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From a Guardian editorial, Saturday Nov. 15th:
... the war in Ukraine has not gone away. Sustained by Russian troops on the ground and by Russian lies in the media, it follows what is now a familiar and deadly script. First there are incursions by Russian forces, going into Ukraine to reinforce the rebels there and assist them in consolidating or extending the territories they control. Then there is fighting. Sometimes the Ukrainians gain the upper hand, in which case the Russians send in more troops to redress the balance. Then comes a sort of diplomatic patching up, the latest version of which was the Minsk accord of early September. The Ukrainians are so desperate for any respite and the Europeans are so anxious to believe that there is, there could be, or at least that there should be, a chance of a settlement that they go along with it.
Then the violations begin, and then they get worse, which, according to the Ukrainians, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and now Nato, is what has been happening in recent weeks as Russian columns move once more into the country. The motive can be guessed at: the rebel zones don’t make much economic or political sense, nor does a Crimea reachable only by ferry. The idea may be to carve out something more “logical”.
No doubt the Ukrainians also violated the ceasefire, as well as responding to rebel moves. But an end to the fighting would have been so overwhelmingly to Ukraine’s advantage, even if areas remained under rebel control, that it is simply not believable that they were the main instigators. The plain truth is that Russia will not let Ukraine go. It is waging a hybrid war, part conventional but deniable (at least by Russian standards), and one camouflaged by a huge campaign of disinformation, in Russia itself, in Ukraine, and in the rest of the world. Sanctions are the only available response. They will have to be maintained and very possibly increased, and the same goes for economic aid to Ukraine.
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