It's not that simple. There are many actions that can be attributed to Putin. Crimea issue is just one of them. And his stance on it definitely gives him more support. The only news from Ukraine Russians get is frequent coups, horrible economic situation, squabbles about discounted gas prices and Ukraine's failure to pay for it in time anyway. So you pretty much can expect that yet another Ukrainian coup followed by period of anarchy will get little sympathy in Russia.

I wonder if such situation would be thinkable if wife's and founder's genders were reversed? Would it considered to be normal for some random guy to hang around the building and interfering with company's operations just because he's one of high level manager's husband? Perhaps it was just allowed in case of wife due to stereotypes of women being meddlesome meddlers of little practical importance..

What makes you think so? Not a single autonomous oblast/sub-SSR was allowed to be independent state by the dissolution. Only SSRs were, and ALL of them. The thing is if Soviet Union didn't dissolve and instead elected to become democratic loose federation, but still a single state, then many post-soviet conflicts could have been prevented. What really happened is a lot of fails due to there being not enough skilled statesmen and too many ambitious people wanting their own toy state.

This is not a fact but some moron's fantasies. And if it were true it wouldn't justify Georgia's fail either.

And what does it have to do with Vova? Are you insane? Disagreeing with your lunacy doesn't constitute dick-sucking to Putin. Your double standard against current Russian Government is ridiculous. And I would know it for sure because I'm not a Putin supporter, I merely agree with this particular action. So why do you emphasize Russia's fails over other former Soviet republic fails and diminish Russia's successes? What's the point?

You're just a troll. Most of former Soviet Republics were so much of a failure that it's even problematic to justify their continued existence. Russian Federation is not an exception. But response to Ossetia issue WAS a success for Russia, one of few cases in recent history when army was actually employed to save lives rather than to control oil or something. And ignoring this and making up excuses for Georgia instead IS blindness.

Yeah, Georgia and Ossetia are in long term conflict just because some clown in old Soviet Union placed them in same republic. Georgia failed to establish relationships with Ossetia so hard that this ended with incursion by Russian army which was even NOT condemned by international community. I bet Russian government expects similar fails by Ukraine based on this experience. Given you're not in any hurry to congratulate Russian army on this feat of Humanism and instead link to wikipedia edit wars based on mistranslated sources, I can only consider you biased. Everyone deserves credit for saving human life, no matter for which country they happen to fight. If there are people like you in Ukraine any people of Russian descent DO need protection.

This is not WW2 definitely. The only reason there's no outcry from world community is that 1: no annexation was done, 2: genocide was prevented. I'd even say Putin pulled off a reverse Hitler here. This was an epic fail for Georgia. If Ukrainian government tries to pull off something like that too another epic fail will follow.

Local governments have levels of their own too, provinces and what-not. Many of them were independent principalities in the past.

Yeah, he was born Georgian though. That citation is definitely ripped out of context.

Soviet Regime had statesmen of local nationalities in pretty much all regions and communistic movement is international by definition. Soviet Union is built by rebels of all nationalities.

And previous was Georgia. Only it wasn't annexed.

You're missing my point. People born on Ukraine DID contribute to empire building, participated in common state. What language they spoke as they did so matters not. They might be compelled to continue this as Ukrainian state this time, perhaps to rebuild ancient Rus' or something. You can always come up with some reason to build an empire. But the time of empires has passed. And nobody will actually try to pull it off. Neither Russia nor Ukraine.

So local population is just tired of weird revolutions at the center? You can expect it to end as Ossetia war did, in nothing. Hopefully there will be no attempts of genocide this time.

I bet they weren't as long they were in Poland or Lithuania or whatever. But I simply don't see how they would be any different than any other territories in either Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Both of those states were to large degree nation agnostic. So Belarus, Ukraine and Russia definitely share some legacy as far as empire building is concerned because they all contributed to it with their soldiers and politicians.

If it was invasion, then Crimea can't be 5th column because it's just a victim of invasion. If it wasn't then why did Crimea rebel NOW? What triggered it?

Ukraine, Russia and Belarus come from Kievan Rus'. All empires WERE theirs.