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Negatively, for the sake of Ukrainian and the people in other states neighboring Russia.
But it's not like Russia is a significant strategic threat.
Sure, they have nuclear weapons - but such devices are a "Your opponent loses, but you lose, too" card that are ultimately only useful in deterring invasions that would never come, anyway.
Russia pulls oil out of the ground but it makes nothing that anyone wants. It's a kleptocracy designed to keep Putin and his minions in power, at the expense of building up Russia so it can compete as a modern economy. It's a country in a demographic tailspin, with the only demographics increasing in population being Central Asian Muslim minorities that are all but completely alienated from the rest of Russia.
Putin has clearly been winging it in Ukraine, and it shows. He's gained a chunk of land that really doesn't get him anything - he already had access to port facilities there, and at any rate the Black Sea Fleet is stuck behind multiple strategic chokepoints. While not all the Russian economic problems are due to this, the sanctions resulting from his Ukrainian adventurism are seriously hurting. He's squandered all the international political capital he had built up. A year ago, he was wooing and courting Ukraine in an attempt to pull into into his Eurasian economic union - now, he has completely and irrevocably alienated the country and pushed it firmly into the arms the the West. He has revitalized the Baltic and Polish commitments to NATO, and he's even managed to push away Belarus, as pro-Russian an ex-Soviet republic as there ever was. His hamfistedness has even pushed Sweden and Finland closer to NATO.
It's rather pathetic watching Russia try, try, try to cling to its former Soviet glory. But that's long gone.
How far has Russia fallen? So far that it's pandering to the half-assed joke that is North Korea.
Well, it's time SOMEONE built Russia up. It's just starting to recover economically from the First World War. I'm not surprised the Russian people love Putin -- he's the best cheerleader they've ever had, bar none. But I don't like where Putin is going with his foreign policy. You can build up Russia without sawing another country in half like a magician's assistant. Being 1/4 Ukrainian myself, looking at the new border between Ukraine and Novorossiya, I too feel kind of split down the middle about this guy.
He has an 87% approval rating among his people. That is the only metric that matters. He also has a fairly high approval rating in the USA despite a mainstream media that never misses a chance to spin him as an untrustworthy devil that can't be trusted. IMO, they need to look a lot closer to home for a "leader" that much better fits that description.
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