Democracy Dies in Darkness
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Threatening to invade Ukraine will help Putin at home. Actually invading won’t.

When he intervenes abroad, the Russian president tends to use proxies or mercenaries, to minimize the impact on public opinion

Perspective by
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December 8, 2021 at 11:07 a.m. EST
Ukrainian soldiers walk along the line separating their ranks and those of pro-Russian rebels near Katerinivka, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region. (Andriy Dubchak/AP)

The two-hour virtual summit between President Biden and Vladimir Putin, held Tuesday in the midst of very real worries about full-scale war, ended as expected: without a breakthrough.

Nothing Putin said — not his concerns about NATO expansion or his claims about Russia’s historical ties to its southwestern neighbor — was enough to push the American president off his public commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, or off his refusal to let Russia decide whether Ukraine may join NATO. And it remains to be seen whether Biden’s threats of sweeping sanctions “and other measures in the event of military escalation,” as the White House readout put it, will be enough to reverse the march of some 175,000 Russian troops to the Ukrainian border — or whether they will spur those forces on still further.