Vladimir Putin's real end game in Ukraine doesn't stop there. To feed his fetish to break back into the $2 trillion GDP club, he will want Kazakhstan and Belarus too. Collectively, the three nations would add almost $400 billion to Russia's approximately $1.6 trillion GDP. That would make the math just right to get to $2 trillion. This means he should not be trusted when he says he will compromise on settling for smaller prizes.

Call it a hunch, but I don't think any dictator survives without constantly finding new funds to keep his thieves nice and thick. When he's past the point of exploiting all he can out of his own people, he's now looking back towards Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus like low-hanging fruit. What happens when he goes for mid-hanging fruit countries next?