Check out these WaPo maps for some information on Ukraine.
At least 50 people dead in Kiev so far. The U.S. has very little leverage here, but the matter is of vital interest to Putin, and potentially to the West:
‘Ukraine today suffers from most of the maladies of post-Soviet life. The old system broke down, and a stable and prosperous new system has been unable to emerge. Unprincipled oligarchs dominate political life and state institutions are weak. Divided between a Russian-speaking eastern half and a Ukrainian-speaking (and often westward looking) western half, Ukraine isn’t sure what it’s identity is going to be.
Meanwhile, most Russian nationalists consider Ukrainian independence an absurdity, and one of President Putin’s central goals is to reunite Ukraine with Russia. This is a battle he cannot afford to lose, and he is playing every card in his hand for all it is worth — at best to bring Ukraine back to the embrace of mother Russia or at least to prevent it from joining with the West.
The EU and the United States have failed to develop a coherent strategy for Ukraine. As the situation in Kiev escalates, the question now is how bad things would have to get to prompt a serious Ukrainian policy from the West, which thus far has been mostly content to utter beautiful phrases.’
It’s not hard to see why there’s been such a conflicted Western response, in looking at the conflicted aims of the EU member states, the Eurocracy, and a recalibrating America drifting further Leftward towards international institutions, redlines and missed deadlines under the current leadership.
So what can we actually do?