For those of us who actually follow all the news, it's little bit more complicated than this, but at the end of the day, Ukraine sits on the fault line between east and west, so either it finds a way to be the bridge, or it is the battleground.

Given NATO has been all but announcing from the rooftops it wanted to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan, one would think the Ukrainians need only to look at Afghanistan to realize that poking the bear is only to the benefit of the chess players, not the chess pieces.

The wealthy and powerful become wealthy and powerful by using other people. Lenin referred to those being used as "useful idiots." There are plenty of those everywhere.

By the time the election comes around, this will all be as old news as the withdrawal from Afghanistan.