Precisely the plan, doug. And the world’s limpid apologists are already forgiving them, saying “well, NATO in the former republics was just too much to ask them to tolerate” (as if the wishes of the peoples of the new NATO members don’t count fer shit, as if the Russians aren’t the very reason the people WANT to be in NATO in the FIRST place) and “Annexing Georgia is just Kremlin payback for Kosovo” (as if the Kremlin show over Kosovo wasn’t a deliberate set-up for launching that very meme, along with the 58th Army).