Six Kremlinologists answer “What is Putin thinking, and what are his next moves?”

[flamingdem]

http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/articles/putins-machiavellian-moment/

-- snip

Russia will continue to support separatists in the Ukraine with arms, training and expertise. This too is vintage Soviet behavior and reminiscent of Putin’s predecessors in the USSR. He wants either a puppet in Kiev or a weak Ukraine that can be kept off balance by manipulating its internal divisions.

Crucial to this strategy is dividing the NATO alliance. With his experience in Germany, Putin understands Berlin is critical. He will try to keep Germany from aligning closely with the United States. He has a perfect instrument in Edward Snowden to keep disrupting Washington’s relationship with Berlin.

Of course, Russia today is not the Soviet Union; its capabilities are a shadow of what once was the other superpower. Measured responses, not a new Cold War, are appropriate.

-- snip

He made a major mistake by choosing to cooperate with unreliable warlords—individuals more concerned about their own local power than with Russia’s strategic interests—in eastern Ukraine. Before this terrible tragedy, Putin had seen only the benefits of warlordism, a tactic he had used previously in Georgia and Chechnya. He was able to outsource the job of destabilizing the government in Kiev by creating a security crisis in the east, hoping to ensure that Russia would retain influence in Ukraine and that Kiev would never join NATO. Putin could avoid the high price and risks associated with direct military intervention, while enjoying plausible deniability about the Russian role in provoking, funding, and encouraging the armed conflict. But now the costs of dealing with warlords are clear. Outsourcing always makes it difficult to monitor and control what happens on the ground, especially when dealing with informal militia members who are riven by internal competition (and in this case, often drunk).