Moscow is, needless to say, distinctly unhappy to see people power dislodge its ally, client and satrap-to-be Yanukovych in Ukraine. To be sure, as of writing he is still calling himself president and recanting his resignation, but he is powerless and I suspect his main choices will be between prison in Ukraine or exile in Russia (he can go join the Barvikha set , even if he has to leave his grandiose faux-galleon behind). But what options does Russia have in the face of this undoubted and, to the neo-imperialists in the Kremlin, traumatic reversal? Does its toxic public rhetoric of a “neo-fascist coup” really tell us what it is likely to do?

A military option? There is talk of a Russian military intervention, Georgian-style, perhaps predicated on ‘saving’ Crimea or the like, but I don’t buy it. The Ukrainian military is four times the size of Georgia’s and rather…