AND FROM THE REAL WORLD – AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  A new warning this morning about Russian intentions, from a guy I've found very solid.  From Fox: 

NATO's former secretary-general has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin could engineer a Ukraine-style intervention in one of the Baltic republics as the leaders of France and Germany flew to Moscow to make a last-ditch bid for peace in eastern Europe.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Britain's Daily Telegraph Thursday that Putin's goal was to reassert Russian dominance of Eastern Europe by testing, and ultimately fracturing the West's bedrock Cold War alliance.

"There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO's Article 5," Rasmussen said, referring to the section of NATO's charter mandating that other member states come to the defense of a fellow member under armed attack. "Putin knows that if he crosses the red line and attacks a NATO ally, he will be defeated. Let us be quite clear about that. But he is a specialist in hybrid warfare."

All three of the so-called Baltic republics -- Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- were part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. All three joined NATO in 2004. All three also have sizable minority populations of ethnic Russians. Rasmussen says his fear is that Moscow will generate a conflict under murky pretenses, In the case of Ukraine, the fall of the pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych prompted Russia's annexation of Crimea and a bloody civil war between Kiev's new pro-Western government and separatist rebels thought to be trained and equipped by Russia's military.

Article 5 has been invoked only once in NATO's 66-year history, by the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is not clear what would happen if a NATO member claimed Article 5 protection, but was turned down by the NATO council.

Rasmussen added that many of NATO's European member nations have slashed military spending to such an extent that they cannot defend themselves without U.S. help.

COMMENT:  I would take that warning very seriously.  Putin looks at the West and he sees only weakness and indecision.  Obama has become an international joke.  As Rasmussen noted, many European nations have hollow militaries.

Ukraine is in desperate crisis, but you'd never know it in Washington.

February 6,  2015