If Putin thought he could get away with it, he’d invade Ukraine in the morning

Editorial: War is in the air – it would please Russia’s patriotic but hard-pressed people, and cement Putin’s pretensions to be the heir of the tsars and Joseph Stalin

The massing of troops in recent months adds an element of military menace (Sputnik)

It is not easy to see how matters could be worsened by a parley at the summit.” It was Winston Churchill, during another Cold War between the west and Russia, who coined the term “summit” for a face-to-face meeting of leaders at the highest level.

He was right about that, just as he was to remark that jaw-jaw is better than war-war, and, though virtual and in different times, it’s to be hoped that the conversation between President Putin and President Biden will at least have left both sides better informed about the intentions of the other, or at least their respective stated intentions. As usual, trust is at a premium at the diplomatic summit.

War-war is in the air, however. The formal annexation of Crimea and the informal partial occupation of eastern Ukraine and the Donbas region leaves little room for doubt about the malevolence of Russian designs on the free and independent sovereign state of Ukraine.