Taminad, thank you for your response.

Perhaps you can be the one to explain to me -convincingly - why Putin accepted the Minsk Accords and let himself be led around by the nose for eight years while the US and NATO armed, trained and prepared the Ukrainians for war with Russia?

Military experts all agree that if Putin had invaded in 2014, he could have crushed the Ukrainian armed forces before NATO could even get off the dime. By letting himself be duped by Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko, Putin allowed Ukraine to become a formidable and threatening force.

Why would he do that, if he planned to invade all along?

And please do not give me any of this "Mad Vlad" bollocks. Putin is a pragmatic thinker and not some crazy person.