Originally Posted by
Toadstool
What will be interesting will be to see how far he takes it. If, as some analysts predict, he starts to look towards the Baltic then the possibility of him testing how strong the NATO alliance is would be very interesting.
I doubt it.
He's not an idiot.
He's playing to the public opinion in Russia but he won't do it at all costs.
IMHO he has a free pass with Ukraine. The Baltic may possibly be a step too far.
Yup on both.
The latter would probably turn ugly for Russia even without NATO firing a gun.
The West hasn't pulled the economic/financial 'nuclear bomb' on Russia yet. At the moment they are just tickling.
Making all Russian Banks toxic, a full economic Embargo including Oil and Gas and freezing all assets of Russian citizens abroad would throw the Country into an economic catastrophy pretty quickly. However this should be spared for the worst case since no one knows what/who would follow Putin after the resulting total collapse. Looking at some of the candidates makes you shiver...
On top of that NATO couldn't leave any Military challenge to the Baltics unanswered. And NATO knows that. And Putin as well.
So, for the Eastern Ukraine including a land bridge to Crimea plus potentially Mariupol it doesn't look to well. On the other hand they were anyway not very Anti Russian (to avoid saying they were majority Pro Russian).
To force Ukraine (which is internally torn between both sides) into a final decision whether they wanted to join EU or Eurasian Alliance was a stupidity beyond belief and Barroso should be pulled to Court and ideally jailed for this.