How Much Do You Think Russia Stands to Gain

[RangerOne]

One potential silver lining of this could be deescalation of cold war 2.0 tensions with Russia, but at what cost? I believe Putin made a statement along the lines of "Trump understands the legitimacy of my claim to Crimea".

Clearly at least initially Putin would love to see us back out of Syria and our condemnation of their seizing of Crimea thus weakening the Wests stance against Russia's actions in Ukraine.

However even if Trump is indifferent to Russia and prefers to back out of Syria and wash our hands of the middle east. Would the Republicans really at large risk letting him publicly condone Russia's annexation of Crimea through public statement or inaction on behalf of our allies in the Baltic region? This seems it could do some serious long term damage to our relationships with major European nations. I can only assume one of Putin's main goals is to weaken cooperation of Western countries to give him more influence and leverage over their part of the world.

At the same time a lessening of the anti American rhetoric would ease my mind but it seems the cost could be too high in allowing a Russia lead by Putin to establish a more influential and aggressive stance towards the West.

[Jack]

Would [the government] risk letting him publicly condone Russia's annexation of Crimea through ... inaction on behalf of our allies in the Baltic region?

Obama already did that. We're not serious about standing up to Russia and Putin damn well knows it. If we were, we would have sent troops to combat the Russian occupation back in 2014.

[Metric Mouse]

Would [the government] risk letting him publicly condone Russia's annexation of Crimea through ... inaction on behalf of our allies in the Baltic region?

Obama already did that. We're not serious about standing up to Russia and Putin damn well knows it. If we were, we would have sent troops to combat the Russian occupation back in 2014.

This.

[LennStar]

1) you guys do know crimea was russia for a long time?
To be exact since 1783 "from now and for all times", accepted by the former rulers (osman empire) officially in 1792.
The movement to the ukraine was just a administrative manouver, since nobody believed there would ever be a real border between russia and ukraine (because both were UdSSR)
1991 more then 90% of the people of crimea voted for a crimea in the UdSSR treaty, accepted by the ukraine government. At the same time the ukraine said crimea is part of ukraine, but that edict itself is legally faulty and as such not valid.
Only by granting the crimea outonomous rights the ukraine could prevent them from a referendum for independence.

You would send troops (illegally btw) to go against the will of the crimean people just to anger Putin? Thats the reason why we are so close to a new Cold War and hot conflicts!

2) You know that the referedum said "yes" to russia and was way more legal then others The West accepted as true? Just look at the Balkan.