Platts: Energy Economist: The Russia-Ukraine standoff looks to the energy needs of winter

Regardless of Russian denials, Moscow is clearly providing direct support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine. Reports Thursday were numerous of tanks, armored vehicles and rocket launchers being deployed in the region, not to mention the earlier capture by Ukrainian forces of ten Russian soldiers 12 miles inside Ukrainian territory. There is no other source for the rebels’ weaponry–and according to some reports, personnel–than the Russian army.

The rise of increasingly overt Russian support comes after a period in which Ukrainian forces have registered significant success in reducing the territory held by the separatists. The conclusion has to be that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot accept defeat in eastern Ukraine. To do so would be seen as an abandonment of Ukrainian Russians, puncturing the projection of Russian power in the region, so clearly demonstrated by the annexation of Crimea in March.

The result will be an escalation of the conflict, with the fiction that this is not a war between states but a civil conflict, increasingly hard to maintain.
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