At the emergency summit in Brussels, there were demands for Russia to face international isolation due to its interference in the affairs of a sovereign state. The British prime minister took a tough position, while in Washington the president denounced Moscow’s actions as unacceptable. But these events did not happen yesterday, but seven years ago, after Russia invaded Georgia. The prime minister was Gordon Brown, the president was George W Bush and the man in the Kremlin was Vladimir Putin, then pulling the strings as premier.

We have, in other words, been here before. In 2007, Russia objected to Nato’s attempts to woo Georgia, just as Ukraine’s dalliance with EU membership so irked Mr Putin this time. Then, there were fiery threats to get tough, but nothing happened. One of the few proposals that might have hurt – to take the Winter Olympics away from Sochi – fell by the wayside.

Something similar happened in the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the fugitive intelligence officer poisoned in London in 2006 by radioactive polonium, almost certainly provided by the Russian state and administered by one of its agents. Britain cooled diplomatic relations and demanded the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB man thought to be responsible, but the Kremlin refused to hand him over. Within the year, Mr Putin was sitting down with EU leaders at a summit in Lisbon. True, there is now to be a judge-led public inquiry into the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko’s murder; but this owes everything to the determination of his widow, Marina, to obtain justice through the British courts, and little to any official desire to find the truth.

In our reaction to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, we in the West are in danger of writing another chapter in this sorry tale of appeasement, by once more talking tough while acting soft. In the Commons on Monday, David Cameron allied himself with Barack Obama in demanding punitive sanctions, and voiced his frustration with the rest of the EU for its unwillingness to act. Yesterday, foreign ministers in Brussels agreed to extend the list of Russians subject to restrictions on their finances and movements – but another summit will be needed to impose tougher sanctions.

Settling on any common policy within the EU over Russia is almost impossible, given the disparate interests of its members – not least the dependence of Germany and Italy on Russian energy, France’s profits from the sale of military equipment, and the UK’s own financial ties to the country’s oligarchs. In this instance, in view of what has gone before, Mr Putin will not be unduly alarmed by the response so far.