Kyiv, Feb 24: Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the stakes in the Ukraine standoff by recognizing the independence of rebel regions in the country's east, and a key question now is whether he will stop at that or try to move deeper into Ukraine.

 

 

 

Putin signaled his readiness to up the ante in an hourlong address to the nation that cast Ukraine as an artificial construct, a US “puppet” that has “robbed” Russia of historical lands lost in the Soviet collapse. But at the same time, the Russian leader appeared to keep the door open for diplomacy if the West agrees to Moscow's security demands.

 

 

 

Russia wants the US and its allies to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations from joining NATO, halt weapons deployments there and roll back alliance forces in Eastern Europe — demands the West has dismissed as nonstarters. On Tuesday, Putin offered a streamlined version of his top demands, saying that Ukraine should renounce its bid to join NATO, partially demilitarise and recognize Russia's sovereignty over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Putin had for weeks defied a barrage of international criticism over the crisis, with some Western leaders saying he was no longer rational.

 

 

His announcement of the military operation came ahead of a last-ditch summit involving European Union leaders in Brussels planned for Thursday. The 27-nation bloc had also imposed sanctions on Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu and high-ranking figures including the commanders of Russia's army, navy, and air force, another part of the wave of Western punishment after Putin sought to rewrite Ukraine's borders. The United Nations Security Council met late Wednesday for its second emergency session in three days over the crisis, with a personal plea thereby UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Putin going unheeded.