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What is your opinion? Things are getting more and more nervous there.  :-\

Nope. Putin has refused to support the rebels, and they have lost major cities such as Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as the port city of Mariupol recently. They won't able to hold one for too long. However, it seems very likely that a few thousand more will die there.

This sucks. I hired a programer in Ukraine in January and sent him 50% of the money in advance. He told me few times since then he is nervous about the situation and he prolonged the project because he needed to evacuate his daughter from a dangerous city. Then in april he dissapeared on 100% and stopped replying me. I am not sure if he scammed me with the money and I forgot them already. But I hope he didn't died, if he is alive, pretty bad by him to behgave that way, but if he died...  :'(

Why he stop supporting the rebels? Does your Daddy Putin got afraid?

Cause it would turn into a war and he doesn't want that and war is expensive.

He also doesnt want blood on his hands.

US can't enter a war with Russia.

The Ukraine thingy is just part of the cold war between the two countries, nothing else.

As US can't sit like this with peace, it wants more and more action, why ?, I don't know why !

The military leaders are planners and do a cost/benefit analysis.
War would be fought in some of the smaller countries,  in order to have high benefit but "low cost".
I'd say a war on Russian territory is not very likely, perhaps the war would be dragged further into Europe.

Why would you say that?
It makes absolutely no sense.

It is not Russia who will be the aggressor , they know they don't have anything to gain even if victorious (very slim chances). If indeed a war starts in Ukraine it will most likely engulf Bielorussia first and then spread into Russia , probably with a few fights in the Tiraspol area.

A false flag operation, in order to make Russia seem the aggressor.  A lot of attention has been on the US lately: dragnet surveillance, guatanamo, snowden, financial crisis etc..  The US wants to improve its image abroad, so after the Olympic games suddenly Russia was the bad guy with anti-gays, pussyriot etc.

They don't need to let russia strike first , they are already labeled as the bad guys.

And honesty , both sides have scored so many bad points in the past few years that it would make both of them look bad even if they were invading hell.

What bad things has Russia done in the past few years in your opinion?

Nope. He is not afraid. He is just concerned about the reaction from your mommy, Angela Merkel.

Putin has nothing to gain from supporting the rebels. He does not have enough money to pay for the pensions and salaries of the Donbass citizens. How Ironic? Donbass people want o merge with Russia. But Putin will not allow it.

Well logically Putin would gain from Donbass and surrounding provinces seceding from Ukraine without joining Russia ala Transnistria.
That would deprive Ukraine of the most of its industrial base, especially Russia-oriented military-supplying factories. After it's done, Russia can stop caring about what remains of Ukraine.

+1.

I can't find any reason for starting a war, only innocent people who pays the war bill.

Why can't we leave in peace ? Why all what we seek is money and power ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycpR_DcEIU

However, it's nice time for good laugh, thanks to keyboard warriors.

I do not think so

He has already pissed his pants...

He has warned  visa mastercard to pay or get our of russia... nothing happened
He has "forced" Ukraine to pay the entire debt by june 1st  , it's june 15 , and they asked only for an advance payment and they are thinking of cutting the price to where it was previously..

It's all empty words , and westerners know that , that's why they don't take him seriously

And don't forget , while we have this open discussion on a free forum , in your beloved russia this might not be possible anymore:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117771/putins-internet-crackdown-russias-first-blogger-reacts

russia can't compete in a war of attrition.. they don't have the resources for that. i do give them credit  for having the balls to try and start shit with the U.S. and europe though. they are honey badgers.

My opinion that everything will be fine. Some people will die, some people will get hurt because of new UA government but eveybody will calm down and everything will be fine

Major cities are Donetsk and Lugansk, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk are just "outposts". And even they are not "lost", don't know what you actually meant by this word... 8)

Where I live, we call cities with a population of more than 100,000 as major cities. Yes. They are lost. Kramatorsk is almost fully under the control of the Ukrainian Army, while Slavyansk is almost 50% under their control.

What country is that? Antarctica? Oh , wait , you never answer this question.

