As a Russian, I get a sinking feeling when I think about my country winning this war. It is being fought against a peaceful, Russian-speaking people whose only transgression is a desire to be part of the European Union rather than a Russian client state. They even managed to topple a corrupt dictatorship -- a task in which the Russian people have failed. A military victory against Ukraine would bring Russia no glory and cost many lives.

"We can stop this," billionaire and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky said today. "It's enough to just take to the streets and threaten a strike. The authorities will deflate immediately, they are cowardly." That may be true, but it's not likely to happen, because most people in Russia believe Putin's propaganda. Unless the death toll mounts so that everyone knows a dead or injured soldier, this is not a war that protests inside Russia are likely to stop.

Putin's decision to escalate signals the failure of Western sanctions. If anything, the sanctions have strengthened Putin's resolve to get his way and consolidated his popularity among conservative, nationalist voters, expanding his support base at home. If Putin ever cared about Western reactions, he no longer does. His continuing denials of Russian involvement are a mocking ritual, a sign of unwillingness to negotiate rather than a nod to international pressure.

"All these sanctions were like poultices for a dead man," a distraught Yatsenyuk said today. "They did not help." He called for the West to freeze Russia's assets and financial transactions to force it to withdraw. The West, however, is unlikely to go that far. The sanctions have already contributed to economic contraction in Germany, and Europe cannot afford much more pain. Military aid is not an option: There is no country in the world where voters would back a war with Russia.

The Western world will probably wiggle out of its moral dilemma by blaming Poroshenko for being deaf to Russia's legitimate concerns about preserving Ukraine's status as a buffer state. No matter how unfair that sounds, Ukraine is now faced with the necessity of making concessions to Putin. It will take some time to sink in, but help of the kind Kiev really needs is probably not coming. Unless Poroshenko finds it in himself to bargain, eastern Ukraine may well end up a Russian-controlled no man's land like Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. There is no face-saving solution for anyone anymore.

David Fuller's view

These are interesting comments by Russians who live outside of the country and are therefore free to speak.  However, it is way too soon to talk about the “failure of Western sanctions.”  They are not a short-term measure and Putin’s response is predictable.  He is gambling against the West with a weaker financial hand, namely a $2tn economy compared to the combined $40tn economies of all the countries participating in sanctions against Russia, including Australia and Japan. 

I think and sincerely hope that Bershidsky is way too pessimistic in his concluding paragraph above, notably the opening sentence:

“The Western world will probably wiggle out of its moral dilemma by blaming Poroshenko for being deaf to Russia's legitimate concerns about preserving Ukraine's status as a buffer state.”

I know some people feel that Ukraine should not be supported by the West.  However, that would be a huge mistake in my opinion, traumatising new allies in the region and emboldening Putin to increase aggressions against other countries on its borders.  It would also increase global political tensions by signalling the West’s timidity to other countries elsewhere.