Foxed Moth - absolutely agree with you as I do with BEagle in his last post.
Nothing has changed, except that the West has steadily disarmed itself, both in terms of weapons and troops
The above is the bottom line here. NATO and the UK in particular have all downgraded the 'Fully Comprehensive' insurance policy to 'Third Party' only but our politicians haven't yet caught up with the reality of a bare cupboard and lowering world status. Despite the frankly pathetic posturing from the likes of Lurch and the Mekon, Putin knows their is nothing of substance that the West will do or even could do.
Crimea has now fallen and Eastern Ukraine stands wide open. In fact, Russia could drive all the way to Slovakia and no-one will do anything about it other than bleat. For those Brits old enough to remember the Cadburys Smash adverts from the 1970's, I can only imagine the Russian leadership crying with laughter in the same vein, with such terrible repercussions as banning a handful of low level officials from travelling to the west and pulling out of a minor scale military exercise!
