Vladimir Vladimorovich Putin is in a bit of a fix. Faced with a sputtering war in Ukraine costing tens of thousands of Russian lives, and two or three more small wars in and around Russia’s borders, he has trouble enough in the near abroad.
At home he is being attacked and urged by ultra-nationalists to go further, declare a full scale war and smash Ukraine utterly — the demand of several former loyalists in the Duma, the Russian parliament, to defend the nation from dishonour and oblivion.
