Ukraine crisis: Vladimir Putin's blithe take on the conflict is dangerous

Vladimir Putin’s annual phone-in with the Russian public offered scant prospect either of a solution to the Ukraine crisis or of a more general thaw in relations with the West, currently at levels reminiscent of the frostiest periods of the Cold War.

With his customary deadpan belligerence, Mr Putin accused the government in Kiev of mounting an economic blockade against secessionist eastern Ukraine, and once again denied that Moscow was supplying weapons or troops to the rebel cause. For good measure he accused the US of putting pressure on leaders of Nato allies from the former Soviet bloc not to attend ceremonies next month marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

In short, the occasion was a typical Putin event: a summons to Russian nationalism and a demand for international “respect” for the country’s age-old interests in Eastern Europe, ignored by a West whose unjustified sanctions were to blame for the difficulties facing the Russian economy. Moscow, he maintained, considered no nation its enemy – unlike the US which “doesn’t need allies, only vassals”.

With the Minsk accords of February, and the focus on the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme and the chaos in the Middle East, an impression has grown that a precarious calm has been restored to Ukraine. In fact, the two-month-old ceasefire is desperately fragile. Of late fighting between government troops and the rebels has surged, while tensions will be further stoked by this week’s murder in Kiev of a pro-Russian Ukrainian journalist and the strange death of a Ukrainian MP sympathetic to Moscow. Was the former a “political murder”, as Mr Putin declared, or a provokatsiya organised by Russia to provide justification for further interference by Moscow? Either way, the lesson is clear. At any moment, the Ukrainian crisis could turn hot again.