Do you think this could ever become a "hot" war? .
I am cautiously optimistic.
When I was leaving the USSR in 1985, there was no doubt in my mind that a civil war is coming - a civil war in a country with nuclear weapons. God help us all.
And then - then something happened that I would not expect in a thousand years: in 1991, during the inevitable Stalinist coup, the Army refused to follow orders, refused to shoot civilians. Suddenly, it behaved as if were a normal national defense force, not a totalitarian tool of oppression created by Lenin and Trotsky.
I am not sure the situation in Kiev now is all that similar to the situation in Moscow back then, but the most important thing that is happening is not the flag-waving, or the statue-toppling, or the speech-making (even by cute little American starlets engaged to Ukrainian market-liberal incarnations of Terminator) - or anything Klychko, Putin, Joe Biden (God help us all again) or the Pope can do, pro or contra
The most important thing is what's going on in the skulls of all these shielded, helmeted, nightstick-wielding "special forces" guys we watch on the screen.
Because, you see, they still have options. They are not the SS/Gestapo or the KGB/NKVD
yet - they still have a lot to lose. And they are also Ukrainians. Very aware of all the horrible history and the urgent need for leaving the worst of it behind.
My - very tentative - prediction: The order to shoot - with the real ammo - will come - and it will be disobeyed. The powers-that-be will lose whatever is left of their legitimacy, the moment they issue the order. At that precise moment, the Ukraine will cease to be the lesser post-Soviet zombie mini-me of the Putin's Russia, and will become a normal European country.