Russian Aspirations : Rehabilitating Stalin

"Russia is far from being involved in any large-scale conflicts. We don't want that and don't plan on it. But naturally, we should always be ready to repel any aggression towards Russia. ... Russia's partners ... should understand it's best not to mess with us."
"...Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia. I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers."
Revanchist President of Russia, Vladimir Putin

"First they drove people to hunger, and now they've driven them to war."
"They call this an anti-terrorist operation, but this is a civil war. Brother killing brother."
Anatoly Babchenko, rebel-captured Ukrainian soldier

Demonstrators gather outside the Russian Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, to protest against Russian intervention in Ukraine Sunday, March 2, 2014. A convoy of Russian troops rolled toward Simferopol, the capital of Ukraine's Crimea region, a day after Russian forces took over the strategic Black Sea peninsula without firing a shot. The parliament in Moscow gave President Vladimir Putin a green light Saturday to use the military to protect Russian interests in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

There's always a first; to test the waters of opportunity, so to speak. And for Vladimir Putin it was partly Chechnya, but certainly Georgia where he contended that the government of Georgia was stepping on the tender feet of ethnic Russians, resulting in a military invasion, a limited conflict, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia triumphant and Georgian authorities slinking away, tails between their legs, Russia having taught them an unforgettable lesson, that once a satellite, always vulnerable in independence.

The international community looked on restively and with condemnation to be certain, but this was Russia's bailiwick, and even the United States finally reneged on its intention to install anti-ballistic-missiles silos in Poland and the Czech Republic, in resignation when Moscow repeatedly balked against this incursion into their territory even while Poland and the Czech Republic urged the U.S. to proceed. Just as the world sat agape as Barack Obama chose to ignore his own 'red line' on chemical weapons use in Syria when Russia cautioned that diplomacy always trumps conflict.

Diplomacy is not working against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And nor is the Kremlin much interested in claims by NATO, Ukraine and the United States that Russian troops and armaments have surfaced in a neighbouring country representing the outrage of a military invasion and a rather subterranean kind of conflict disguised as anything but. Diplomacy and sanctions are a contemptible non-starter with Vladimir Putin; devices better used by those he urges them upon, and certainly not himself.

As for sovereign Ukrainian territory; it is, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, a vain conceit that defies reality. Reality is that eastern Ukraine is ripe to become, as with the annexation of Crimea, "New Russia". Therefore, the need for "statehood" for southern and eastern Ukraine. With the Kremlin-supported ethnic Russian Ukrainians opening a land route to connect Russia to Crimea, as an especial gift to their patron.

"We will do what it takes to defend our allies", stated NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Ramussen, of a country that is not part of the alliance, and whose defence will be restrained to sanctions that, if enforced sufficiently and carried through long enough, will eventually have its desired impact on Russia, but will not, int he short term, deter President Putin from his goal of asserting Russia's power strategy on the region.

Which makes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, understandably, very nervous indeed, wishing they did not, after all, have the privilege of hosting ethnic-Russians as citizens of their brave countries whose memory of the not-so-distant past as part of the Soviet Union they've been doing their best to push as far behind them as they possibly can. While they can.