Bowing to Western demands would potentially spell political suicide for the Russian leader, who has built his popularity on standing up to the West.
When mass protests chased the Russian-leaning Ukrainian president from power in February, Putin saw it as a Western plot against Russia and quickly moved to annex Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea to head off what he said was the imminent threat of Ukraine joining NATO.
Putin then sought to maintain pressure on the West by fomenting a pro-Russian insurgency that flared up in Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east in April, apparently hoping that a slow-burning conflict would …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
