buddy,

Jeez, I hate to have to say it, but Ukraine is a much better candidate for soft power.

Their military is huge, but I wouldn’t have confidence in a large part of their officers or troops. In any conflict with Russia you can expect a lot of traitors and desertions.

Until the recent oil boom, Ukrainian Russians could see that their cousins across the border were just as miserable as them. It just didn’t matter.
We cannot deny that the oil boom has filtered down through Russian society. Everybody has more spending power and Ukrainians see themselves falling further behind everybody – Russians, Poles, Czechs.

Ukraine suffers from a lot of the same economic pathologies as Russia, except they don’t have any oil. Their chief export is also weapons. (If you recall, we shamed Kravchuk into sending troops to Iraq after busting Ukraine selling AA contra sanctions. Yushchenko pulled those troops when he took office, it was one of his premier campaign promises.)

If we could only wave our magic wand and give everybody in Ukraine a stimulus check.