This US journalist fully understands what Putin and his hardliners are planning for the "New Russia".
A solid article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...d33_story.html
Some commenters here thought one could just talk with Putin as the way forward---people do have to listen to and read what comes out of Putin and his circle of advisors currently.
For example---this from September 2013:
In September 2013, when the Ukrainian authorities still discussed the prospects of signing the Association Agreement with the EU, Putin’s aide Sergey Glazyev explicitly stated that if Ukraine signed the Agreement, Russia could no longer guarantee Ukraine’s status as a state and could intervene “if pro-Russian regions of the country appealed directly to Moscow”. The Ukrainian revolution that set the country on the pro-European course was a signal for Moscow to launch that Plan B.
This appears to not be the case for senior US leaders---no US strategy as of yet has been seen in the Ukrainian crisis. The WH must at some point realize the US signature on the Budapest Memorandum was an implied promise in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons--if the US fails to upload this Memorandum then what country will ever believe the US in the coming years?
From the NATO 2008 Bucharest Summit Conference:
23.NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations. We welcome the democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia and look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May. MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership. Today we make clear that we support these countries’ applications for MAP. Therefore we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked Foreign Ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting. Foreign Ministers have the authority to decide on the MAP applications of Ukraine and Georgia.
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