Persuading Putin to Bow Out of Ukraine

"The possibility of lethal defensive weapons is one of those options that's being examined. But I have not made a decision about that yet."
"There is not going to be any specific point at which I say, ah, clearly lethal defence weapons would be appropriate here. It's an ongoing analysis on how to persuade Russia from encroaching further and further on Ukrainian territory."
U.S. President Barack Obama

"If we give up this principle of territorial integrity of our countries, we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe that we have been able to achieve. This is not just any point. It's the crucial point."
"I myself would not be able to live with not having made this attempt. If in a certain point of time one has to say that a success is not possible even if one puts every effort into it, then the United States and Europe have to sit together and try and explore further possibilities."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel

"We all hope that this situation will be resolved by diplomatic means. Unfortunately, to this point in time, as you know, Putin has rejected diplomatic means. He seeks to move his agenda through military violence, which is unfortunate." 
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Europe, led by Germany and France, prefers to wait a little longer. In fact, they're prepared to wait it out a lot longer. And the longer they wait, it is obvious enough, the more stridently Moscow will intervene in Ukraine aiding the Ukrainian-Russian rebels in their goal of extracting eastern Ukraine from Kyiv and joining the Russian federation as Novorossiya. Russia, of course, is only responding to the need of its oppressed Russian-speaking Ukrainian brethren, for all its denials.

Leaving former Soviet satellite countries feeling themselves vulnerable to similar Russian armed interventions in their sovereignty, in support of "oppressed" Russian speakers, leftovers from the Soviet Union's dispersal of Russians into the geographic territory of the federated states. In Ukraine, however, the Russian-armed and -backed and -trained separatists in the eastern provinces sees Ukrainian troops contained by rebel bombardments.

Europe would far prefer calm to prevail. That their volatile neighbour be appeased somehow without in doing so, encouraging Moscow to continue its predations elsewhere in Europe. In continuing to exert pallid sanctions to deter Mr. Putin from further infringing on other nations' sovereignty it is obvious enough that Ukraine will remain a sacrificial lamb to peace. The alternative, surely, is war. That is, an extended war, not merely the one now raging in Ukraine.

No one among the European nations with vested interests in the outcome of this disagreement between a newly-assertive Russian bear and the trembling lambs situated in the nearby geography, is prepared, singly or collectively to militarily counter Russia's moves, and Russia is fully aware of that. Neither Russia nor any of its near or far neighbours would think positively of an engulfing war. It would be too costly, disrupting even the wobbling equilibrium that prevails.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande to discuss emergency negotiations for a halt to the hostilities, they left the meeting with its inconclusively vague promise to continue talks in several days' time. Republications and some Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. have called upon their government to send offensive weapons on to Ukraine to enable the military to confront and successfully counter the onslaught by the separatists.

If and when, however, President Obama does assent to providing weapons for the Ukrainian military, he stresses they will be defensive in nature, not offensive. Russia, in providing the rebels with technically updated weapons has also, over time, trained the rebels in their use. The training had gone somewhat awry when a civilian Malaysian jetliner was shot down in error, mistaking it for a Ukrainian military jet; recognition of targets have since then appeared to have been improved.

Even should Mr. Obama relent, and Mrs. Merkel recognize that all attempts at diplomacy and reconciliation have failed, deciding to send in technologically advanced weapons for the Ukrainian military, without training, and that takes time and effort, those weapons would be useless. In the interim, the out-weaponized Ukrainian military in their thousands have been encircled and further loss of life is a given.

Even while President Obama speaks of diplomacy in agreeing with Chancellor Merkel's insistence that all diplomatic means must be exhausted before lethal weapons are handed over to Ukraine, his vice-president  at a security conference in Munich on Saturday spoke of the lies Mr. Putin engaged in respecting his annexation of Crimea and the invasion of his troops across the border to Ukraine, let alone the truckloads of provisions and weapons that a "humanitarian" brigade gifted the rebels with.

The only certainty in this situation is that of uncertainty.