Well....there’s one interesting issue. It’s the eastern side of the country that would be mostly Russian in interest. ALL of the Russian natural gas lines....run through the western sector. So, there’s some serious thinking going on here. It’s best to go in....get corrupt with the new guys, and pretend things are ok with a friendly EU and a new gov’t...while building up the old corruption cycle. There’s too much at stake here to screw things up.
The gas lines are Russia’s ace in the hole. They essentially have a silver bullet to any situation with those. Putin has his hands on the valve and unlike the Saudis, is more than willing to turn it on a whim. We could wield similar influence in our own region, but unfortunately thanks to the libs, our resources remain unused like dry buckwheat.