Vladimir Putin, perhaps unknowingly, is putting the final nail in the coffin of the performer (artist is too strong a word) formerly known as the Soviet Union.
1. By acquiring an economic basket case, Crimea -- and perhaps planning to annex, in one form or another -- economically depressed/inefficient areas of eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Vladimirovich, child of the Cold War rather than messiah (to say the least) for a new century (except for nationalists longing for the third Rome/International), is putting additional stress on an unproductive Russian economy that has not yet recovered from 50 years of Communism. All this after billions of dollars wasted for Sochi.
2. Arguably, the Russian president, aspiring for life tenure like a second-rate American academic in a minor regional learnery, has made the leadership circles of former Soviet republics even more cautious that ever about joining Putin's efforts to "remake" the USSR under a more "klean" form. Basically, these intolerant, corrupt hacks fear they would lose their power/pay backs, just as Yanukovych did. So, in trying to go
back to the KGB USSR -- when Order (on the surface) reigned -- Putin is unwillingly contributing to its final dissolution, as the strongmen in places like Belarus and Kazhakstan, will now in no way be enticed to join an "updated" Soviet Union, having seen how the Russians "took over" Crimea in order to "protect" speakers of their language ("ethnicity" in Eastern European is far more complicated and elastic than the Western media suggests). And, of course, whatever Western-leaning "dissidents" that exist in these Russia-bordering two countries would fight against, even more than their dictators, Russian state interference in their societies -- their cris de guerre would be not one but “two, three, or many Maidans,” to use a phrase by Che regarding Vietnam.
3. Western investors in Ukraine -- which today, I speculate, have no choice but consider the country as unitary in order to deal with its government which, no matter how corrupt, they must cooperate with (bribe) to get things done -- would quickly lose interest in Russian-held places like Donetsk and Kharkov, Detroits of Eastern Europe. Savvy profit-oriented Poles and Scandinavians -- who, unlike the EU chinovniki, have "real" economic/historical interests (rather than bureaucratic ones) -- in an entity so close to their borders.
Several Oblasts can be referred to as "Eastern Ukraine":
Red - always included
Orange - sometimes included
They'd put their money in western Ukraine, which is more adaptable to the 21st-century economy than an Eastern economic rust belt under Russian influence, so often associated (unfairly, I'd say, given Western Russophobia, similar to elite bias in the US against "rednecks" or "trailer park goons") with corruption, parochialism, and brutality. So eastern Ukraine would, economically, lose out, as no way the Russians have the resource significantly to invest in that part of their "space" (unless they want to hold the next winter Olympics in Kharkov with its lovely Lenin statue as an inspiration for its mascot).
In 2005 I wrote a widely -- doubtless rightly -- ignored piece suggesting that the redrawing of the map in areas occupied by Ukraine should not be considered an abyss into which involved parties dare not gaze, for fear it would (perhaps) gaze back at them (which it is doing right now). This article was based on my experiences in Ukraine in 93-95 as a U.S. diplomat (granted, in a frivolous State Department "cone," public diplomacy), when I was struck by the political and territorial fragility of the country, essentially at that time a geographical expression created over a few decades by the Soviets (think of "Ukrainian" Crimea as an extreme example). Indeed, I thought that, had it not been for the bloodbath in the Balkans in the 90s -- an experience neither the Ukrainian or Russian governments wanted to follow -- the country could have been torn asunder by regional/intra-regional conflict. In the article I mentioned the peaceful Czechoslovak divorce sympathetically. However I understand that now, from accounts of Ukraine 20 years after I had the privilege to serve there, younger people in that part of Europe/Eurasia feel "Ukrainian." But is Ukraine as currently configured a way to their better future? I still ask the question. I'll never forget the bitter joke I heard in Ukraine by the mid-90s, in reference to Western (U.S.) aid
In Ukraine, we got shock but no therapy.
Will U.S./EU "aid" do any better this time around? Consider this: Even from a strictly "amoral" realpolitik NATO persterpective, if eastern Ukraine were to be "liberated" by Russia, soon these eastern areas, like East Germany during the Cold War, would see how much better life has become in western Ukraine (as it is, already, now) -- that would be caused, in part, by "real" investments from Poland and Scandinavia (let not forget that "under Varangian [Viking] rule, the city [Kiev] became a capital of the Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state.")
In other words, even from the most cynical Cold-War, money-is-money perspective, a redrawn Ukraine would be far in more in the West's, rather than Russian, interest. Let the russkies have the rust belt. We'll take the innovators in the west. Or so goes (granted, extremely simplified) thinking. At the risk of sounding condescending, there are many talented people in eastern Ukraine. I know, I've been there, I've talked with them -- granted all too many years ago.
I don't think Vladimir Vladimirovich, evidently intent on creating a tempest-in-a-teapot foreign crisis to fortify his domestic control by propagandizing restoration-of-USSR fantasies, has thought this (as the Russians say) variantthrough.
As a KGB agent, one would assume that he did.
To image from; below image from