Ukraine might be saved because of Kazakhstan

To anyone who knows me, or anyone who has just read this blog for a while, it will come as no surprise that I am trying my best to follow the news from Kazakhstan today. I can't reach any of my friends in the country (it looks like the government has shut down the internet and possibly the mobile phone system as well), so I have no insights to what is really happening there beyond what you could find yourself.

But I will say this: Unless this gets resolved soon, I think it greatly diminishes the chances that Russia will invade Ukraine. Putin is really close to the current regime in Kazakhstan. Any threat to that regime's stability is going to freak the Kremlin out. I am sure it is already triggering paranoid conspiracies about Western backed "color revolutions." There is no way that Russia will maintain a military buildup on its Western border when Putin is feeling vulnerable along it's long Southern border.