Give Putin a Way Out
With Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border, the talk of war is getting louder. But it doesn’t have to happen.
Massed on Ukraine's border today stand 20,000 Russian troops, some apparently wearing a blue peacekeepers' uniform with the "MC" insignia. This could be seen as a replay of April, when Russia positioned 45,000 men on the frontier, which after a tense stand-off was reduced to only 1,000 personnel by June. But today the pro-Russian separatists aren't ascendent; they're losing badly to the Ukrainian military. With the rebels' backs to the wall in the almost-encircled cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, there plainly is a risk of a Russian "peacekeeping" intervention, as Moscow's request for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the humanitarian situation in east Ukraine suggests.