Once they have the political situation turning in their favor it won;t be hard to install a Kremlin friendly government.
It's how Putin will keep it conventional and nobody will stop him, just as nobody stopped Hitler until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor...Then it was quite a while before the armaments and planes needed could be manufactured and the men trained to confront him, (Now in France).
If Hitler had not lost his marbles and delayed attacking on two fronts until be was ready, we would be talking a different scenario...from WWII But he assumed that the British would not be very effective if he kept them suppressed and he failed to see the US entering the fray.
The attack on pearl changed all that, but Hitler had already committed and played out a bad hand.
Putin knows all this, so the game is already set. I am sure his occupation of Poland is already in process. He will use their friendliness with the US as a weapon in Poland's politics, just as he has used it in the Ukraine and in Georgia.
With most of the college graduates for over two decades having been brainwashed into thinking that the US is a global problem and it's policies have damaged the peaceful world, it will be a given that the US will not get into the fray as the US media takes their side, just as they took the German’s side in WWII. They will be attacking Bush for at least another decade.
So it's logically a doable task and it's been underway for years..and you can now see the Russian influence working here as well through the media and through the opinions of out educated elite.
All of this “Putin will invade Poland!’ stuff is just pure hysteria, imho.
What economic or strategic advantage is there for Russia? I said Russia, NOT the Soviet Union. This isn’t 1939.
There are many factors at play here, this isn’t as simple as moving pieces on a Chess board.
“If Hitler had not lost his marbles,,,”
At what point of his life do you opine that he ever possessed ANY marbles?