While we are no friends of Putin and Russia, nor of the Ukraine, as Robert Kennedy Jr noted in a speech a few weeks back, to prevent nuclear war, the West need to begin talking to Russia, and working through their world view on the Ukraine situation. International Man.com has a good piece towards these ends. The main concern of Putin is that he does not want, for obvious reasons, US/NATO nuclear missiles 40 minutes away from Moscow. It is the equivalent of the US facing nuclear missiles in Cuba, which was dealt with in the Cuban missile crisis, with President John F. Kennedy threatening nuclear war if the USSR went ahead with it, which they did not. The Ukraine becoming part of NATO is raising the same issue for Russia.