The US should not intervene in Ukraine!

[Anomalocaris]

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.

All Kiev and the West has to do is carefully tamp down those seditious acts.

The calmer they can do it, the more frustrated Putin will get.

The weaker he'll look too.

You can't tamp down seditious act if the acts are not all motivated by grievance you can address, and you can't establish credible threat of effective coercion.

Ukraine can do neither. Ukraine will lose very badly. The only question is will Ukraine lose fatally. Once it became clear the west, particularly the US, had its hands in the unrest Ukraine through NGOs, Putin will not, and indeed can not, back down.

The west, particularly the US, but not so much France and Germany, has been trying to strip Russia of her entire sphere of influence and make it untenable for Russia to pursue any sort of independent foreign policy. Mostly Russia has been losing, although putting up increasingly stiff struggle since 2003. I think the west is belatedly realized in Ukraine it has inadvertently maneuvered Putin into a situation which he can not afford to lose but which he can indeed win.