Its the right move, and a very hard move that only a "real" leader can make. Putin may be the closest thing to a modern Czar, but he's going to be remembered as one of the greater Czars of Russia. He sees the trap being set. Though people in Eastern Ukraine will be massacred, a true leader must make hard choices, see the bigger picture. Putin must protect "his" people, in Russia, from this very ugly trap set by Western leaders, the US leader especially who has fallen under the fever spell of neoconservative fascism. With no Russia taking the bait, the US leaders will have to explain the monstrous doings of their "new friends" of the Kiev junta going on in Eastern Ukraine. The atrocities will forever sever the east from the west in feelings of bad blood over spilled blood, chiefly spilled by neo-nazi elements in the Kiev government that it can't control. Moreover, consider the chess master's calculation. If no Russia invasion comes, the business community in Germany and elsewhere in the EU--who do not support the sanctions, who are set to lose from sanctions hundreds of billions of euros a year--will force their politicians to back off from US pressure to sanction Russia back into a Cold War. Perhaps we'll see the Syrian scenario of last year play again as US war mongers loose support from allies and even other NATO members for Russian sanctions like they backed away from a US push to pummel Syria with air strikes back in September last year? Putin will save Obama's reputation like before, by sending Lavrov with the same errant of peace he sent to Kiev earlier, before it was ignored and this putsch overthrew the elected government in Kiev. He will promote the only thing that can be promoted, a UN monitored election where the people of Ukraine can decide whether they wish to stay in a federalist union with provinces holding far more local autonomy, or the people agree to divide the country into an East and West Ukraine.
