That’s a lot of targets - why don’t the Ukranians do something?
A drawn-out, asymmetric war would be a humanitarian disaster, but it would certainly punish Russia as well, it is the last thing Putin wants, and would likely force him from power.
If Russian troops only entered areas were they had support of the local population this would not be a problem. The Russians have a great deal of support in the eastern part of Ukraine.
Ukraine is pretty pithed off about this, it is what I am hearing. It’s even driving Christians and Muslims together, they are angrier at Russia than they are at one another and all are praying to God as they understand Him to achieve justice. The Christians are high minded as is our bent, but seems to me the Muslim segment could get pretty nasty.
"The West" is telling them not to. It's probably felt that opening fire would give Russia an excuse for a full scale invasion, plus, the targets to really worry about are still on Russian soil, at this point.
Also, the Ukraine military is a shambles after Yanukovych got through with it. Probably by plan, he was Putin's puppet, after all. This has been in the works for a long time. Right now, the Ukraine gov't is having trouble simply maintaining order, as most of the police are gone, too, tho' the police did manage to (under orders from the Interior Ministry) assasinate a Right Sector leader very recently. (Yeah, the Nazis are in control - righto... /s)
While this gives time for Russia to mass forces, Ukraine needs "time" more than Russia does, to try to organize some sort of defense, thwart Russian subversives being sent in to disrupt, and so on. I saw on another thread where they (Ukraine) did not even have batteries for a lot of their military vehicles... And naturally our "leadership" is too impotent to even assist them with that, quickly enough to do any good. Fortunately for Ukraine, a local oligarch stepped in to help, but an awful lot of that sort of thing, not to mention really competent leadership on the Ukrainian side, is desperately needed.