Russian rouble has fallen 48% this year in value. Domestically little effect except on the price of imports, luckily for locals Russia produces its own oil and has anyway banned many imports.

We need to wait for any reaction from Moscow middle classes.

Externally many $ denomination loans to repay

Research shows the people want it so:
http://m.ceip.org/moscow/eurasiaoutl...=57115&lang=ru

Sanctions may actually consolidate these sentiments.
Not that I condemn these, as they may eventually reduce the money stream for rearmament.

Well I did write "We need to wait for any reaction from Moscow middle classes." Of course Putin is popular now and is pulling the right levers to maintain his position.

The problem for Putin is that people are fickle; sooner or later(maybe much later!) people will start asking "how do we actually benefit from the Crimea" and " how long will we have to live without the Western commodities" and "why is the cost of living rising".
So Putin will have to keep creating more successes like Crimea or actually start a war

What does "getting rid one by one" mean ?

We speak about 200'000 people. Erdogan on one side does not want so many refugees, but the fate of the Crimea-Turks is an issue of internal politics for Turkey. So that he has to find some deals with Putin, most likely semi-secret ones, which may include Transit rights for Russian troops and Russian military material in Anatolia


The threat of Erdogan is clear. If Russia does not co-operate, he may allow Muslim Propaganda be delivered to Muslims in various regions of the new Russian Empire in the making

Crimea is under total Russian control and Administration. So that what happens is Russian responsibility.


Crime in Crimea is no longer Ukrainian but RUSSIAN CRIME

Huh?
Turkey is not the protector of the Muslim population around the world.
Nobody is asking for Erdogan's permission to do propaganda in Russia (or Europe, America, etc).
Erdogan may think he is god. We have no reason to believe he is.

Maybe Russians will just get the sanctions effectively mitigated with the help of their de-facto ally - here about a low-profile meeting of crème de la crème of German industrialists with Russia's leaders:
Vertrauliche Gespräche deutscher Unternehmer in Moskau

Great, this is exactly what I am saying -- if a crime happened on Russian territory it doesn't mean that the Russian authorities have been involved in committing it. Thank you Wollishofer

Article in Tagesanzeiger here in German language about the Russian military moving into eastern Ukraine with photos from AP reporters of unmarked military trucks.

So what can be deduced from the photos? The posters at the side of the road look like recent Ukraine posters so the photos are fairly recent, certainly the trucks are unmarked.
Question is "who other than the Russians would be driving unmarked military trucks and for what reasons?"

Seems a strange time to start a military action as winter draws in?

Maybe Russia's intelligence ascertained that Ukraine wants to recapture these territories and this is a reinforcement only.

Is there enough left of the Ukraine armed forces to launch an attack?

No idea.
But the Russian help looks impressive - about 80 military truck were seen by AP reporters in three groups today:

http://mobile.nzz.ch/international/r...tet-1.18421123

Oh nice, an Ukrainian nationalist from Moscow. Be careful, Putin reads your messages, you'll be in prison in no time.
If you are not a fake profile, I am worried for you. If you are fake, your presence here could be very entertaining.

Well, dear, if you have such an anti Russian definition of Ukrainian history and identity, then younare the aggressive western propagandist, not me.
The rest is irony, which you pretend not to understand, and a pinch of hypocricy because reading my old messages about UA/RU would have taught you better.

Differences in religion?
Only if you exclude the 1/3 of non-atheists who follow the Moscow patriarchate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio...atriarchate.29
And with the atheists being at 60%.
I don't think many people care about religion.

A) Turkey may not be the protector of Muslims around the world, but is influential, as many Muslims in Russia are ethnically related to Turkey
B) Erdogan does NOT need the approval of Mr Putin to allow Propaganda being done in Russia, but he up to now did his best to supress it
C) Erdogan does not believe to be God, he only believes to be the next Sultan-Kalif
D) Vladimir Putin is NOT yet the new Czar but may well be the next one

WRONG WRONG WRONG -- I did not say that. I say however that crimes committed in Russia are Russian crimes. This does not mean that the authorities are involved. Quite to the contrary the authorities most likely fight against it. To shift responsibility to outside sources is just bad style

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are still as they were, BUT I hope they are NOT to attack areas populated by ethnic Russians. From the news it looks as if Ukraine is just strenthening its positions in areas like Mariupol.


President Poroshenko in the past lost out in exactly the territories now annexed by Russia, and so possibly is not too sad about the lost of them
-- When I saw pics of the meeting of the two presidents I realized that they both must have been officers of the same SovietUnion army and obviously were on friendly terms. Do not ask me what the deal was

OSCE reports dozens of unmarked trucks, tanks, etc. streaming into Donetsk. Sounds very much like Russian regulars (aka "little green men")

http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/126483

In the intense fighting/shelling around Donetsk Airport, Ukraine has claimed to killed over 200 Russian-backed fighters. Some reports were saying a group of Russian marines from Murmansk were also killed there, but since there is no further verification, I take it with a grain of salt. I guess we'll see if suddenly there's a bunch of freshly dug graves appearing in military cemeteries in Murmansk (like Pskov)