Russia-Ukraine conflict
Moscow has reoriented the strategic landscape, and is pulling the West reluctantly back into a drawn-out military and diplomatic standoff.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a document recognizing the independence of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. | Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
By Bryan Bender and Paul McLeary
02/21/2022 06:09 PM EST
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Welcome to the new Cold War. And like the last one, strap in for a long and costly military and diplomatic duel with the Kremlin.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially recognized the independence of breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east, areas that Moscow has functionally controlled since 2014.
The nearly hourlong speech had all the hallmarks of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s finest: a winding, one-sided treatise about the Soviet Union’s alleged creation of Ukraine, laced with references to other Communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, that left little doubt Putin intends to right perceived wrongs and recenter Russia in a multipolar world — beginning with Europe.
He then followed up by sending “peacekeeping” troops into the territories.
