I’m no military strategist, and information is so poor that I would never play armchair general. I will play armchair diplomat though… Personally I didn’t expect any better, but it was still incredibly disappointing that after decades of speculation about this scenario (literally predating the dissolution of the Soviet Union) that Russia’s/Putin’s response was, well, what it was. That it got to the point where Russia had to militarily invade… The failure to maintain their sphere of influence and prevent a military conclusion could well point to a tremendous lack of imagination and diplomacy on Russia’s part. How is it that the US/NATO are just that much better at propaganda? I know it’s a declining superpower, but the writing has been on the wall since the Soviet-Afghan War at least: If you invade a neighbor because the US has been fomenting conflict, they will pour billions of dollars, weapons, and CIA/JSOC training into arming radicals in that country to create a US-Vietnam style embarrassment and destabilize the region probably permanently. They just walked into it, again despite decades of forewarning from even the liberal foreign policy crowd, and with 8 years between the previous flare-up and this round.