Rumours of war

I'm just reading Edward Lucas' The New Cold War, published back in 2008 and I'm amazed how much of this crisis was predictable even back then (Lucas is bringing out a revised "I told you so" edition in April).

Maybe everyone reading this blog is aware of this already but Lucas pointed out this passage from Vladimir Socor reporting back in 2008:

According to a witness account, Putin told Bush that Ukraine was “not a real nation,” that much of its territory had been "given away" by Russia, and that Ukraine would “cease to exist as a state” if it joined NATO. In that case, Putin hinted, Russia would encourage secession of the Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine...