The US should not intervene in Ukraine!

[Anomalocaris]

It is expensive for the Russian military to be parked on the Ukrainian border.

The longer the US and Ukraine can keep them on the border threatening to do something but not doing anything, the more untenable it becomes for Russia.

Putin needs to save face. If he cannot get a conflict, or a very stupid politician on the opposing side, then he will look foolish when it becomes too expensive for the Russian military to remain there.

I agree with the original post – the US should not militarily intervene in Ukraine. The US instead should force Russia to pretend and posture along Ukrainian border for as long as possible.

Consider Crimea a loss, and instead focus on attempting to give liquidity to Ukraine and spin up the light manufacturing in the western Ukraine to compensate for the economic losses.

If the Ukraine is not bankrupted by Putin's oil price war, then he will have effectively lost his attempt at subjugating a former satellite state.

I am afraid even Russia can easily afford keeping a mere 30,000 troops at a high state of readiness (but not actually expending supplies and ammunition, and not suffering casaulties, in a real war) indefinitely a few dozens or hundred kilometers from their normal bases, but still well within a high developed part of Russian territory.

Soviet Union kept 150,000 troops in parmament war footing for 9 years of actual combat operation in Afghanistan at the end of a vastly longer and more tenuous supply chain in one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world, bordering the largest as well as most underdeveloped part of the Soviet Union, while starring the US down in a comprehensive cold war military build up.

Actually, Putin does not look too smart to let things progress to the point where Ukraine can threaten to leave Russian orbit. But once that happens there is no other smart thing he could do then to do whatever it takes to keep Ukraine from leaving Russian orbit.

Once that has happened, the singular act of idiocy was on the part of the new Ukrainian government in making it virtually its first official act to deprive Russian language of its status of one of the official language in Ukraine, thus immediately riling up ethnic russians - largest minority group in Ukraine, as well natively Russian speaking and russophile Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, and hand Putin the tool with which to lever eastern Ukraine away from Kiev.

I think it is now fairly evident Putin is going to keep levering chunks of Russian speak, or ethnic Russian majority parts of Ukraine away from Kiev. The Russian army massing on Ukrainian border is there to threaten intervention in order to prevent Kiev from using too much force and being too effective in suppressing Russian speaking local insurgency. Meanwhile the Russians will keep inciting ethnic Russians and Native Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine to revolt and clamer for independence. I think Russian would likely end up with all of Ukrainian territory east of Donets river. I think they may eventually even end up with most of Ukraine east of Dniper river.