Ukraine

It can not be compared because the other side at the present day is quite a socialism in comparision with Putin's Russia . Also, images of beggars & homless on the streets of big cities on the West are pretty "normal" (e.g. the famous Parisian bums were / are a tourists attraction), while in Russia that poverty is a result of  "transition" where "former" KGBers and gangsters took all in past 25 yrs only; there wasn't so called democracy (as they "have" now) , but they were living in a real socialism and there weren't  these kids and old womans to beg in downtown Moscow - actually the most expensive quarter in the World now.

My point was the fact that Putin and his Mafia are not willing & able to make some "Eurasia" and particularly not the "new empire" because they are not willing & able even to raise their Pacific East nor to feed the people. On Kremlin' side, all of this with Ukraine is just a mimicry  in order to false patriotism - in order to keep in power; Slobodan Milosevic did do the same and caused the Balkan wars in 90s on that way. 

Putin and his gangsters are Russians and they know that Russian people not staging demonstrations so often as Americans or the Greeks do, but their protests can easily turn into a rebellion and revolution. So that "battle to save Russians in Ukraine" is actually a battle for their rule, and consenquently, that unlimited robbery to be continued.

I have some Russian friends and they say it's pretty sh*tty after the Soviet Union collapsed. People lost everything and then ( US sponsored ogliarchs and the current Putin, KGB gangsters) took everything. A lot of people that were at the top of the party hierarchy who weren't corrupt or gangsters got really screwed. Shock therapy completely destroyed all social protections and Russia became the testing ground of the new IMF neoliberal state. Now what we see that is the neoliberal state created by the Americans has now MERGED with the Russian KGB, who took advantage of the situation and took everything. Putin never planted those former KGB over in those post-communist states... They have been there even before Putin took power... They never lost their allegiance to their intelligence agencies and their cause.... What's worrying is the thing that Svetonio mentioned with the development of two mature fascist empires in the heart of Eurasia -> The "European" Union and the new Russian Empire -> which will include most of the former Soviet Union.. 

About Belarus -> It's not a Russian puppet, it's just a PART of the Russian empire. The people there mostly speak Russian and they view themselves as Russians. A guy at work here who is from Belarus views himself as Russian. The languages, cultures and customs in Belarus, Russia, Eastern and Southern Ukraine are very similar. Western Ukrainians, from what I met, are Polonized and a lot of them are Catholics. From hundreds of years of Polish and Austrian colonization, they are more like Poles than Russians. Russian presence in Central Asia remains different, because those are conquered lands. 

The problem with you talking about "Russian puppet states" is that the pro-Western opposition are not free from puppetry either. The current Ukrainian and Georgian government are not these "liberal democrats" you're talking about, they are of the same mould as the Russian puppets, but they favor the US side, because they receive most of their funding from the US and the EU (mostly from us taxpayers). They're very much as corrupt as the other side and employ similar authoritarian actions in dealing with whomever opposes them. Just look at what the pro-Western Georgian and Ukrainian authorities did when they took power. The Georgian government cracked down on pro-Russian protestors and employed torture against them. Mind you in 2008, Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers in the region with NATO weaponry FIRST and the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies IMF has been embedded deeply into the pro-Western factions in both Ukraine and Georgia. What other state would the CIA director John Brennan visit unannounced other than to directly their puppets? These countries, if they join the EU and NATO as vassals, they won't do as well economically as the United States or the United Kingdom. I mean look at most of Eastern Europe, even after 25 years of American cultural, political and economic dominance, the economies of most of those nations continue to be basketcases...They provide cheap labor to Western markets, cheap resources to be transported without barrier to the German industrial base and their best talent continues moving to the West.. Not really a good deal for them...., but since Westerners are so indoctrinated by the most ridiculous knee-jerk Russiophobia, the population of the West believes that they might join with the West if they want prosperity and happiness. 

Of course. However, here in Serbia, Russian agencies performed very strong propaganda  - due to interests of Gazprom - that there's not poverty at all in your country because Putin is a good natured saint. So I can't wait that Putin is gonna be disposed.

He missed his chance in 1996, the train's gone.

Most people don't realize this, but the EU was founded by a bunch of secret Nazis and now they're dominating all of the nations of the European Union. 75% of all laws that European Union members follow are made in Brussels, but the reality is most of these laws are vetted by the German industrialists and their banker friends in Frankfurt.

I don't see the petrodollar lasting for too long. The US can no longer be the dominant power in the world with all of these great powers emerging.

All dirty autocrat and dictators have their "clowns". For example, Slobodan Milosevic also had his "clown", serbian fascist Vojislav Seselj (the short video below: near yugoslavian / serbian parliament building,  Belgrade's taxi driver was threatened by Vojislav Seselj with a gun); the "clown" has come a long way since Milosevic's minister to the accused for genocide. Why is there Seselj in Serbia? For the same reasons as in Zhyrinovsky in Russia.  Because Zirinovski serves to clean the field; that leads to an absurd extreme, so that it turns out that Putin's extremism to some "Third Way" - like politician image.