But really , calling cities that are not even 10% of the population of the top 3 , and not included in the top 20 by population "major" is a bit off.

Russia is not the USSR.  Russia has a way smaller economy, population, demilitarized a lot in the past twenty years and has few international allies.  Much like Britain, Russia basks in its' former greatness but it's largely a paper tiger compared to what it used to be.

If you read military blogs on Russia - they aren't strong enough to win a war against Ukraine, it would stalemate into a bloody conflict.   Rocketry technology is such that modern wars now are all infantry slug fests.  Something like WW2 arguably can't be repeated anymore since it's too expensive to produce vehicles relative to the cost of missiles.  It's similiar to how people stopped wearing plate armours when guns became more common.

Might have lost half the population, but Russia is still very powerful. They have the best ICMBs in the world, the most number of active nuclear warheads and the most accurate air-defence systems. The army is a bit smaller, but once the modernization drive is over, it will also rank as one of the best in the world.

Stalingrad was over 90% controlled by Wehrmacht, but the Soviets still didn't lose the city. It seems that you don't quite understand what's going on in these cities now. If the Ukrainian troops have entered into, say, Kramatorsk, this doesn't in the least mean that they begin controlling it. They may control a block, a street (or two) at the moment, but not the whole city all the time (they just don't have enough manpower to do it)...

Slight difference that can change all the picture.
Stalingrad was never completely encircled by the Wehrmacht.
Also , rebels can't expect an army twice as big as their foe to come to their help.

Neither are Kramatorsk and Slavyansk actually. Don't take it at face-value when they tell you that the cities are "completely encircled". They are not, pro-government forces may actually control "major" (lol) roads around them, but they don't control the territory. As I said before, they just don't have enough manpower to do the trick of a total blockade (which would count for "completely encircled")...  8)

Let's follow your assumptions for a moment.
How much in man power and numbers would they required do do this "trick" according to you?

Orders of magnitude if counting only by numbers. But it is not just sheer numbers, they would also have to carry out some form of "ethnic cleansing" (e.g. temporarily send the population to concentration camps or whatever they may be called, as Russians did in the Chechen wars)... 8)

With half of the city already deserted I don't think that there is too much to do.
And the city is not a large one to actually require thousands of troops to encircle but...concentration camps?

I can't believe you've said that?
Did the Russians send civilians to concentrations camps during the Chechen wars?
I think you are mistaken ;)

Lol, this was just what the U.S. government did to the Japanese population of the USA after the Pearl Harbor attack. Regarding the Russians sending civilians to concentration camps during the Chechen wars, these camps were not indeed called that. There were camps for displaced persons, but when you take up military actions in the hostile territory where population is not very loyal to central authorities, you don't have much choice unless you're going for total genocide... 8)

You forget that this territory (i.e. Donbass) is one of the most densely populated in Europe (only the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region in Germany is more urbanized, if I'm not mistaken), and cities are actually bordering with each other, so your remark about half of the city already deserted makes no sense (let alone "encircling" it)... 8)

So it is not about just one city, it is about taking under control the whole region, and what's even more important, keeping this control over the territory! ::)

With 164 inhabitants per square km , I can't call that the most densely populated area in Europe. =))
The United Kingdom has  255 for example.
And the Ruhr area 1,422/km2.

I don't know where you got these figures from, but the population of the Kramatorsk urban agglomeration is around half a million people. And there are other three (from which two are even bigger) agglomerations in the Donetsk region with a total population of around 4.5 million people... 8)

So you guess the military force required to control the area (Chechen population was around just one million in the 90s)! ;D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk_Oblast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_Oblast

6 millions people in both spread over 50 000 km2.

For comparison the Ruhr area has twice the inhabitants in 1/7 of the area.

Okay, so we have 6 million people you are going to control from which over 90% are hell bent pro-Russian (even if the majority of them won't take to arms)... Your actions and how much manpower would you need? ;D

From Wikipedia on the Donetsk region (which is the core of the Smaller Donbass, by the way):