Quote Originally Posted by Kralizec View Post
Seriously? You want to send your country's troops to fight in this conflict?
No, but that's where we're headed now.

We should have supplied Ukraine with the materials to fight the rebels six months ago, we didn't, things have escalated and now we're looking at Ukraine being turned into a failed state by Russia.

Diplomacy has failed - people will look back on this the way they did American negotiation with Japan before Pearl Harbour.

Putin initially tried to bargain for a ceasefire 10 days later than the final agreement finally provided for. The purpose of that was obviously to give the rebels time to capture Debaltseve, which suggests that he wasn't negotiating with the intent of breaking the deal afterwards.
In other words, he wanted a ceasefire he didn't need to break, which is still negotiating in bad faith.

Some people claim that the rebels are Putin's puppets, while Russia claims it has no involvement in the dispute at all. I'm guessing that neither is true; Russia provides the rebels with the means to fight but has limited control over what they do with them.
Whether or not Russia controls the idiots with guns, any resulting "state" that comes out of this will be a vassal of Russia.