@Firn

My take was and still is:

1) Russsia needs the Krim for military reasons.

2) Russia needs some parts of the Ukraine for military and economic reasons.

3) The western Ukraine was a glacis for Russia.

3) Russia faced the problem that they may lose all this to a combination of (stupid) western political actions and soft power (EU).

Result: We saw already the occupation of the Krim and IMHO we will see the occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in the future.

OTOH Despite the nice Russian performance, I have problems to sell this as real Russian strategic success, Putin had to choose between pest and cholera. He had to invest to maintain the status quo, that is a loss when the opponent had to invest much less.

And to sell Putin as extremly gifted strategist ignores the basic fact, that Russia was not able to control her backyard in the last years and will be unable to provide something that has a chance against the eroding soft power of the EU. Putin is good in his field (ex-KGB), but he stinks when we are talking about the creation of stable and competitive society. Good fever curve is the emmigration of well educated Russians, I bet it will will continue.

On "our" side we were reminded as Fuchs put is, that we have some ugly gaps in our strategic set up which may here and there lead to a small version of August 1914.