What hoards in their thousands roaring over what horizon and for what purpose?
Putin isn't even doing anything of the kind to the Crimea, not that he has thousands to do it with anyway.
One inevitable consequence of all this is going to be irreparable damage to nuclear proliferation control. As Herod rightly points out, would Putin be doing ANY of this if the Ukraine still had a strategic nuclear deterrent?
A lot of people will be looking at all of this and realising that fleets of frigates and destroyers, regiments of tanks and squadrons of shiny jet fighters mean diddly squat compared to just one or two deliverable buckets of instant sunshine.
Shame.