Was anyone else amazed at the events over the weekend? Both amazed and disappointed really. I watched things unfold, and thought it was the start of a revolution. And let's face it, the only way Putin will be stopped is by some kind of armed insurrection.

But it turns out Mr. Putin has all this figured out. You see he knows that the only threat to his authority is from an uprising of the military. Ordinary Russian people on the street have no chance, even if there was the collective will to go up against their leader. So Putin is doing things by the standard playbook of dictators - divide and rule. Have your underlings fight each other, so they don't collaborate and become stronger than you. Hitler behaved in a similar way.

So normal service has been resumed. Poor Ukrainians suffering needlessly.

The very sad thing here is that Russia has huge natural energy resources. It could be a major international trader. In fact that was happening, with Nordstream supplying Germany with gas. So if Putin was not hell bent on restoring the former Soviet Union and aggressively trying to regain territories, Russia could be a peaceful global trader, and become a very rich nation, benefitting all of its society.