Quote Originally Posted by Ulenspiegel View Post
They (re)occupied a region, that is supplied by Ukraine, with an economy much weaker than their own in order to secure a maritime base. This menas in my book they will have to pay.

Without occupation of eastern Ukraine Russia faces the interesting situation that parts of "her" industry are now located in a country that was turned from neutral/friendly to hostile by Russian operations. Great. BTW there are not only some production facilities for military hardware but also for oil/gas production and distribution in Ukraine. Of course they can rebuild this industry in Mother Russia, however, that will cost.

Occupation of eastern parts of Ukraine, again a region with weaker economy, may solve the industrial problem, but requires even more investments than the Krim.

Western Ukraine, a neutral or friendly buffer, is lost and a country with around ~30 million citizen (around 1/4 of the Russian population) will now spend recources to defend against Russian operations in future.
I agree. A key to understand the current crisis is that the personal goals of Putin and Russia aren't necessarily the same, to put it midly. This is true even if there is no doubt that for now, after massive propaganda campaigns, the Kremlin leader has a very strong popular backing.

PewGlobal has some interesting new polls:

More than seven-in-ten Ukrainians also express disappointment with Putin. Broad majorities of Ukrainians in the west (89%) and the east (66%) express no confidence in Russia’s president, while just 5% of residents of Crimea say the same. About half of Russian-only speakers (51%) in the east lack confidence in Putin’s foreign policy compared with 43% who say they trust him.

Ukrainians’ attitudes toward Russia also have changed significantly over time. Six-in-ten in Ukraine rate Russia unfavorably today, compared with just 11% in 2011, the last time the question was asked. Within Ukraine, there are deep divides by region and language. More than eight-in-ten in the country’s west (83%) give Russia low marks, compared with 45% in the east and only 4% in Crimea. Within the east, Russian-only speakers (28%) are less negative toward Russia than their neighbors (58%).2
It strongly supports the comment of many that almost all of Ukraine will be lost for quite some time for Russia as friend and partner. The aspect of the minority of the minority of Russian-only speakers which trust Putin is of course interesting.

But another survey, published by Ukraine's Razumkov Center last week, makes unhappy reading for the Russian President. The Razumkov pollsters said 54 percent of Ukrainian people want their country to join Nato, with just 32 percent against.
P.S: Good to see oversampling in the East and Crimea, given their smaller size. Russian-only speakers tend of course to be over-rappresented as they are considerable more urban then bilinguals.

Country: Ukraine
Sample design: Multi-stage cluster sample stratified by Ukraine’s six regions plus ten of the largest cities – Kyiv (Kiev), Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Lviv, Kryvyi Rih, Lugansk, and Mikolayev – as well as three cities on the Crimean peninsula – Simferopol, Sevastopol, and Kerch
Mode: Face-to-face adults 18 plus
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian
Fieldwork dates: April 5 – April 23, 2014
Sample size: 1,659
Margin of error: +/-3.3 percentage points
Representative: Adult population (Survey includes oversamples of Crimea and of the South, East and Southeast regions. The data were weighted to reflect the actual regional distribution in Ukraine.)