Aw Hell

Putin has recognized the breakaway republics in the Donbas and is sending in peacekeepers.

This is clearly Putin seizing the opportunity to further his influence in the region, and (rather unfortunately) draws directly from the 1990s precedent in Kosovo, where NATO forces, without a UN imprimatur, used similar justifications to support the partitioning of Serbia.

The difference is that there was an actual genocide going on in Serbia, and there was not one in the Donbas, though some elements of the Ukrainian polity were calling for such.

The only winners in this, I think, will be the Right-Wing paramilitaries and the parties that they are affiliated with.

Notably, Biden has not currently implemented sanctions against Russia, and has refrained from calling the movement of "Peacekeepers" into the Donbas an invasion, though he has announced sanctions against Lugansk and Donetsk.

It is pretty clear that the US response from the start of this has been needlessly alarmist and incompetent, and has been akin to pouring gasoline on a fire, because there are elements of the US foreign policy and defense apparatus, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for example, who have continued to prosecute the old Cold War conflict against Moscow:

Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to enter the Russian-controlled areas of southeast Ukraine following a decision to recognise the territories as independent states.

The decision to dispatch his troops to perform “peacekeeping duties” will be viewed in Ukraine and by other western allies as an occupation of the region and likely trigger tough sanctions and a Ukrainian military response.

The deployment was revealed in the text of two treaty documents that Putin signed with the leaders of the separatist republics on Tuesday.

The third article of the treaties provided for the “implementation of peacekeeping functions by the armed forces of the Russian Federation” in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, which Ukraine and most of the world views at its sovereign territory.

On Monday night Ukrainian officials said Russian troops may have already entered separatist territory. The officials said local people in the town of Makiivka, 15kms west of rebel-held Donetsk, saw what appeared to be Russian armoured vehicles on the move.

………

In a televised address early on Tuesday morning, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of wrecking peace talks and ruled out making any territorial concessions. Zelenskiy said Ukraine was committed to peace and diplomacy and Ukraine was expecting “clear and effective” steps from its allies. “We are not afraid,” he said.

Perhaps these actions were inevitable, but it's pretty certain that the overwrought predictions of doom US increased tensions and accelerated the process.