Will Putin now roll on to Kiev?

The White House told us with absolute certainty that there would be an invasion of Ukraine this week — instead Vladimir Putin bit off a chunk of Ukraine without firing a shot. Perhaps it seemed to him that recognising the two breakaway territories of Luhansk and Donetsk was a clever move: he had not, after all, ignored the warning that — in Boris Johnson’s phrase — one Russian soldier putting a toe-cap over the border would make sanctions inevitable. But sanctions will come anyway — the issue is only about how severe they will be — imposed because, as Johnson says, there has been a clear breach of international law.

More than that, the Kremlin has announced that there will be ‘peacekeeping operations’ in Donetsk and Luhansk — that is, at some moment very soon, Russian troops will officially and undeniably enter Ukraine. Perhaps these were the plans the White House had received intelligence of.