re: #160 Dr Lizardo

Being as Strelkov is Russian (and as you said, probably ex-GRU) perhaps it’s time for President Putin to exercise his Stalin Option, which is similar to the Darth Vader “You have failed me for the last time” Option, except without telekinetic strangling. The Stalin Option usually involves ‘recalling’ someone back to Moscow for ‘consultations’, said ‘consultations’ consisting of a bullet to the back of the neck.

The other problem is that Putin’s got a tiger by the tail and made a nice fucking mess in his own backyard. He can, and probably should, tell all these meatheads that they’re on their own now and can’t count on a can of beans from Russia anymore, but the separatists have already got enough materiel to make a decent shitstorm in Russian territory if Russia sells them out. So Russia ends up fighting an insurgency that they started and armed; gee, where have we heard that one before.

There’s some article of faith in the Kremlin that they need a pliant weak buffer state at their border to feel safe, so they don’t really want to take over eastern Ukraine but have a cooperative and plausibly independent state that can get their noses bloodied without hurting Russia. Now they’ve got a warlord-run failed state that’s a hazard to everyone. Good work, guys.