i dont think there is any doubt that putin has won this round, albeit an outcome that can still be overturned should ukraine somehow endure its consequences and persevere to fight another day (meaning next spring). at this stage of the game i think most of us have discerned putin's game plan as exerting indirect (but firm) control over novrossiya, starve ukraine of energy and cash, which in turn could precipitate a major crisis for poroshenko. a repeat of maidan or other potent display of popular discontent against poroshenko spells victory for putin by discrediting the very movement which propelled him into power.
You're somewhat abstract about Ukraine. The wages in the Ukrainian textile industry are a third of those in China. As far as Ukrainians want accession to EU it is to escape Ukraine to work for higher wages in the better EU countries.
Putin has won this round but what he wants is regime change. In 1991 in Russia and Ukraine the state was cut down and the power went in both countries to a score of oligarchs. In Russia the oligarchs chose a colorless bureaucrat to succeed the alcoholic Yeltsin, Putin, but they were mistaken. Many went to live in London, one went to live in Siberia for may years, paid for by the state. In Ukraine the oligarchs still own the members of parliament.
After the coup in Februari when the change of front of one oligarch owning forty members of parliament let to the new regime that was manifestly depedant on neo-nazi's outside the parliament because too few Ukrainians support it. The war in the East was fought by the Ukrainian army with support from police forces who were re-orginised for their new task but remained under command of the Interior Ministry, private armies of oligarchs ( see
for the background of one such private army ) and neo-nazi voluntary battallions from the North-West of Ukraine. This doesn't provide a basis for a democratic country.
The Ukrainian army has been effectively demoralised by being defeated time and again by numerically inferior but tactically superior forces. And if the war is to continue it will be in the winter, it will not wait for the next spring. Ukrainians were very well trained in Russia to fight the regime. I have the notion that those who are now in training are being prepared to fight this winter rather than being used to extent the sommer fighting season. That too will have been a factor in the truce that is now achieve. Of course Russia would prefer not to see more war on its border, but that will depend on the political developments in Kiev.
