you're wrong on one point

What Russia is engaged in is precisely defending Russian interests.

It annexed the Crimea to secure it's naval base at Sevastapol, and it is destabilising (with a view to annexing, I don't doubt) Eastern Eukraine so that it has a secure land route to Sevastapol.

Neither of these things would have been necessary if the West hadn't been courting Ukraine and encouraging it to join the EU (and potentially NATO further down the road).

One of the reasons for courting them is to deny Russia easy access to Sevastapol and limit Russia's sphere of influence. Sevastapol would be extremely vulnerable if Ukraine was within the EU or NATO. It's completely inconceivable that Russia could continue to base its Black Sea Fleet in 'enemy' territory.

Russia will get what it wants in this case because it isn't *that* important to the West, but we will make it difficult in order to be clear that if Russia harbours any ambitions on actual empire re-building, we have the means and will to cripple Russia economically.

But whichever way you cut it, Russia is trying to protect its own interests here and the West knows that.

Sadly for Ukraine and its people, it's being used as a pawn by the West and Russia for geo-political reasons. We don't have any real desire to get involved, otherwise there would have been hell to pay over that civilian airliner that got shot down.

Posted By: CWC, Feb 19, 12:53:20