>>46620
>economic sanctions, which are really just a limited form of economic warfare
I have been reading a little bit more. Let me correct myself: if what is being discussed pans out, it will not be "limited" after all, they are starting to threaten a pretty brutal decoupling, they even seem to be threatening sovereign assets abroad. I'll update my guess: you know how I spoke about the ebb and flow of us foreign policy vis-a-vis china and russia? I think the events have for the time being coalesced the will in the halls of the pentagon. They are taking the opportunity to push for regime change in moscow. Almost full-on economic warfare and decoupling, massive propaganda campaign, and as many weapons as possible for kiev so as to drag on the conflict ("fight them to the last Ukrainian"). They will eventually offer (if they didn't already) a choice: either regime change in moscow and renouncement of all claims on ukraine (including crimea), or iran-tier economic warfare, as much isolation as they can manage, basically an "iron curtain" this time drawn by the west. The goal would be to prop-up the pro-west politicians and excite the russian population to revolt against the govt to avoid the other alternative.

>>46639
>Maybe Russian leadership thinks that Ukraine has more potential if put into use by Russian interests, and not just hovers in a limbo
For sure, and I think they would be correct (though the currents events may entail difficulties)

>>46734
The point though is that whatever is or isn't a good casus belli depends on the power of your propaganda machine

Speaking about propaganda. I saw the "polru" board at the top of the list and decided to take a look... Welp, not what I expected. Almost everything there could be called "anti-russia"
bbc, the grauniad, ukraine embassy, echo of moscow (liberal slant russian media), whole bunch of pro-us pro-ukraine accounts
bellingcat: This is some outlet for british intelligence cut-outs, pretending to be a kind of wikileaks (they are actually highly critical of Assange and Wikileaks)
nexta: IIRC this is the channel created by Protasevych, the guy who supposedly fought in Donbass for one of the Bandera-related ukrainian battalions, and who was arrested after a plane was diverted towards Minsk over an alleged bomb threat. This outlet is constantly pushing all sort of pro-ua anti-ru propaganda, even going as far as posting footage of video games and claiming it shows ukranians shooting down russian aircraft.
I'm guessing the flagless posts above (after mine) are from one these denizens