Ukraine - suffering in the beautiful city of Kiev but Putin can't possibly endure another Syria

Russian President Putin may not be a religious man but if he has any spiritual soul at all, he's praying for the Sochi Olympic games to end without incident. 

Meanwhile, the civil war in Syria (with Russia protecting its self interest in the country's port city of Tartus) is displacing 9.3 million people while street fighting in the Ukraine is taking time away from the public relations opportunity offered to Russia via Sochi's games.

Aleppo, Syria

While Putin props up Syrian President Assad, the UN Security Council is debating allowing more humanitarian aid to reach the nation's millions of refugees. Imagine having to vote on such a self evident issue. What's more discouraging is how Syria will never be the same. In fact, it's likely to become a Russian colony.

On the other hand, while the Ukraine really is a Russian colony, a relationship relic of the Cold War, it's now violently falling apart. 

Although I'm certainly not a diplomat, it's my opinion that Russia's President Vladimir Putin can't sustain two deteriorating "colony" nations while he is personally hosting the Sochi Olympic Games. 

 Think Progress Blog reports:

It’s been a rough 24 hours for Russian president Vladimir Putin. After basking in the glow of a successful Olympics for the better part of a fortnight, reality came crashing down on him over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving his — and Russia’s — image in the spotlight and the glare is unflattering.
Casting the harshest light on Putin’s Russia and the role it plays in its neighborhood, Ukraine appears to be exploding. For a brief moment, it looked as though the political crisis that has seized Kyiv since November was preparing to come to a close. The government of president Viktor Yanukovych and protesters who claimed that he intended to replicate Putin’s tight grip over Russia in Ukraine were slowly edging towards an agreement, one that left a Russian ally — who received a $15 billion bailout from Moscow last year — in power.

Instead tensions flared again on Tuesday, leading to police attempting to clear out Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) and end the so-called “Euromaidan” protests once and for all. The result was the bloodiest day yet in the stand-off, leaving at least 25 dead and hundreds injured. As dawn broke on Kyiv on Wednesday, the protesters were still there, continuing to feed the fire that separated them from the riot police. Western governments denounced the violence, with members of the Obama administration and European diplomats alike warning of potential sanctions being levied against the Ukrainian government’s leaders.

Well, well,well.....Syria and Ukraine. Let's remember Volgograd terrorists, on top of these. It sure doesn't look good. When Sochi is over, the Russian government could risk imploding from having overextended itself by propping up two governments while subsidizing a very expensive Olympic Games.

Will Putin's government survive? 
This is the time when the proverb about the devil you know being preferable to the devil you don't may fit. 

Nonetheless, when Putin's government implodes, Syria's Assad will be sucked along with him. This synergistic collapse could create an international vortex, the outcome being a black hole. 

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov says "What?" I'm Not Believing Him - It's About Tartus

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he has no leverage over Syrian President Assad to end the nation's disasterous civil war and subsequent humanitarian crises. This is tragic and I just don't believe him, at all. 

Of course, I'm not a diplomat, but a person can see a lot by just looking and it seems like Assad is looking like a puppet of the Russian government. In my opinion, Russia doesn't want to look complicit in the genocide going on in Syria, so the Foreign Minister is claiming he needs help from other nations to leverage influence with Syrian president Assad to stop the humanitarian carnage. 

The Daily Beast reports:  Russia is not able to pressure the Syrian regime to make concessions to the Syrian opposition, at least not without the help of other international actors, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

Lavrov spoke at the Munich Security Conference about the recently failed first round of peace talks between the Syrian government and the Syrian Opposition Coalition in Geneva, mediated by U.N. Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi. At the same conference on Friday, Brahimi called on Russia to use its alleged influence with the Syrian regime to encourage them to return to Geneva next month for another round of talks and to be more constructive if they do. The first round failed to achieve any progress even on ancillary issues, such as humanitarian access to the besieged city of Homs.

“Why hasn’t Russia been able to put more pressure on the Assad regime to make even small concessions?” The Daily Beast asked Lavrov. “Is it that Russia is unwilling or unable to use its influence in Syria?”

This is ridiculous. Russia has tremendous influence over Assad. Russia is allowed to access Syrian clear water ports. Russia needs Syria to maintain a base of operations to access open water at a naval facility in the city of Tartus. Likewise, Assad needs Russia to hold off an invasion of his nation by an international force, including the United States, to save the people he has victimized from even more genocide.  

Russia can't project responsibility for the genocide, persecution and dislocation of over a million Syrian people on the lack of international cooperation to leverage against Assad. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is certainly speaking with a forked tongue. This reasoning has no credibility whatsoever.

In my opinion, Foreign Minister Lavrov obviously doesn't have any family of his living in forced exile, in a Syrian refugee camp.