It seems like a lifetime ago when we heard Germany justify their aggression into adjacent countries. They claimed that they were protecting German-speaking Peoples.

Just recently, Russia sent armored columns into Eastern Ukraine with roughly 2000 troops. Russia has an estimated 20,000 troops poised on the border of the Ukraine, to either invade or to act as a very real threat to the territorial integrity of the Ukraine.

Putin is using similar excuses to justify his actions, similar to those Hitler used over 70 years ago. Aggression is still aggression, conquest is still conquest. You can’t paper over it. We are not fooled. Putin’s actions are contrary to international law.

Russia may feel pinned in by nearby countries seeking membership into NATO and into the European Union. Russia protests of being hemmed in by the West, are a read herring. It is not reasonable to assume that the request for membership into the EU is a tangible threat to the sovereignty of Russia. Putin’s words and actions remind me of a Shakespearian saying about you protesting too much. By acting as a victim, Putin is able to gin up the nationalist sentiments of his countrymen and increase his own popularity. He has rekindled the embers of the memories of Russia’s past glory when Russia had an empire. But in doing so, he is playing a very dangerous game of international chicken. Testing in the process the resolve of the West.
It is each country’s right to seek membership in the European Union. Irrespective of these facts his actions are just plain wrong. 

If we allow Russia’s actions to go unpunished and we allow Putin to take the eastern part of the Ukraine will Putin’s appetite be sated? Will he stop or will he go forward and try to conquer the rest of the independent country of the Ukraine?

With Russian being a nuclear power can Russia be stopped? We may be witnessing the use of nuclear weapons in one monster game of nuclear chicken. Putin may have the attitude that he is the baddest person on the block, so stop me if you can. 

It is sheer paranoia for Russia to actually believe that the West has any territorial interests in the Russian Republic.

The whole world is watching the Russian Bear march into lands that no longer belong to them.

The prospect for war between the West and Russia is unthinkable.

It is with a fervent hope that sanity will return and the reality that military ventures costs lives and money. It is my hope that Russia’s military adventurism ends. It is not a welcome sight to see either the United States attempt nation building or to see Russia trample international law by seeking to conquer. War is not the answer. Aggression must be met with further economic sanctions, the type that will make naked aggression painful to the country seeking new lands with time-worn excuses.