As you know there are many moving parts to Ukraine that the EU/NATO/US and Russia are influencing....and they 'all' use the undesirables to their advantage while they attach themselves to whatever piece of the Ukrainian pie is significant to them.... Not just Russia Ivan...and there is no exaggeration to it...it's how the big players work.
All that's happening in Ukraine isn't about their freedom...it's about how much of Ukraine the interested parties can control, manage, and steal. ...which of course the USA had all Ukraine's gold shipped immediately to the FED.."for safe keeping" don't you know, (Rather like they did for Germany, and we now know how that played out.) when in fact it's payback for the revenues the USA put into Ukraine to support 'their' revolution. Ukraine will never see that gold again.
Russia got Ukraine's Crimea, the ports, the navy and their oil.
US got Ukraine's gold, and perhaps a missil base?
EU got their economic trade deal which Ukraine will have to use to pay off the EU.
Ukraine will get exactly what these three squabble over to give them...and you can be sure it won't be sufficient for Ukraine to ever go it alone.
Ukraine now has three boots on their necks.
Very pessimistic world view there, caww. But Ukraine has been in worst situations, the past three centuries were a complete write off. Relatively speaking, today’s crisis is, an improvement.
During Maidan, the joke was, if the situation was dire and you didn’t know what to do, sing the national anthem.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzHlSLhtmM
As for the geopolitical side of this thing, it’s not going to be the big players doing the actual fighting with Russians, it’ll be Ukrainians, so I can’t agree that Ukraine is a bystander. Used by US, meh, up to a point I guess, but I’d prefer to say that it’s providing assistance because there has been so much tension between Ukraine and Putin’s Russia that it was meant to happen, regardless of US showing up.