Putin employs an old strategy in eastern Ukraine's Donbas
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Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized separatist republics in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area on Monday, dispatched Russian soldiers there for “peacekeeping,” and drove Russia to the brink of war. Is it time to freak out?

Let’s start with a recap of the day’s events: Putin planned his day around a cunning bit of political theatre, hosting a meeting of his security council at the Kremlin that was shown live on television. Putin sat in a gaudy, colonnaded auditorium, almost comically separated from his top security advisers, listening to arguments in support of recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

Putin’s aides were keen to demonstrate their passion. Sergei Naryshkin, Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, stated that while he favors recognizing the breakaway republics’ independence, he also supports their inclusion in the Russian Federation.

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“We’re not going to talk about it today,” Putin joked.
The show was abruptly interrupted by state television, with no comment from Putin on the issue of recognition.
The Kremlin then hinted that Putin will announce his decision to recognize the two rebel statelets in eastern Ukraine.
Putin came on television a short time later with a broadcast speech, resuming the drama.
But he buried the lead in that broadcast speech. Rather than getting to the heart of the matter, Putin prefaced this major announcement with a lumbering, nearly hour-long speech that traced the arc of 20th century Soviet history, beginning with the October Revolution of 1917 and ending with the emergence of a sovereign and independent Ukraine from the ashes of the USSR.

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Putin’s interest in history is well known: last summer, the Kremlin lit a slow-burning fuse beneath Ukraine by publishing a more than 5,000-word article that, in essence, questioned the validity of Ukrainian statehood.
However, the Kremlin leader’s preoccupation with history has now taken him into a new and more heightened era of open conflict with the West – a clash that threatens to erupt into a disastrous new war.
Professional historians will be hard-pressed to analyze and reject some of Putin’s historical generalizations for a long time. But, if you’ll excuse the brevity, it goes like this: The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was founded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks; Joseph Stalin expanded it after World War II by annexing territory that had previously belonged to Poland, Romania, and Hungary; and then, for some unknown reason, Nikita Khrushchev (who led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War) took the Crimean Peninsula away from Russia and gave it to Ukraine.

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