There's a chasm of gigantic proportions between how most of us are governed and the Russian/Chinese people. Democratic leaders are temporary, theirs are pretty near permanent. So they play much longer political and power strategies than any democratically elected governments. Hence Putin's gradual increase in his way of gaining advantage, challenges the Western governments to do the unacceptable. He knows how unpopular the Iraq war was, he knows how much most of us wanted out of Afghanistan, he knows that the electorate in the West have no appetite for any more foreign military involvement. But, he knows too that even if a harder response started coming from the West, until now 'we've' been prepared to have a moan, set up a few sanctions and that's that, because around the corner, general elections interfere with the international focus and the need is to get elected on a popular set of proposals which do not include offering Russia or China any serious military challenge. That approach does not win elections, here in the West. So he can then move back onto his agenda and, even now, knows the West will not take him on, despite having a technically superior range of weapons. However, this time he's in a corner of his own making and has offered the chance of himself being displaced by his own people. That is realistically speaking our best hope at present. Any attempt to negotiate with him will end in long term failure as his mindset appears completely at variance to most leaders of the NATO alliance and others too. The fear of a nuclear war is, I'm afraid, why we are where we are. The Chinese too are playing a much longer game than the rest of us and we have to rid ourselves of the current level of reliance on what make and the money they seem to throw at simply gaining influence. We shall see.