First there are the Tatars of Tatarstan, who have the good (bad?) fortune of having a lot of oil under their feet and a Constitution agreed to by Russia that gives them more independence than the Kremlin cares for.
Then there are the 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who have returned to the Crimean peninsula after living as a Stalin-displaced diaspora for decades. These Tatars have the misfortune of having an ancestral homeland they want to re-settle that is too near Putin's Black Sea fleet in what is now - but may not be soon - Ukraine.
Putin has pulled his passport gag in Crimea. Handing out citizenship to local ethnically-Russian Ukrainians in order to make a "point* to the Ukrainian government.
But will Putin defend the rights of ethnic minorities when they - unlike the Ossetians - are actually standing between him and his strategic goals? Will justice and autonomy for Tatars cry out to Putin, deafening him to strategic cynicism? Will the man who saved South Ossetia save - or at least not dispossess - the Tatars?
Hmm.
Thanks to Saakashvili, Russia has now executed a plan to turn the north of Georgia into Russia and of course Russian commentators and "news' agencies have long ago declared that Ukraine would be far better off split in two.
Byelarus - anyone taking bets how long that will remain one country?
Russia is playing a crazy, dangerous game here. Clearly Putin is taking advantage of Bush while the taking is still good, but his quest for "security" - (as if anyone wants to invade Russia) and belief in petro-power is making the Russian people much less safe than they were - even with NATO at their front doorstep.
Nobody in the Universe knows what Bush is thinking with this "missile shield" nonsense in Poland. It's impenetrable thinking about a sieve of a system. Install a system that makes sure your nuclear adversary has to launch multiple missiles? Insane. But since the system doesn't actually work and and wouldn't work even if it did work, Putin should ignore it.
There will be other regimes in America.
And ultimately the West, India and China will not accept being dictated to by oil-igarchs anywhere. Those regimes who overplay the hand Black Gold has dealt them are looking for terrible, terrible trouble.
Instead, Russia could be using this opportunity to help Europe start prying itself away from America and standing tall. There has never been a better time. But if Russia tries to go down the old autarchy route - this time via oil - they are looking at returning to the darkness of militarism.
There's simply no reason to do it.
America is so easy to distract and Europe and Russia need and want the same things.