There's no country like Russia that is accepting such high risk. Russia is a dictatorship. It's Putin taking risks to settle old scores that he feels weren't addressed when the Soviet union collapsed as a way to distract from Russia's severe internal problems.

Putin sees the west as weak. Germany has a new leader. France is about to have elections. The UK is still dealing with Brexit. The EU is fractured with Poland and Hungary and has no out. The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade and the current president is likely to lose the House and the Senate very shortly.

This is the perfect time if you believe the west is weak. The problem is that what's next on the menu (maybe after Moldova? But that's not very tasty, sorry friends!) Are all NATO members.

And.. Putin lives in the echo chamber you create when you're a dictator who regularly throws people out of windows to their death. He might decide it's time to test NATO. And that's world war territory.

But you'll always be lost if you assume there is a them. There's no them. There's Putin. Read his speech from last night, this thinking and desires are very clear.