Vladimir is testing the West … not Putin on the blitz in Ukraine

Russia President Vladimir Putin addresses the nation from Kremlin, recognising the independence of separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Vladimir Putin’s actions towards Ukraine have been ruthless, bloody, vicious and unconscionable. They have also been extremely effective.

We may not like this, but we must deal with the reality – Putin is winning this conflict hands down. He is achieving his strategic objectives and is not paying what he regards as an -unbearable cost.

With his latest moves, he may be attempting to calibrate their consequences in the following way: they will attract Western sanctions, but they will not attract the absolute maximum sanctions which he would find most difficult.

So Putin has now pulled the trigger, but not necessarily for a comprehensive invasion.

Sending Russian troops as “peacekeepers” to the rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk centres in Donbas in eastern Ukraine is, in reality, an invasion of Ukraine.

It is not yet a full invasion, but it is a violation, probably permanent, of Ukrainian territory.

After Joe Biden stumbled recently and said a minor incursion by Putin would not necessarily trigger a major US response, the White House was fast and emphatic: any incursion by Russian troops into Ukrainian territory would constitute an invasion.

Putin has now crossed that line. He has formally recognised the so-called independence of the two breakaway territories – which are not independent at all. They are completely subservient to Russia, which has infiltrated soldiers into them in civilian disguise.

These new moves give Putin a dangerous range of military options. He can permanently annex the territories, which seems to be his initial purpose, and make them part of the Greater Russia he is building. Senior Russian figures have also said Moscow intends to “recognise” the two breakaways in larger territorial configurations than they now occupy. That can only mean that Russia intends to take and keep Ukrainian territory, and not just insert a formal Russian military presence in the existing breakaways.

Putin can almost effortlessly take control of much more of the Donbas region than he has up until now. He can occupy a land corridor between Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, which he took from Ukraine in 2014.

That would make the Crimean peninsula of much greater economic use to Russia and lend a strategic and territorial coherence to the Russian land grabs.

Putin’s latest speech in the Kremlin rejected Ukraine’s claim to independent nationhood, and was a mixture of tendentious history and paranoia.

By taking control of more Ukrainian territory, he also positions himself to mount a lightning full-scale, or at least much bigger, invasion of the rest of Ukraine at any time he chooses.

If the West imposes its maximum sanctions now, it has no obvious path for escalation if Putin goes further. At the same time, half-hearted sanctions will be seen by Moscow – and also by Beijing – as a sign of weakness and lack of Western resolve.

Best of all for Putin would be if the US and at least some of its key European partners, particularly Germany, were divided over which sanctions to impose.

The idea that the pro-Russian breakaways need peacekeepers, or more bizarrely that Ukraine is conducting a “genocide” against ethnic Russians, is completely fraudulent. There is a brazenness, an Orwellian quality, to the way Putin makes up facts. He is using these falsehoods as a justification for intervention.

It may be that some Russians believe them. No one else does.

But facts, fraudulent or otherwise, and belief of any kind, are not the point of Putin’s performative propaganda. Demonstrating power is the point.

The US must now lead a strong reaction or Putin will conclude that when he pushes forward, the West won’t push back.