It's difficult to know if Russia will indeed get bogged down in Ukraine, as per everyone's experience of Afghanistan. Unlike the latter country, Ukraine does not have a tradition of tribes continually engaged in bloody conflict with each other. Thus, resistance to Russian occupation is likely to be far less effective and far less persistent. Provided Putin's stormtroopers crush all resistance ruthlessly - a gameplan for which Belarus provided early practice - it is likely most Ukrainians will quickly accept the new overlord.

Meanwhile, the West - for all its bluster today - will quickly forget about Ukraine. Germany will continue to be dependent on Russian gas, US citizens think they have a god-given right to cheap petrol and so will acquiesce in anything that brings down the price of oil, and the EU is so internally divided and impotent as to be utterly meaningless in the context of violent conflict.

So long as Putin keeps his nerve and is willing to exterminate all sources of opposition, his ultimate victory is assured.

The West is weak, divided, and incapable of responding to Putin's aggression. Just as with Munich, people in far-away lands are being sacrificed so that flabby Westerners can remain undisturbed as they cram junk food down their gullets while gawping at brain-dead streamed video entertainments.