Ukraine Stuff

So, here I am patting myself on the back, because it looks like Putin is doing what I've said Putin is doing.

ie: Uncle Walt is getting what he wants by encroachment instead of invasion.

Yay me - where's my fucking prize?

Putin sent his little rat fuckers into Ukraine's eastern provinces years ago, and they did their little rat-fuckery thing, and over time, "the people decided" they wanted to be Russian, so how could the great and noble Walter deny his protection for what is so obviously truly Russian real estate, with truly Russian people living under the oppressive and cruel thumb of Kiev and blah blah blah.

We can call this The Sudetenland Maneuver. Wally runs around beating his chest and throwing dirt in the air, knowing there's a fair chance that someone will decide it's easier just to hand over what he wants.

So, meanwhile, at WaPo: (pay wall)

White House wrestles with whether Russia has ‘invaded’ Ukraine
Putin announced he is sending troops into Russian-backed separatist regions within Ukraine. Opinions differ on whether that is an invasion of the country.

The White House on Monday confronted the reality that its months-long effort to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine would likely be futile, as officials grasped for last-ditch ways to head off what one called “military action that could take place in the coming hours or days.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin spent the holiday weekend effectively closing off one diplomatic path after another, suggesting ever more clearly that he would not be swayed by diplomacy or deterred by sanctions. And by announcing that he was recognizing two pro-Russian separatist regions of Ukraine and ordering troops into them, he forced the United States into an uneasy dilemma about whether that constituted an invasion.

The Biden administration sought to hit back at Russia’s aggressive action while stopping short of declaring that it had officially invaded Ukraine, which would have triggered the array of hard-hitting sanctions President Biden has been warning about for months.

Instead, amid meetings Monday with his national security advisers and calls with several foreign leaders, Biden and his team reiterated their grim assessment of the crisis and imposed a smaller set of sanctions prohibiting U.S. investment and trade specifically in the breakaway regions.

Administration officials said additional measures — including more sanctions — would be announced Tuesday, and emphasized that the newly announced sanctions are different from the much larger ones Biden has been threatening should Putin invade Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global security consultancy, said Putin’s actions followed a certain logic, enabling him to make a move against Ukraine while throwing the West into uncertainty about whether it was serious enough to merit a full-blown response. Western diplomats have been predicting for days that Putin would, initially at least, take actions short of a full-scale invasion and capture of Kyiv, such as a cyberattack or a limited incursion.

“If I were advising Putin, I would tell him to do this because we have a problem now,” Bremmer said. Putin has deliberately “not gone all in” yet, Bremmer said, because “the entire point is, don’t make it easy on the West to respond.”

Earlier in the day, Putin delivered a televised address saying he had little choice but to recognize the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, enclaves within Ukraine that have been a source of bitter Russia-Ukraine tensions. Russia has increasingly suggested, with little evidence, that residents of those regions are under threat from the Ukrainian military.