The trouble is, I think we've gone too far down the road to turn back up it now, the chance to bring Russia into a co-operative stance with the EU was around 2000 or so, but we never really took Russia seriously, laughing at the shambles that it had found itself in after the fall of communism, or still treating it as the communist enemy, taking the opportunity of a weakened Russia to push the border between East and West closer to Russias territory.
Now our birds have come home to roost, we have pushed Russia for the past two decades and now Russia is pushing back and its doing so having come from being the underdog of the 1990s to a position of strength. If you can only credit the governing forces of Russia with one thing, it's the dramatic turnaround of Russia post-Yeltsin from a nation sliding into decline back into a superpower. It wasn't a pretty process, nor one that we would support in the west, but you cannot argue with the fact that Russia is stronger now than it was in the 1990s.
So, where does that leave us? Well, pretty much exactly where we were before the Berlin wall came down but with a different line up of nations. The shadow of the Cold War is still hanging over Europe, Russia is still considered a hostile force by many, and when it conducts operations like this, even though it is similar to actions undertaken by Western nations in recent history, it is automatically reassigned its position of Cold war enemy.
Still, it's good news for the military-industrial complex (TM) which was facing potential cuts in the near future, at least with Russia being given its Cold War status back they can make a case for the continuation of massive military spending...
And when it comes to news, I have also noticed an east/west split in regards to how the news regards the current Ukrainian regime, which is why I've been sampling news from both. You'll notice in this thread that I've been posting stories from both the BBC
and Russia Today, which both have their own slants on the story. The reddit live thread which I have also linked to is also quite useful for getting live updates of the situation on the ground, from twitter accounts of reporters in the area, as well as news stations from around the world, from the BBC to Al'Jazerra to RT.
I'll post it again for the benefit of those reading this page:
http://www.reddit.com/live/3rgnbke2r...ciytwcxadi?t=t