It's true enough Putin can find genuine justifications to act - and the West should have joined Russia to denounced more loudly - though it's somewhat ironic that nations like Russia or China come to the defense of ethnic minorities, given their track record.

Definitely not a good sign, and another example of how the West has blundered and is constantly giving munitions to China and Russia. It's nothing new, though, the West has a long history of not looking very closely at who it gets in bed with, though here it's more focusing too much on the goal of a European Ukraine without looking enough at the costs.

Back in early January, specialists of the region (like a female professor at Stanford I saw an interview of) were warning that the West was getting too focused on pushing Ukraine to a rapprochement with Europe and not watching enough the various forces that would be in play if/when the pro-Russian government fell or was ousted, and that this was pretty much baiting Putin, when Putin's long game with Ukraine was to step back, watch, let himself be baited until the "right time" had come to bite and win. I don't remember all the details of her argument, but she predicted accurately that Putin would send the army into Crimea on the first excuse he could engineer, Georgia style, but whatever happened he would wait until after the Sochi games, but probably not until the Sochi G8 summit he couldn't care less about.

So far it's hard not to think events and developments have completely outpaced Western diplomacy.

I wonder if Putin will stop at Crimea, or if he will push further to "protect" the also pro-Russian regions of the south/east.