Russian tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine overnight Tuesday ostensibly on a peace-keeping mission and to protect two breakaway republics that Moscow fashioned eight years ago and is now formally recognizing as independent states.
But following a 56-minute bellicose speech, in which the Russian leader denied the very existence of a country called Ukraine, few in Kyiv harbor any doubts that the armored columns will sooner or later punch beyond Ukraine’s Donbas region with Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk being seen as a prelude for likely more widespread military action.
In the friendship treaties Putin signed with Moscow’s breakaway republics, he committed to defending their borders.
Kremlin officials Tuesday declined to be pinned down on where the borders of the breakaway republics start and finish — whether their territory includes all of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk or just the territory
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