NBC quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Ian Brzezinski on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan for handling the crisis in Ukraine:
Ian Brzezinski , a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, said Putin now has three unattractive options: He could bring Russian troops openly into the conflict, continue to supply the separatists at a level where they can fight Ukrainian troops to a standstill or simply abandon them.
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“He feels it’s an important priority to the re-establishment of Russian greatness,” said Brzezinski . “It has a territorial dimension as well as an ethnic dimension. He wants a Russia that not just akin to former Soviet Union but to the former Soviet Union … and its satellites. He feels that Russia has been forced out of that realm.”