Grandmaster Putin

 President Putin, in his attempt to go down in history as the man who recreated the Russian empire of Catherine the Great, has been following the methods of Tigran Petrosian. (Catherine was from Germany and Petrosian from Armenia, by the way.) Petrosian was the chess grandmaster who became world champion through the accumulation of advantages, gradually restricting his opponents' freedom of movement and building pressure on their weak spots. His contemporary, the Latvian Mikhail Tal, was the opposite, going for all-out attack, sacrificing pawns and pieces with gay abandon in the process.

If Putin had attempted an immediate Anschluss with Ukraine as soon as he became commander-in-chief of Russian forces, the response by Western powers would surely have been more vigorous. Instead, he has reached an advantageous end-game step by step. First, the insurgency in the Donbas by his proxies followed by testing the resolve of the West by shooting down MH17 - perhaps the only move which would have deserved a !? in a commentary. Then military exercises (shades of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) with the participation of a willing partner, the bordering state of Byelorussia, ensuring that there was enough military force to prevent a counter to the next move which he carried out yesterday. Russia recognised the independence of two statelets comprising the Donbas region and at the same time moved massive "peacekeeping" forces their, presumably responding to a "plea for assistance" from the leaders of Luhansk and Donetsk under the friendship and cooperation pact also signed yesterday. 

The West is handicapped by not having a single controlling presence with the strategic abilities to match Putin. Instead, we are in something like a consultation match. In theory, the more players who are part of a consultation, the more likely they are to produce brilliant moves to counter the grandmaster. In practice, what usually emerges from such a committee is the "safest" move. In the present situation, that is the threat of sanctions. Whether this will be enough in the face of overwhelming military force in eastern Ukraine remains to be seen.