You beat me to it Miragedriver, although I was waiting for a full resumption of fighting before starting a new thread.
You are right to list the restrictions, but do not be too censorious as; although members are invited to take their dissertations on Neo-Liberalism or Marxist Leninism elsewhere, there are areas of objectives and strategy that will be essential in understanding the looming conflict.
The conflict is about to reignite, I think that is very certain. We are seeing an increase in the intensity of the "violations" with massive artillery duels breaking out around Donetsk and of course, the open convoys courtesy of the Voentrog, whihc have been very ostentatiously moving through Donetsk during the last week.
The Fighting though has not yet fully restarted, so; you may ask, why so sure that it will? The answer is that now Russia has the answer to a vexing and complex question, the lack of which was giving the Kremlin cause for pause.
Lets be clear on one thing, The ultimate Russian objective has always been and remains, the removal of the Maidan Government in Kiev and the installation of a new regime that is at the very least neutral towards Russian interests. Russia has of course the military capability to roll through the Ukraine and capture the whole country within weeks, but this is and remains the option of last resort. This is because, not only would there be a ferocious international backlash, but also because Russia would be moving into a quagmire if it did.
A Kremlin spokesman in credited with saying off the record, that although in Eastern areas of Ukraine, that the Russian Army would be greeted as liberators, the further west you go, the more they would be regarded as Invaders and Occupiers and resisted.
It is a fact, acknowledged by Russia, that the majority of Ukraine does not wish to be occupied by Russia. If Russia has no choice, it will go in, but only in the last resort and it will try all other options first.
The restoration of a none hostile Ukraine, is a job for Ukrainians, albeit Ukrainians with substantial Russian assistance. The resistance must therefore come from within the Ukraine itself. The problem here is that the area controlled by the resistance (The regional Capitals of Donetsk and Lughansk and surrounding countryside) is way to small, only the equivalent of one region (albeit a populous and critically Industrial one). The critical mass for an effective regime changing capable opposition would need to be many times larger.
The problem for Moscow was of course, where exactly could they expand to? where exactly would their backed resistance forces would be welcomed as liberators, where would the public mood be permissive and that critical mass acquired?
Well this is precisely what has changed. The recent RADA elections have; through the mass poll boycotts in the South and East of Ukraine under Kiev control, identified precisely the areas where Pro Russian forces would be welcomed and has done so in detail.
Putin now has the template he has needed to be able to plan his campaign strategy and I suspect that this plan is now complete and being implemented. This plan is nothing more than the consolidation of the overly Pro Russian areas under the Novorossiyan flag and for these newly consolidated territories to then take up the challenge of regime change in Kiev.
Does Kiev know this? I have no doubt it does and is the precisely why, the Ukrainian President called the existing resistance held territories a "Cancerous Growth to be removed".
Russia therefore has all the information it needs and has no more need of delay in implementing its plans. Kiev knows what is coming and sees no point in not getting its retaliation in first. Both sides have no reason to delay the rush back towards full conflict.
The Ceasefire is crumbling and most likely to disintegrate within a few days at most.
this is Military Forum, so what?) and I hope you didn't mean that massacre was OK or something ... it coincided with your post that yesterday I recalled how tense October/November 1989 was in Czechoslovakia (at that time in Poland has been already formed, in Communistic Germany was about to fall etc.) where a deployment of tanks into the streets was one of the options very seriously considered by the local Politburo ... never happened, Blackstone, neither the US "overlooked" 
