[L,TOWM]

OK. I am still having a tough time seeing Russia's hand behind the current situation.

I can't see what the payoff is for Russia in pulling the "bellicosity" string for the DPRK (if they even have a string attached). I can't see what the DPRK would be getting from Russia for responding to that string pull (assuming that there is a string to be pulled).

If Russia had been propping up North Korea in the last few years, well, OK, I could see the influence there. My impression is that the NK's are starving simply because very little propping up from anyone is going on, and the little that has been done was being done by the Sinkmeister's regime.

No, from where I am sitting, I believe that the DPRK is after:
a)Getting us off the Korean Peninsula, which would set up their re unifying with the South,
b)Bullying us to give them food, fuel, and $$$ and/or
c)Having us broker a foreign aid deal with a lot of countries, without them having to give up anything.

I am not sure how any of those outcomes would serve the national interests of the Russians.

The $64k question is, will they go to war if we don't play along?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I guess I thought it was the Red Chinese that darned near ran the US off the peninsula, armed the NK's and fed them for 50 years. Their fingerprints are all over the "crisis."