hedwards: Well, they did just annex Crimea. But yeah, I'm not really sure there's any reason to think they'll go any further at this point. But, the whole way that it was handled was rather fishy.
jamyskis: Indeed, the key point being in this case that the vast majority of Crimeans wanted to be annexed by Russia. Ukraine was holding onto Crimea for dear life as nothing more than a simple land grab.
What concerns me is that Putin may start having delusions about Russia having some manifest destiny to revive the former Soviet Union.
Goodness knows, outside of the major metropolitan centres like Moscow and St. Petersburg, Putin has a lot of support from patriot zealots who think that Josef Stalin was the best thing since sliced bread. And the Russian military is certainly powerful enough.
Confusing thing is that Putin has been sounding more far-right than far-left recently with all the anti-gay stuff and wasn't there something about 'The Jews bringing the Holocaust on themselves' from someone in his camp too?