The sanctions should not be lifted so long as part of the Crimea is in Russian hands. It's really that simple.
Pootin is nothing more than a murderous KGB street thug in a Brooks Brothers suit. Damn Eisenhower and Truman for not letting Patton take the third Army and his armed and equipped German Divisions into Russia and whip those SOBs. That's why Patton was murdered.
True story,
Hossfly . When the Americans (our boys) crossed over the Elbe at Torgau and took Dessau (Junkers Werke), Aken, Wolfen and part of Bitterfeld, they drummed together about 100 german pilots they captured - whose planes were right there at Junkers Werke - and intact - and told them that they should be ready at a minutes notice to fly for the Amis and the Brits against Russia once the war was over (it was just days from being over). I know this first hand because I sat down with one of those pilots for coffee and cake back in 1998, he was 72 going on 73 years old then and his wife worked at the Opera House in Dessau, which is how I got to know the family. He showed me pictures of the pilots together in a room being talked at by an American officer. He showed me a contract, in German, that he signed, that guaranteed all pilots who partook that their families would get double-rations during the action. Every single one of those pilots signed up, Günther told me. We were far closer to marching onward toward Moscow than most realized, and I am referring to May,1945.
Historical footnote: The Junkers Werke in Dessau was 5 KM (or less) from the factory that made the Zyklon-B tabs for the Concentration Camps. It's all on record. Even at the close of the war, the nazis were bound and determined to keep the Zyklon-B tabs in production, and for this reason, 100 fighter pilots in the middle of what is now called Sachsen-Anhalt to protect Junkers Werke and the factory. That factory is now a disqotheque in Dessau, right on the Askanische Straße, close to the intersection of the B-185 and the B-184. I lived about 4 blocks from that disco. It was a very, very weird feeling.