Robert Gates: “We have a lot of work to do in trying to convince them that we're not trying to take over their country.”

Putin hasn't given up on any of his original goals in Ukraine.

Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire.

I think the president is — based on what I read — is getting the sense that, as he put it, that Putin is 'tapping' him along.

Such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.