Ferocious, Biting Sanctions...

"The sanctions that Washington has imposed since the annexation of Crimea are good and attack Putin's oligarch trustees. But Europe has been duplicitous. Germany has been duplicitous. There is not a single oligarch on their list of those sanctioned and that's where the oligarchs keep their money, in Europe."
"Putin is going to take over Ukraine, just the East, then Moldova, Transnistria and then test NATO  and see whether it's going to hold. Is President Obama going to send in troops to save 1.3-million Estonians? If not, then NATO falls apart and Putin can take what he wants."
"Crimea was easy to annex because there were already 15,000 Russian troops living there or stationed at its Russian military base. The rest would require an occupying force."
"He [the next elected President of Ukraine] should give NATO permission to enter and guard his country. If there is any invasion by the Russians, Ukraine must cut the natural gas off to the rest of the European countries. This will force everyone to the table because this is the economic artery. Actually, he should cut the gas immediately and play hardball."
Bill Browder, Russian expert, American money manager

Mr. Browder is the man behind the Magnitsky Law, legislation passed in the United States into law in 2012 in memory of Mr. Browder's Russian lawyer, tortured and murdered by Russian authorities who had him arrested on trumped-up charges for his loud and public denunciations of graft and corruption on an unbelievable scale. The Magnitsky Law blacklisted and sanctioned 18 Russians and their companies, for stealing $230-million based on fraudulent documents.

Under American pressure several other countries have frozen or seized apartment buildings and assets in concert with U.S. action under the Magnitsky Law. Mr. Browder is on a campaign to convince other countries to enact their own similar law. "The amount of corruption is staggering and today there is nowhere to hide. You can't launder large amounts of money because of the global banking system, money transfers and the Internet."

"On the U.S. Department of Treasury Website it states that 50% of the oligarchs are holding Putin's money. He has become one of the richest men in the world." And aside from the personal wealth he has amassed, and given his authority, allowing his personal friends to continue sacking the country, he has become increasingly confident of his capacity to rule world affairs. The authority of his presence inspires him to advise President Obama in his capacity as a diplomat of distinction.

That became so boring to him, President Obama so obedient to President Putin's overtures to solve problems without resorting to force, relying instead on opening alternate avenues to permit an immoral tyrant to escape any penalties for committing atrocities on his own civilian populations, that Vladimir Putin turned to other irritants, those of his own, to abandon the growing detente with the U.S. and the West to further his expansionist ambitions. Even the distraction of covering for Iran's nuclear program couldn't deflect his interests for long enough to stabilize his ambitions.

Ukraine had acquiesced two decades ago to the persuasive arguments of the West that it would be in its best interests to surrender the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile for Russia to dismantle. A ridiculous assumption to begin with, since Russia was itself not prepared to adequately care for its own decommissioned nuclear stockpiles, the West fearing its ill-cared for nuclear assets would end up in the hands of terrorists.

Necessitating that steps be taken to persuade Russia to allow the United States and other responsible entities to take on the arduous job of safeguarding Russia's own nuclear stockpiles and failing equipment. On this occasion, however, for Ukraine, territorial protection was guaranteed, in return by the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China. The Budapest Memorandum. Who can you trust if not the great powers of the world, after all?

No one, it seems.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is now a good friend and admirer of Vladimir Putin. The privilege of sitting on the board of the energy giant Gazprom certainly colours one's perspective. According to Gerhard Schroeder, who was pleased to embrace Vladimir Putin on the occasion of his 60th birthday, the Russian president is a "flawless democrat". On whose behalf he is committed to obstructing sanctions. And here the world was thinking of Putin as an overbearing autocrat!

Gerhard Schroeder,right, has been good friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, since they both were ostracised by U.S. President George W. Bush for opposing the 2003 Iraq invasion

And for all her condemnation of President Putin as "out of this world" mentally, Chancellor Angela Merkel has a ruling coalition with Schroeder's Socialist Party, since the last election brought her to minority status. Which has resulted in the current German and generalized European sanctions against Russia without much of an impressive bite; Ukraine's plight as a European problem aside. Nor has Britain exerted itself to any significance, reflecting its position as Russian oligarchs' favourite playground.

How likely is it that Ukraine will call Putin's bluff? Ukraine fears invasion, but that may not be in the cards. It is hegemony, accomplished through the force of an assumed invasion that could take place, the threat of intimidation and that alone that will move Russia to a position it envisions for itself. Putting the fear of invasion into the thoughts of those whom he intimidates, leaving them in a puddle of exhausted fear, willing to submit to their re-Russification status that will satisfy Putin's ambitions to become the Czar of all he surveys.

Unless his ambition is hugely diluted with a threat coming out of Europe that the vast riches Mr. Putin and his cronies have amassed are threatened. And that takes the kind of courage of determination to proceed despite having to pay an economic price of their own that Europe shows no sign of committing to.