…in eastern Ukraine, but not only there.

Russia plans to increase defense spending over 20 percent in 2015, with a lot of the additional money going to rebuilding Soviet era facilities in the newly acquired Crimea. This includes radar stations and naval facilities.

Naturally, all of this will support Russia’s continued occupation of partitioned Georgia, and it will facilitate Russia’s pending aggression against the Odessa Oblast of western Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, which stands between the Sea and Moldova, another Russian target as it seeks to restore the Soviet empire. It also eases Russian support for Vladimir Putin’s ally and BFF, Bashar al Assad in Syria.

Here, too:

…there’s plenty of Russian misbehavior against other neighbors as well. Finland reports that Russian aircraft increasingly test Finnish air defenses and twice recently Russian warships have threatened a Finnish research vessel operating in international waters in the Baltic. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are receiving similar harassment, as well as Russian offers of a large discount on what they pay for Russian natural gas if they will leave NATO.