@Mainiac
I'll go ahead and refer to the pipes I kept mentioning a while back, and to
What he is worried about is A. The /actual/ sanctions that would follow an invasion and B. The collateral PR damage said sanctions and Ukrainian land war would cause at home.
These things would be real problems for him. The sanctions would hurt, along with an auto-limit on the gas exports which is out of
everyone's hands. Plus it seems the general Russian bay12er opinion is that Crimea was popular while an invasion of Ukraine isn't.
These things combined would probably destroy the gains Putin's made with the Crimea business, perhaps more.
Though, he has brought up the pipes and cutting them off- bluffing he may be, but bringing them up is dangerous as it puts his face at stake. 'tis worrisome.
Meanwhile, I don't think NATO's rearing for the opportunity to have a conventional war with Russia. Not that they'll bend over to avoid it, but that shit's costly.
Otherwise, I agree with what Mainiac's saying.
It is much easier and safer to just play it on as separatist groups. For example for NATO member countries, article 5 covers pretty much only foreign threat. It can be interpreted in many ways. So the strategy that Putin used in Crimea could theoretically be also used on a smaller NATO nation.
If NATO leadership would like to sneak away from applying article 5, they could do so under the faux-separatist strategy that Putin is using. However this would pretty much destroy any kind of legitimacy that NATO has, since defending it's member states is one of it's goals.
I don't buy this
one. single. bit.To do that is cowardly and incompetent on an incredibly
massive scale, and Putin would have to be
equally massivly incompetent to have such a low estimation of NATO.
Being so arrogant as to assume your rivals are cowards and dullards and then provoking them is how a fool starts a war. (Hitler: "If England and France declare war over Poland, I'll eat my shoes.")
And I don't think Putin's a fool, (nor our collective military leaders, for that matter).
Influencing a vote in Ukraine isn't the same as in Crimea. Yeah, they'll try to mess with it, but Ukraine has the overwhelming advantage here, (similar to, but not quite as good as, Russia's advantage in Crimea). The most Russia could do without invading before the election is organize a boycott, and with such small numbers of Russians/pro-Russians that would have limited to no success-- other than giving Russia the 'it's illegitimate because (5-10%) didn't vote' (lol) talking point.