No there won't.

Europe hasn't the stomach and the US hasn't the motivation.

Interesting article; as written trying to recreate the Soviet Union with all control from the centre is creating a flawed model which contains the seeds of its own destruction.

About " If he does try and recreate the old Russia there will be war"

If he does then he has to rely on a Russian military that may well not be good enough. There are certainly plenty of soldiers and amour but a lot of the hardware is outdated and their logistics system is not exactly smooth running. Look at the Georgia action in 2008.

If he runs his military into several countries then he will have to keep them supplied with all the issues of long supply chains and the general inefficiency of the Russian military logistics system. Gets much worse of course if the people in the countries are actively against any occupation; look at Chechnya and Afghanistan.

The situation in eastern Ukraine is escalating -- it includes the seizure of state buildings by pro-Russian protesters. In Donetsk, a group of activists have declared their region independent from Kiev. The Council in Donetsk issued an address to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for deployment of a temporary peacekeeping force to the region.

http://rt.com/news/donetsk-republic-protestukraine-841/

In other breaking news, I have barricaded myself into my apartment in Bern and declared it the "Peoples Republic Of My Apartment" and have issued a formal request to Russian President Vladimir Putin to come to my assistance as I am 1/16 Russian by blood.



But seriously, these coordinated attempts by Russian provocateurs are aggressive, but are not large (few hundred) and lacking and real backing by the locals living in these cities. In some southern cities they have already been chased away by locals.

In other news again, a Russian town has asked to join Estonia: http://www.rferl.org/content/Russian...a/2011276.html

I am not surprised but I was expecting the first such application would come from Chechnya

Why not just hold a unilateral referendum in the same way Crimea did. The Russians can't argue if the vote then goes Estonia's way. It's all lawful, right?

Sure And on the same basis, the population of my flat have been polled and wish to join Sealand

I have really never understood this whole nationhood thing, where some piece of land is a country because some guy way back when drew some lines on a piece of paper and declared it to be his. At what point does this desire for "independence" stop (and by "independence", what I mean is some people deciding that they would very much like to be in power, please, and will happily put others' bodies on the line in order to get it)? At "country" level? Province? Municipality? District? City block? I find the whole idea of a nation or state to be absurd.

You should probably understand when reading this that according to various tests I have done, my political leanings are to Social Anarchism (in particular Inclusive Democracy), so I don't expect you to agree with me

Empires. They were so much better, oh how we miss our former rulers.

Help, help I'm being repressed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q58nTiZrJ0

The problem is not so much ambitions of Mr Putin but the fact that the Central Asian republics did not become independent out of nationalism but because people like Nursultan Naserbayev and Islam Karimov wanted to be Presidents of independent countries. The Eastern Ukraine became part of independent Ukraine by accident. Bessarabia (Moldova) became independent as a kind of historical hick-up. Belarus/WhiteRussia only became independent as Boris Yeltsin wanted an additional vote in the UN.

So that you have the three Baltic Republics and Georgia, Armenia and Aserbaijan with a real national identity.

Nobody expects Romania even to consider to get closer to Russia. But it may be different with the home-country of Cyril, the founder of the Cyrillic alphabet

Karte von Bulgarien – 1878 – Grenzen nach dem Frieden von San Stefano (3. März 1878) und dem Berliner Kongress (Juni 1878).



If Putin manages, to get, after the death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan, he will practically control a vast chunk of Afghanistan. And if he succeeds in luring the Baluchis into the fold of the Russian Federation he is on the Indian Ocean

Wolli, what you are missing is the fact that we are in the 21st century and access to non-freezing waters/oceans is not that important as in the 19th century. BTW, what would Russia trade over Saloniki or even the Indian ocean?! Russian export:
1. Mineral fuels including oil: $304,559,452,000 (57.9% of total exports).
...
5. Machinery: $8,815,393,000 (1.7%)
...
10. Electronic equipment: $4,914,638,000 (0.9%)

I am pretty sure that Ukraine will be Putin's Afganistan!

They could park their naval fleet in even more ports. It is (again) about power.

Keeping the fleet at high alert, moreover in a hostile environment is neither easy nor cheap. And the Russian fleet is not what they used to be. In the last 10 years they have demonstrated operation incapability during peacetime with several major embarrassing incidents, some of them requiring rescue efforts by British/U.S. etc.
It's easy to run over a smaller/unarmed country but what's next? Afghanistan, I say.

I sure hope you are right, but Putin is out of touch with reality and his nationalistic aspirations seem to appeal to many Russians in Russia and other countries. Unless there is a "save face" option for Putin he will continue his undercover meddling in Ukraine and possibly trigger a civil war.

They're claiming no-one is fomenting this but it seems the only explanation when things suddenly erupt out of the blue.

The seaport of Saloniki would be a very good place for the Mediterranean Eskadra. If you draw a line from Rostov-on-the-Don to Sevastopol and continue the line you end up in Sofia. And in case of the Ukraine, Mr Putin has some limited objectives. aimed primarily at securing the link between Sochi and Sevastopol

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Putin wants to build up the fleet to something different from now.

Very true; they really need those new French naval ships to update their fleet but it looks like delivery will be delayed due to the Ukraine issue.

I imagine they are also stretched logistically to support the 120,000 troops claimed to be hanging around the East Ukraine border; one wonders about the quality and regular delivery of food. Also from the NATO photographs published recently their living accommodations are basic to non-existent; sleeping in tanks loses its enjoyment after some weeks.

This means that Russia will take over one of those East Ukrainian cities within 20 days, to get the required accommodation.

Both Ukraine and Russia have enough food. But the agricultural organisation is still fairly bad, more than 20 years after the end of communism

About "Both Ukraine and Russia have enough food" - of course.
The problem is the logistics as well as the agriculture organisation; the Russian military are extremely bad at moving things like food and ammunition from where they are now to where they are needed. They recognised the issue and some 3 to 4 years took out some of the logistics management levels to improve efficiency and responsiveness; whether this actually improved matters or made them worse is open to discussion.