Ik kwam ondertussen op Reddit dit tegen van een Russische redditer. Het geeft mijns inziens een heldere inkijk in waarom een en ander zo cruciaal is (geweest) voor Poetin en co:
Edit:
En omdat we het nog niet hadden, een kaart van het NSDC:

Gevechten gaan, ondanks de gesprekken in Minsk gewoon door. Van een staakt het vuren is, in tegenstelling tot de beloftes van beide kanten, geen sprake.
Permalink naar postHere are speculations of educated insider.
If EU and US will provide slightly higher pressure (some more sanctions + help to Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova) - there is good chance to see the fall of Soviet Reunion before World Cup 18. It seems Kazakhstan is already moving into this direction after recent phrase of Putin how Kazakhstan was created on a territory which never had any state on it - and Belarus is openly exploit Customs Union to bypass Kremlin's self-inflicted sanctions and organize government-sponsored "contraband" of forbidden products from EU into Russian Federation.
It's serious but it won't lead to new cold war - just a couple cold battles maybe - because population of RuFed is close to boiling point (it's obvious Kremlin has nothing to offer to develop the country - only prayers for higher prices of oil and gas and invasions into nearby countries), government's bankruptcy and/or severe sanctions may spark explosion of separatism. Either RuFed will remove Putin and its government from control (and army from Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) or there is serious possibility for the "empire" to go belly up in couple years.
I bet local bureaucrats already have plans what to do as separate countries, in fact there are already ready-to-use customs post structures inside RuFed + regions of RuFed already act as separate states, they have less integration than countries in EU and that is why Kremlin was so hysterical about Ukraine and Georgia signing association agreement with EU - because it's almost the same level of integration as relations between regions within RuFed. Another example: when a citizen move between regions of RuFed she/he need passport and visa on arrival (a.k.a. "registracia") which is strongly linked to property ownership rights and act more like "localized/temporary citizenship" (if you don't own another real estate you can legally live within estate where you have registracia indefinitely without consent of other tenants) so citizens either have to purchase real estate to acquire "localized citizenship" or bribe someone to get their passport stamped with local visa - I heard about case where 40,000 (!) people were illegally registered within the same real estate property in Sochi (by FSB itself, mind you).
Edit:
En omdat we het nog niet hadden, een kaart van het NSDC:

Gevechten gaan, ondanks de gesprekken in Minsk gewoon door. Van een staakt het vuren is, in tegenstelling tot de beloftes van beide kanten, geen sprake.
[ Voor 5% gewijzigd door PauseBreak op 05-09-2014 14:05 ]
Nee, merp!