“My mother’s caregiver, Tamara, despises Vladimir Putin. She’s a Georgian, and bitterly resents Russia’s 2008 invasion of her home country and subsequent appropriation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Moscow’s orbit. “That idiot Putin!” Tamara cries every time I visit my mom. Putin, she says, is determined to reconstitute as much of the Soviet Union as possible; now that he’s carved off Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will also find excuses to invade and swallow the three Baltic states. “If no one stops him,” she says, “that idiot will keep going. You’ll see.” I used to think Tamara’s fears were exaggerated, and that the pain of strong sanctions and a crumbling economy would deter Putin from further predations. But he has actually stepped up his aggression, with Russian state media predicting a direct military confrontation with the West — and warning that Russia might defend itself with a first-strike nuclear attack.”

Source:The Week

I have a hard time seeing even Vladimir Putin attempting to invade any of the Baltic States for one reason only which is NATO. If Russia attacks the Baltic States, that brings in NATO and then Europe and America would respond to what Russia is doing and would send in ships, planes, personal to defend those countries. And then Russia would have a big decision to make. Do they really want to take on NATO that is so heavily backed by America. Russia could sort of get away with what they did in Ukraine even though they are now paying a heavy price for it financially and economically because Ukraine is not under protection of NATO.

I’m sure Vlad Putin as dreams if not fantasies of reuniting the old Russian Empire and perhaps go back to the Soviet Union days, but with more of a private enterprise economy and a more developed country perhaps. But he doesn’t have the resources and the manpower to do that. The Russian Federation military is not the Soviet Union military obviously, as far as numbers and resources and manpower even. And they are very limited to what they can do especially their economy and economic growth is so linked with their state-owned energy industry that is struggling right now because of all falling oil prices and economic sanctions.

The Putin Administration needs to pay a heavy price for invading Ukraine. They need to continue to pay that heavy price since they brought that on themselves. And if that is short of physically being eliminated from Ukraine, then the economic price should be so severe that people in the Russian Government think to themselves, “how long are going to put up with this dictator and how much damage are we going to allow him to do to our country before we look at replacing him?”. And could come fairly soon as people inside of the Russian Federation are already very aware of the damage that their President has done to their economy.