If this is true - -
Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko has told David Cameron that a column of Russian armoured vehicles that entered Ukrainian territory late on Thursday night had been destroyed.
In a phone call to Cameron on Friday, Poroshenko appeared to confirm a report by the Guardian and other journalists that Russian armoured personnel carriers had crossed the border. He suggested that Ukrainian troops who have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine swiftly knocked out the Russian column.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Then Russia can and, very likely, will interpret it as an act of war.
A hundred years after the outbreak of World War I, it seems as though world leaders want to find a way to engulf the world in another conflagration. Meanwhile, those same leaders insist that the international structures in place would never permit another global war. That's what they said in July of 1914.
Nationalism - which has always been extremely dangerous for world peace - is on the rise worldwide. During communist rule in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the official line was that the national issue had been solved under Marxism. The reality was that it had only been swept under the table by Russian power and chauvinism.
After a generation of decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Vladimir Putin is flexing its muscles again. Neo-Sovietism plays well in Russia - Putin's annexation of the Crimea has sent his approval ratings skyrocketing. But nationalist chauvinism is evident in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, as well. This is most evident in the role of the Svoboda Party and the Right Sector in the new Ukrainian government. More than 20 years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the majority of ethnic Russians in Latvia lack basic citizenship rights - a situation not unlike the worse abuses of Jim Crow.
Although Latvia is now a member of the European Union and NATO, Ukraine is not. It appears almost certain that Putin is not going to permit an unraveling of any more of the former Soviet bloc - most of which has been under Russian rule since at least 1815. Given the large number of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, especially eastern and southern Ukraine, it is impossible to draw clear-cut ethnic boundaries. The diplomatic language of the United States and the European Union has largely ignored this reality.
Putin, on the other hand, is willing to play a game of brinkmanship in order to retain Russian influence in Ukraine or, at the very least, to peel off majority-Russian areas of Ukraine. He is clearly aware that the U.S. has its hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. He knows that much of Europe faces ongoing recession and a challenge to the concept of a united Europe.
I believe that there is little doubt that Putin is willing to push matters to the limit. Thus, he sends a so-called "relief" convoy into Ukraine. Surely, there were some American and European advisors in Kiev who may have had influence over Poroshenko's decisions. (Given the amount of money Ukraine needs from the West) Surely, no American advisor would have suggested attacking and destroying a Russian column.
But if it is true, Putin is almost certainly going to use this as a pretext for greater intervention. What will Ukraine do? What will the West do?