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.
“Do these borders include Mariupol,” a journalist asked.
“I have nothing to add,” replied Peskov, who had already delivered his one-line talking point: “Within the borders in which they exist and have been proclaimed.”
“Meaning within the current borders?” another journalist ventured, hoping that the sixth question on the topic might lead to a breakthrough. “I have nothing to add to this,” Peskov replied. And on it went.
Putin signed a presidential order to recognise the territories’ independence on Monday but it only became clear on Tuesday evening that Putin would back the territories’ claims to nearly three times the area currently under their control, making an offensive in east Ukraine a distinct possibility in the near future.
For nearly a day, officials were treading water. A deputy prime minister said Russia had recognised the current borders where the states “operate and have jurisdiction.” An MP contradicted him, saying it should be the expanded borders, then contradicted himself, saying he was just expressing his personal opinion.
It is possible that Putin only made up his mind later on Tuesday, after he gauged the reactions from the west to what some called his “re-invasion” of east Ukraine. Analysts who spent Tuesday waiting for Putin’s decision on the issue said that backing the territorial claims could “definitely mean a war”.
“In Moscow, the open question is what particular borders they’re going to defend,” said Andrei Kortunov, the director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a thinktank, noting the territorial claims could be a justification for war.
But while Putin could remain sphinx-like on the question for much of Tuesday, other officials were forced to run the gauntlet in public, stumbling over themselves to avoid making policy for the Kremlin.
Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, went on state television late in the afternoon to discuss an official treaty he had just signed with Putin on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance.
“I want to get to the bottom of this question,” the anchor asked in an unusually insistent interview for Russian state TV. “When the agreement was signed between Russia and the [Donetsk People’s Republic], Russia took on an obligation to defend the borders of the republic in the whole Donetsk region, is that correct?”
Pushilin sighed. He’d already dodged the question twice. “I’ll tell you that the question was not discussed,” he admitted a bit sheepishly. While normally you would expect a state signing a similar treaty to recognise the others’ territorial claims, he added: “We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”
When Putin finally chimed in later on, he made it sound as though the answer had always been obvious.
“We have recognised the independence of these republics,” he said, noting that included their constitutions, which had the borders “within the Donetsk and Luhansk regions at the time when they were part of Ukraine”.
The simple statement could have explosive consequences.
