Some stories on Russia worth your time:

Leon Aron: The Front Lines on Russia’s Home Front

Those who claim Putin commits acts like seizing Crimea simply because he can are wrong. He does these things because he must — because, as leader of a morally near-bankrupt regime at a time of a sharp economic decline, a major foreign policy defeat is something he cannot afford, and a spectacular assertion of power is almost all he has left. Putin launched himself into the very risky, open-ended Ukrainian adventure for largely domestic reasons; those seeking to bring it to an end would do well to remember this when figuring out how to honorably untangle the mess Vladimir made.

John Yoo: Russia: A Great Power No More

Putin’s dreams of a resurrected Imperial Russia evoke a Potemkin village rather than Peter the Great. The United States can pull aside the curtain on Russia’s great-power pretensions and begin a reform of the international system that would advance American interests and global welfare.

Fox News: Central European nations appeal to Congress for faster exports of US natural gas

And in what might be a preview of things to come, if Putin, as Aron is asserting, is largely trying to gin up domestic popularity by stepping on the necks of Ukrainians:

Fox News: Russia complains of lawlessness in eastern Ukraine, blocking of Russians from entering country

Crimea hasn’t done it for him, next Eastern Ukraine? Heute den Krim, morgen die ganze Ukraine?

As mentioned earlier, folks, gangsters usually don’t stop until they’re stopped.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.