The veteran Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov certainly had not been authorised to declare war on Ukraine in his daily press briefing on Tuesday, but he was coming perilously close to doing so anyway. He could not explain if Russia had recognised the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk up to their current borders, or with claims on further Ukrainian land.
The answer could be the difference between a stalemate and a Russian war of conquest. And, not knowing that Vladimir Putin would weigh that evening to settle the question in favour of the expanded borders, Peskov was making a hash of it.
