The US should not intervene in Ukraine!

[Anomalocaris]

The Russian economy depends solely upon it's oil. Of it's economy, there has been insufficient growth to support a country of Russia's size. That alone bodes poorly.

Of the wealth in the economy, the majority of it is concentrated in less than several hundred individuals.

How can you use assumptions based off the Soviet Union when the environment is completely different?

Can you justify such?

Russian economy still has a certain size and revenue. Tax from Oil and Gas exports may be the main source of Russia government's discretionary revenue, but that does not mean these are the only things Russia makes. Russia is still a major producer of machine tools, a major ship builder, electronics manufacturer, construction and manufacturing equipment. Even if what Russia makes isn't fully competitve in a free market, their products still has value to their own economy and can certainly support a military effort.

Overall Russian economy still ranks 8th in the world by nominal and 5th largest by purchase power parity. The gap between nominal and PPP immediately indicates the Russia's productive power is not mainly reflected in exports of raw material. By either measure Russian economy remains larger then Italy, and larger than India or those of any other BRIC countries except China. You would have no trouble envisioning India keeping 30,000 troops, nor indeed 300,000 troops, on high alert against Pakistan. So why 30,000 Russians?

Relative to the United States, Russian economy today was perhaps half as big as the economy of the Soviet Union had been in the late 1980s. So Russia really still has considerable potential for large military efforts.

Putin demonstrated repeatedly it is Putin, not the oligarchs, who call the shots. Oligarchs who defy Putin have their entire wealth stripped from them and sold to the state at artificially low prices, and their persons then placed in solitary confinement for 15 years. So the concentration of wealth in the hands of the Oligarchs does not mean Putin can get his hands on them if he want them for his own ends. So I can't see why there can be doubt Russia could come up with 15 - 20 billion to sustain a campaign to threaten Ukraine.

I think Putin wants most of eastern Ukraine, not just crimea, and will get much of what he wants. Sooner or later, seditious acts by ethnic Russians and russian speakers will either wrestle de facto control of those regions from a weak and impotent Kiev and hand them to Moscow, or Kiev will be forced to crack down violently on the ethnic Russians and russians speakers, and Putin will have his excuse to invade and take these parts by force.