Russian President Vladimir Putin just announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and with those words declared that his eight-year war on Ukraine has reached a point of dramatic escalation.
The Russian leader rebuked months of Western diplomatic entreaties to end the crisis sparked by the amassing of Moscow’s nearly 200,000 troops on Ukraine’s border.
Instead of shaking American and European hands, Putin slapped them away, pointing his forces toward the Ukrainian lands he has directed them to seize.
His pronouncement at 5:45 a.m. Moscow time — during a simultaneous U.N. Security Council meeting in New York, at which Western nations pleaded for Putin to exercise restraint and deescalate — could spark the largest land war in Europe since World War II, one that could result in the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian troops and civilians, and send a crush of refugees fleeing west.
