People walk past a house damaged by recent shelling in Mariupol, a city on the Sea of Azov, January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Nikolai Ryabchenko (UKRAINE - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT)STRINGER/Reuters
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has taken his disinformation on Ukraine to new heights (or to a new low) by claiming that the Ukrainian armed forces are to a large extent "so-called voluntary nationalist battalions," which amount to being a "foreign NATO legion," designed to "achieve the geopolitical objective of containing Russia," rather than "pursuing the aims of Ukraine's national interests."
It's far from easy to make sense of such remarks as these, and Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO, was quite right to be undiplomatic, pronouncing the foreign-legion claim to be nonsense – and calling on Russia to withdraw support from the pro-Russian militants in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin's bizarre blustering, in a televised meeting with university students in Saint Petersburg, is a distraction from the fact that the conflict in Ukraine has reintensified – back up to the level that preceded the Minsk agreement in September, if not worse.
In the past few weeks, Donetsk International Airport, already severely damaged by the war, has been reduced to ruins.
But on the weekend, the city of Mariupol became the main scene of the fighting. It seems likely that the pro-Russian militants have been trying to secure Mariupol's economically important harbour on Russia's behalf, and with Russian equipment.
Mariupol is on the Sea of Azov, which is in effect a bay of the Black Sea, with a narrow opening. On the southern side of the Sea of Azov is Crimea, the large, lozenge-shaped peninsula that Russia illegally annexed last March – and which has long been the Russian navy's access to the Mediterranean and warm-water ports generally. The Russians' probable motive to cause trouble in Mariupol is to secure a sea route to Crimea; the land links to Crimea cross Ukraine itself.
Consequently, President Barack Obama is right to have said about Ukraine, during his trip in India, "I will look at all additional options that are available to us short of military confrontation." The unmistakable implication is that more sanctions against Russia are being considered. Russia is particularly hard-hit by falling oil and gas prices, and Mr. Putin should not take Mr. Obama's warning lightly.