I'm probably not your typical American, having lived in Eastern Europe and the Balkans within a decade of the Wall coming down...

My European Perspective: Russia was like a huge, well-fed, black bear. You knew it was over there, in the woods somewhere, and that at any time it could come show up on your front porch, or walk into your kitchen, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. It probably wasn't going to eat you or kill you, but life would be VERY complicated if a 1500 pound black bear decided to sit in your kitchen. You would work around it, but also know that at any moment it would, without provocation or need, take a swipe at you, or bite you, and kill you. And it would not even notice you'd died. Then it might wander away to leave your corpse to the flies and the ants.

My American Perspective: Eventually I moved back to my homeland - the west coast of the USA - and have lived here for about 10 years now. Russia today is comically inept, and lost in a Tzarist fantasy land of Empire and Expansion.

The utter hubris and totally ridiculous annexation of land from a sovereign country is ... so sad. It just makes me shake my head sadly and want to pet Putin on the head and say, "You silly, silly man. This is not the 19th century. You can't just walk into another country and cut bits off any more. Those of us who live in the real world understand that the borders on the map made their last major changes at the end of WWII, and that's just the way it is."

Eventually Russia will have to give back the Crimea, and Dagestan, and Chechnya, and and and and... hang on, you guys have been annexing a LOT of territory recently, haven't you?

Is it really worth it to be put on the worldwide Shit List?

Does Putin realize the only reason the lunatics (Assad, North Korea, etc) are the only ones that want to do business with him, is because he's got this weird Tzarist/Imperialist view of the world that makes the rest of us look at him as unstable and dangerous? Why does he want to associate with the stupid kids in class that sit in the back of the room and eat paste? The rest of us are advancing, living in the 21st century, and moving forward. Why is Russia so enamored of these broken failures, and propping them up? What a waste of time and energy.

The Non-Government Part of Russia: The interesting thing for me is that few of the Russians I know (who are almost all outside of Russia at this point) feel that Putin and the Russian government have anything to do with "the real Russia". They tend to shake their heads at Putin and look forward to the day when someone takes office who doesn't need to swing his dick around in public to feel important. Another Gorbachev, let's say.

But then... isn't this true for most countries? We don't identify with our government... but we measure all other countries by their governments. A weird dichotomy, for sure.

P.S. - Yeah, I know the tactical reasons for Russia needing a naval base on the Crimea. Still, making up some silly story about "liberating ethic Russians" is total horseshit, and everyone in the world knows it. But nobody is gonna throw troops against Putin. Because Putin is nuts enough to push The Button. We'll just wait until Putin is dead/ousted, and the following purge kills off 93% of the people in office, and then we'll deal with the new government and come up with some sort of Kaliningrad-like solution to the problem.