Ukraine Thread

[Husar]

I'm sure if he had reacted otherwise, now he would have quite a different Ukrainian government to deal with (with the pro-russians in Donbas and Crimea participating in the elections). Instead, with every new move he is digging himself into a deeper hole. He has two choices only: to press his cause until he wins (which he is finding increasingly difficult) or leave his post. His backing out at this (or any further) stage and saving his face is not possible any more.

Putin will not have it even with the truncated Ukraine. He needs both non-Nato and non-EU guarantees of Ukraine's future. And can he guarantee anything in return? I mean guarantees that anyone would trust? And would anyone trust him anymore? Not Ukraine, at least.
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Once again: Nato, EU, USA - they KNOW everything perfectly well so if they had wanted to start a war they would have done it long ago. As the USA had done it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada... They don't want a war still hoping to give Putin a chance to back out and save his face. Putin sees it as a sign of weakness and keeps doing his dirty tricks. The questions is who will acknowledge the failure of his approach first.

So Putin is digging himself deeper into a hole and his approach is really bad for him in the long term, but the strategies of the Western countries have also completely failed, so who is going to "win" this? Putin? Apparently not, he's digging a deeper hole all the time and cannot go back. The West? Apparently not, their tactic has failed. Sounds like the situation will either disappear magically or WW3 as I said earlier. Or am I getting something wrong here?

You didn't get what I meant. I mean that Ukrainians and Russians have been living side by side for several centuries and considered each other more than friends. This is one of the reasons no one expected such attitude and actions from a strategic partner. What Putin has done may have benefited him tactically, yet strategically he has disadvantaged Russia tremendously. I don't see any time in the nearest future when Russians and Ukrainians would feel the same towards each other. And this is more grievous than all territorial and political disputes. Ultimately, Ukraine will never (well, not in the forseeable future) say that our brothers and close friends live across the border.

Maybe Putin didn't expect his strategic friends to dump him for the EU with the whole Maidan thing either, which happened before he showed his "attitude and actions".

He wasn't. I just wanted to show how unreliable socialogical surveys are in modern Russia. Do you know the procedure? They TELEPHONE random people and ask: "Do you support Putin?"

What's the problem with telephones? Political polls in the West aren't conducted by magic mind readers either, telephones are a common tool.
https://www.boundless.com/political-...ling-275-6802/