On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially sent Russian forces into two eastern regions of Ukraine. The move came after Russia staged a series of events meant to provide a pretext for first recognizing, then occupying, two regions within Ukraine. the United States is expected to issue harsh sanctions against Russia, with a “significant announcement” coming in the next few hours. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the European Union is also preparing sanctions intended to strike directly at Russian politicians, as well as financial institutions. And in what may be the most significant move, CNN reports that Germany is halting certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline—a measure that could cost Russia hundreds of billions. The United States provided an official diplomatic response in remarks by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “He calls them peacekeepers,” Thomas-Greenfield said of the forces Putin has sent into Ukraine. “This is nonsense. We know what they really are.” Putin could try to take the territories he has already occupied and solidify his control over them, as he did with Crimea in 2014. Or, as now seems more likely, he could use those territories to create further justification for invading all of Ukraine. Neither situation is acceptable, and Putin’s war of conquest is going to prove extremely costly.
Putin’s pre-invasion theater includes transparently false charges of “aggression” by the Ukrainian government along with scenes of supposed civilian occupation, some of which appear to have been filmed days in advance. None of this even comes close to passing the smell test with an international audience. In a lengthy Twitter thread, imprisoned Putin critic Alexei Navalny expressed the belief held by many both inside and outside Russia that Putin is focusing on Ukraine as a means of diverting attention from his complete failure to deliver the kind of economic opportunities he has promised to Russia for decades. Despite trillions of dollars in income from oil and gas exports, little of those funds have been used to diversify or expand Russia’s economic base. Instead the nation continues to be an oligarchic kleptocracy, pinned solidly at the bottom of the list when it comes to personal incomes or economic growth in Europe. “To fight for Russia, to save it, means to fight for the removal of Putin and his kleptocrats from power.”