Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
It's actually starting to look like a great Putin debacle, though he'll still be claiming credit for reclaiming Crimea.

It's actually a bit ironic. Not so long ago on this very thread we were beinmg told that Putin is a genius and Obama a fool, that Putin was in control and working Obama, and that unless the US leaped up and responded with all manner of dramatic moves, the Ukraine would be lost and all of Eastern Europe imperiled.

Seems it hasn't worked that way. The Russians seem more than ever disinclined to invade, and their proxies are retreating in disarray. Is it possible that the US really didn't need a dramatic response? That Obama may have actually had it right? That the prophets of doom here might have been... [insert theatrical gasp}... wrong??
Dayuhan--still a win for Putin as h established his doctrine of intervention to defend ethnic Russians wherever they reside and in whatever country.

Putin and his "radical nationalists advisors vastly underestimated the impact of some actually flawed sanctions thus the pull back.

BUT while he is struggling outwardly he is still pushing armed irregulars into Donetsk based on video footage still coming into the net and he is still pushing for a settlement that "allows" the Russian irregulars to "appear" to be winners---ie he states there must be talks before the arms are laid down and he is still trying to control the international responses from the international players ie that last meeting of the four FMs in Berlin which they spun as an iron clad legal document which it was not.

So even through outwardly appearances say one thing I still think he can book a major victory---and along the way verify his new military doctrine as well.

West has lost massively as the EU is slowly breaking up on the topic of the South Stream pipeline and both the EU and the US backed away from their threatened sectorial sanctions.

So really again those "hard" from Obama voiced sectorial sanctions uttered after the last U major meeting if Russia did not comply means what---another red line in the sand that went nowhere.

So I do not see where the US got anything out of being still---Russian irregulars are still fighting and weapons are still coming across that "enhanced" security border Putin promised.