Those citizens will grow more and more unsettled as NATO continues to build it's forces up on their "Western Front". I don't see Putin having any choice but to match that buildup, regardless of his personal aspirations. If Putin doesn't, the PTB in Russia will find someone who will is my guess.
As far as the Ukraine, Cohen suggests that what happened there is being used as the excuse by the West for this military exercise and soon to be build-up. The link I posted earlier is now gone but I still have the full interview as recorded at the Nation, in case you were unable to see it:
"War With Russia Without Public Debate?
NATO is continuing its military buildup and “exercises” on Russia’s borders, Moscow is taking “counter-measures,” while the US mainstream media remains silent.
By Stephen F. Cohen
Yesterday 8:00 am
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The John Batchelor Show, June 7.
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com). This installment returns to the large-scale NATO military buildup on Russia’s Western frontiers, again on land, sea, and in the air, now featuring Operation “Anaconda-2016,” an “exercise” involving more than 30,000 American and other NATO forces in Poland.
Batchelor asks whether alarmed warnings by informed analysts, including three longtime Russian residents in the United States, that actual war may be imminent are plausible. Cohen thinks this worst-case scenario cannot be ruled out, for several reasons. The NATO build up is not episodic but intended to grow and be permanent, and be ratified at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July. No such hostile forces have amassed on Russia’s Western frontiers—now from the Baltic to the Black Sea—since the Nazi German invasion in 1941. (The inclusion of a German contingent among the NATO forces has further awakened that memory in Russia.) The only explanation given by the US-led NATO is “Putin’s aggression” in Ukraine, but that was more than two years ago. (Claims that he is now menacing the small Baltic states and Poland are clearly without any basis in fact.) Not surprisingly, Cohen reports, Moscow is reinforcing its own conventional and strategic (probably nuclear) forces on its Western territories, bringing the two powers to a Cuban missile crisis–like confrontation. Even leaving aside accidental military acts, there are many other potential tripwires, from Ukraine and Turkey to Syria.
Astonishingly, this looming possibility of war with Russia has gone largely unreported and entirely undebated in mainstream American media. Neither Batchelor nor Cohen can think of a precedent for such a media blackout or indifference. The situation, according to Cohen, is quite different in Russia, where NATO’s buildup is hotly debated on, for example, prime-time television talk shows. Opinions vary as to the actual threat, but one growing opinion is that “a scent of a great war is in the air” and that Putin has not done enough to ready the country at home or abroad. Analogously, a leading Russian journalist publicly criticized the Kremlin for not having intervened militarily in Kiev in February 2014, when the ongoing crisis began with the overthrow of a pro-Russian Ukrainian president. That is, Putin also has a public opinion to consider as he decides how to react to NATO’s buildup. •"
Here is my take on this: NATO forces and equipment are at an all time low. The M.I.C. needs Russia to be the boogy-man so the citizenry within NATO will want to see NATO built up nice and strong. Russia will match forces massed on their borders against the ones NATO adds there. As forces build, (both sides), the case for further strengthening NATO also strengthens. It's a dangerous spiral, with two growing militaries standing there eyeball to eyeball but an incredible win for the M.I.C.
I remember participating in Duck and Cover drills, I think it incredibly sad that children worldwide may soon live with such fears again.
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