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The die is not cast at all. Troops can move within Russia back and forth without problems, there are no obligations to give an attack order just because the troops are standing near the border. There is no too much risks to his internal image, because according to propaganda he is fighting for peace and does not want to attack at all.

I think that Putin has lost a chance to grab the eastern Ukraine in 2014. When Yanukovich fled Kiev, he could have made him ask for a military help, and in the post-maidan chaos could take everything east of Dnepr, creating a puppet state loyal to a legitimately elected president, and then slowly incorporate those territories into russia over the next few years or decades.

Also, do not equate Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea. Chechnya was an internal region with no international recognition ever, so this is an internal matter, and it's not so much 'grabbing territory' as 'restoring order'. Taking territory from Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, etc is a different matter and is seen by state propaganda as bringing the rightful territory back into the fold.

While I agree each unhappy subject state is unhappy in its own way, the examples of Chechnya, Crimea and Georgia all show in different ways how machiavellian Putin is - anything goes and the lives of others (including his own citizens) simply don’t matter if he thinks he will get away with it.

I think given the public statements demanding absurd terms from the west and the very public troop movements Putin would now find it very hard to back down.

Both Chechen wars have started before Putin came to power. And both were lost by Russia, actually. Russia just picked one of many rivalling clans and pays tribute to them.

So no, it's not Machiavellian, more like a gopnik who stole a TV set while the neighbors were putting out a fire in their house.

> Also, do not equate Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea.

Of course you can equate. Russia has a history of supporting separatists immediately outside of their borders, while cracking them down when they're just across inside. You can directly compare their completely opposed stances in North and South Ossetia.

Russia created what I call Schrodinger's jihadists: you can't know if someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter until you observe on which side of the border they are and the threat function collapses. Basayev in Abkhazia? Good. Basayev in Chechnya? Bad.

Last time a southern region where a slavery was practiced wanted to secede from the USA, Lincoln went to a civil war to stop them. Chechnya is also a southern region where slavery is practiced which wanted to secede, so equating these is quite sensible.

Why do you equate such conflicts with conflicts between different nations is hard for me to understand.

As for completely opposing stances, that's politics for you. Ever wondered how certain member of Bin Laden family came to prominence?

We're not talking about USA.

Ever heard about analogies? This one is pretty direct here.

Comparing a:

• Pre-industrial society with widespread slavery, with most of the agricultural production of the union, trying to secede because they don't like the new rules.

Against a:

• Turn-of-the-21st-century, religiously-motivated, terrorism-mediated secession with testimonial cases of slavery in a tiny post-industrial subject of the Russian Federation (and the poorest of them all).

Is not only wild, but also a gigantic tu quoque, especially when you have plenty of analogies right there in the Caucasus: Abkhazian independence good, Dagestani bad; South Ossetian independence good, Ingushetian bad.

That's reality of Russia saying and doing the opposite immediately inside/outside of their borders.

Thing is, both are part of a larger state. I'm not supporting Putin's politics, but there is a very clear distinction between internal and foreign conflicts. US civil war and Chechnya secession wars are both of the former type, and in that regard they are very similar, and widespread slavery in Chechnya makes this comparison even more vivid.

As for "X good, Y bad", every conflict in history is rooted in different understanding of what's good and what's bad by different groups of people. For Georgia, Abhazian independence bad, for Russia, Dagestan independence bad, as they both claim soverenity over these respective territories. I don't understand why are you talking about it in such grandstanding fashion, it is not some groundbreaking news.

So no, you can't equate internal Chechnya wars with international conflicts like Crimea and Georgia. These are two very different conflicts with very different reasons.

> You don't move this many troops and ships etc as a feint (nor would you need to)

I agree, but you know what? The best feints are the believable ones, and even moving 100k troops is cheaper than actually engaging in war.

Actually, moving 100k troops costs almost the same as not moving them.

> Fulfils his old goal of expanding Russia to old soviet borders (see Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea etc).

Which I read as a direct continuation of pre-communist imperial ambition. When whites turned red they mostly just dropped their loyalty to the Romanov, keeping other elements of imperial attitude basically unchanged. And to this day there seems to be the idea of a "historical injustice" that deserves correction wrt places that used to be under Romanov rule at some point but subsequently got independent.

Putin has no expansion goals. This is a myth unsupported by any evidence. The only new territory Russian Federation acquired since 1945 is Crimea, and this event was not driven by expansion interests. Russian elite including Putin has business rather than imperial mindset. They understand the costs and benefits of forceful acquisitions too well to get in such trouble. Even in Belarus where the chances of peaceful merge without any sanctions were the highest, they never dared to push for it.

Unsupported by any evidence except the recent annexation of territory you cite?

I completely agree Putin and his backers are entirely focussed on pillaging Russia and surrounding countries for wealth but part of that is ensuring he maintains control of that wealth, and false patriotism and war is one way to do so more easily and to expand the wealth available.

As I said, Crimea was a special case and it was not driven by expansionism. There are no other examples.