In Ukraine, there is no line that Vladimir Putin won't cross | View

“Where will he stop?”.

It is a question that is often repeated. It was even plastered on the cover of a leading British newspaper just days before Vladimir Putin’s troops massing near Ukraine entered the country.

Even now, after Russian forces entered Ukraine, moved towards Kyiv and turned the eastern city of Kharkiv and port city of Mariupol into a modern-day Stalingrads, Western leaders are still looking to find this elusive line, where Putin will stop. The line between rightful support for Ukraine, and escalation.

But there is no line.

This line of thinking is symptomatic of the West’s inability to address the perceived return of the threat of war between states, a threat that we haven’t seen in decades.

We haven't seen it - but it has been there.

From Putin’s war in Chechnya, to the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and emergence of separatist republics in Ukraine, to the intervention in Syria, it’s been there all along.

History hasn’t disappeared, we have stopped paying attention. At each turn we could have stopped Putin, but our sympathies for the people most affected by this new form of Russian imperialism were eroded by the comforting thought that there, somehow, was a line where he would stop.

There is no line.

There is no form of appeasement that will permanently solve Putin’s insecurities. These insecurities come from within Russia rather than from the West. The rationale peddled by Russia and some of its allies that NATO crossed a red line by expanding eastward, and that it is somehow on a “regime-change” spree highlights Putin’s own insecurities.

Putin sees his fight in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Ukraine and in Syria as one and the same: It is a battle for his own survival and that of his regime. As a KGB