Vladimir Putin is wily, they say; he’s steps ahead of naive Western counterparts, ruthless at wielding his power for maximum advantage. And sure enough, there was the former KGB colonel Monday signing a piece of paper that Russia has recognized two breakaway Ukrainian regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent — a move widely seen as a precursor for an invasion of his neighbor, a democratic nation of 44 million people. Not long after the announcement, very well-armed “peacekeepers” (right) arrived on the scene.
Call us rubes, but we don’t see how on earth a Russian military occupation of Ukraine serves Putin’s ends.
It might feel good in the moment to bring a former Soviet Republic back into Moscow’s orbit, but what does he really gain by engaging his massive military with his neighbor’s 250,000-strong armed forces, bolstered by cash and arms from the West, in a war that would almost certainly make the Soviet Union’s disastrous invasion of Afghanistan look like whatever the Russians call a picnic (granted, picnics aren’t much fun in the dead of a Kyiv winter)?
