Putin made a speech: Annexing the Crimea is for Russia like for Germany the reunification. He is not going to partition the Ukraine. And because of the special adress he makes to the Germans it is clear that he honours their commitment and will avoid a sanctions and countersanctions escalation.
As long as Germany is on board, the EU sanctions will be as toothless as possible and without Germany, they will be toothless. US sanctions are irrelevant for Russia. Russia feels self-sufficient in economics.
The ongoing military showdown in Crimea and the pro-Russian protest in parts of Eastern Ukraine showcase the possibility that the whole of Ukraine could move into the orbit of Russia. There's no reliable data on how many staunch opponents against a Russian alliance exist. The economic situation is dire and the lack of real commitment by the EU will likely make people wonder whether that option really pays as much as it promises. Within the EU, Germany serves their self-interests in maintaining strong economic connections with Russia and is a roadblock against agggressive EU measures against the cumulating Russian take over. This is a European business where the US can contribute almost nothing, because the US does not have the financial capability to launch a Marshall plan of economic progress for the Ukraine.
In military terms not much is to be expected of the Ukraine. They are building an ideological corps from the militant Maidan protesters to launch their military counterpose. This is widely interpreted as a sign that their regular military structure is dysfunctional and unable to pose any challenging resistance.
The whole Hitler-appeasement narrative is a smokescreen that hinders people from seeing a few basics.
The EU fucked things up by offering the Ukraine a really bad trade agreement that was very one sided in EU favour. The Ukrainian president Yanukovic did the right thing for his country by refusing it, when reading the content within that package. The additional EU demand of cutting ties between Ukraine and Russia was like asking Canada to cease trade with the USA. As soon as the terms of the offered EU agreement surfaces to a better informed Ukrainian public, they are likely to turn their backs to the now popular EU option. Germany is running counter the EU politics on this issue and is sooner than later going to prevail, further strengthening German position within the EU.
Russia had an agreement at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand east. Now NATO is on former Soviet territory in the Baltic and a EU-NATO integration was contemplated with Ukraine. From a Russian perspective the Reagan agreements have been broken for the last decades during Russian weakness and now they act in self defence, protecting the achievements Russia has paid for in blood and treasure during previous centuries. Crimea was one of the prime targets in order to enable Russian maritime and naval presence among the nations of the world. The Ukraine is a former borderland between powers such as Poland, Great-Lithuania, Russia, Turkey, Hungaria and the place of origin of Russian identity, the Kievan Rus. The Kievan Rus was the most powerful of a number of principalities that formed a federation of monarchs under one overlord. For these reasons it is not easy to draw clear ethnic boundaries between Russians and Ukrainians (it's akin to the differences between Northern and Southern Chinese). This is a very difficult issue and one of the best solutions would be to accept real basic democracy. If there is an overwhelming majority in Crimea really voting for unification with Russia out of their own free choice, then so be it. If such a feeling extends to the whole of Ukraine after the EU-fuck up surfaces, then there are no options, but to accept that Ukraine dissolves into Russia.
In the Western media exposure it simply drowns out what kind of deal the EU offered the Ukraine and what kind of deal Russia offers them now. The people of Ukraine want to escape the poverty trap that their economic and political situation created for them, despite their education, abilities and efforts.
I doubt that anyone is making the French not send their LHA ships to Russia as ordered. This is the major French arms deal and honouring it during these times of crises is most important for the French-Russian ties. Berlin makes it quite clear that they want toothless sanctions and will not pay economically for the EU created disaster, so why would Paris shoot themselves in the leg?
News is: Man bites dog, not dog bites man. For this reason utterly impotent political figures try to gain prominence by launching convenient agendas.
