the possibility some future Ukrainian leader might decide to join a Russian-dominated Ukrainian confederation.
The assumption is that the non-Russian part of Ukraine won’t fall into chaos.
We saw the same thing happen to the rest of Czechoslovakia after Hitler took the Sudetenland.
Which is precisely why NATO should be prepared to move into Western Ukraine should the situation deteriorate there.
The eastern part of Ukraine is the industrial heartland. The rest isn’t worth fighting for. It’s interesting the the IMF wouldn’t bailout Ukraine unless they put down the rebellion in the Eastern part. Which looks less and less likely as time goes on.
That depends on the character of the newly emerged Putinist Russia. I think, they said goodbye to rational economic behavior long time ago and instead prefer territorial expansion at any cost. If Russia had been driven by this consideration they would have continued covert support to the insurgents and encouraged independent DNR/LNR. Instead they removed the charismatic rebel leaders such as Girkin and allowed the rebels to be nearly destroyed, before they intervened. That is classic Soviet maneuver: use local proletarian base to justify a military invasion, then get rid of leaders with independent streak and gain direct control. In a place like Angola the sovs had no alternative to setting up a satellite state, but since East Ukraine is contiguous, I think they decided on direct annexation.