DONETSK, Ukraine - The warnings from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the White House over the past week could not have been graver in tone: The Russian army, they said, had massed enough forces on the border with Ukraine to invade.
The last time Russian troops appeared to menace Ukraine, in the spring, the Ukrainian military quickly halted attacks on pro-Russian separatists to avoid the chance of touching off a new war in Europe. Not this time.
Buoyed by successes against the separatists over the past two months - and noting that the Russians have threatened an invasion in the region before without following through - Ukrainian commanders have pressed ahead with an offensive to drive the rebels from their stronghold in Donetsk in the east.
The army continues to fire artillery into the city nightly and paramilitary groups raid outlying villages despite Russian president Vladimir V. Putin's warnings that he could intervene at any time to protect Ukrainians who favor closer ties with his country. And the Ukrainians have flaunted their victories.
When pro-Ukrainian militiamen reclaimed the village of Marinka from pro-Russian forces, they captured the action with a GoPro camera mounted on a fighter's shoulder. The video showed them marching into the village, yelling and waving their rifles in the air, firing wildly.
Despite growing jitters in the West, Ukraine's military leaders say they are making a well-calculated gamble, betting that Mr. Putin feels he has too much to lose to invade, including the possibility of crippling international sanctions. So while Western officials view each new Ukrainian artillery barrage in Donetsk as drawing the country closer to the brink, the Ukrainians see their unchecked advance as further confirmation that Mr. Putin is mobilizing troops only as a scare tactic to keep them from reclaiming territory.
The government in Kiev is 'calling Putin's bluff,' said Oleh Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian diplomat, who said political leaders dismiss Mr. Putin's moves as 'psychological pressure.'
'If we pause, it would show Putin that any time he puts troops on the border we will stop,' Mr. Voloshyn said. Russia's testiness over Ukraine's boasts was clear on Saturday. Illustrating Ukraine's assertions it can thwart a Russian invasion with diplomatic pressure, while pressing its offensive against separatists, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Saturday that late-night diplomatic consultations had halted a Russian military column approaching the border.
A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, shot back, dismissing the statement as untrue, Reuters reported. 'Each time Kiev is more and more inventive in creating fairy tales,' she said. If the Ukrainians' calculations about Mr. Putin's willingness to engage directly are wrong, President Obama and other Western leaders will face yet another crisis at a time of mounting danger in Iraq, as Islamist militants overrun once-safe areas, and as hostilities between Israel and Hamas continue despite diplomatic efforts to halt the bloodshed.
So far, the West seems loath to try to stop the Ukrainians, particularly after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which the United States blames on the separatists.
There are plenty of reasons for Mr. Putin to be wary about committing troops to a war in Ukraine.
The separatist zones of eastern Ukraine that were well-defined just several months ago are now amorphous, with the front lines shifting after the Ukrainian military retook 75 percent of the territory initially seized by pro-Russian rebels. Ukrainian commanders say that stands in contrast to the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, which the Russians occupied and recognized as independent states in 2008.
Beyond that, loyalties in eastern Ukraine are split, increasing the risk that the portion of the population that supports Kiev would aid any insurgency against Russia should it invade.
An invasion would also be costly, not only because of the likelihood of stiffened sanctions, but because it could plunge the region into an economic freefall, bleeding funds from whichever country wins on the battlefield.
But Western leaders remain unconvinced Mr. Putin - who has his own reputation for toughness to uphold - will be willing to be taunted endlessly.
European markets dropped sharply over fears of a cross-border war. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that the risk of an imminent Russian intervention under the guise of a peacekeeping operation has risen. And NATO's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on Thursday called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the border and 'step back from the brink.'
Analysts in the West, meanwhile, say the Ukrainians might be foolishly pushing the limits of Mr. Putin's patience.
'The Russian president has a record of brash, emotional and forceful behavior, and he could just 'go for it,'' Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group, a risk analysis organization, wrote last week. The Eurasia Group, estimated the likelihood of a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine at about 35 percent.
Some of the only supporters for the notion that Mr. Putin will surely not invade appear to be the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine who crave his help. Yuri, a commander of about 500 pro-Russian fighters defending Donetsk, said he does not believe the Russians will cross the border.
'Russia,' he said, 'is afraid of starting World War III.'
For the moment, it is clear the Ukrainians are emboldened by Russia's lack of action.
Ukrainian commanders on the front lines say they believe European Union sanctions will take care of Russia, while they take care of pro-Russian separatists.
'The European Union keeps Russia in check, and we fight the terrorists,' said Lieutenant Colonel Josef Venskovich of the Ukrainian army, at a headquarters north of Donetsk as helicopters buzzed in and out.
A spokesman for the military operation in the east, Colonel Aleksei Dmitrashkivsky, said morale is high. 'The threats to send Russian peacekeepers into Ukraine have been around since April, but nothing happens,' he said. 'The Ukrainian army is learning quickly how to fight. Volunteers who join the army want to defend this land.'
The Ukrainian military strategy, commanders say, centers on encircling Donetsk to squeeze off the lifeline of supplies from the other separatist stronghold, the city of Luhansk, and from the Russian border. The fighting has taken on a lethal pattern: the regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat.
Officials in Kiev say the militias and the regular army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.
The militias' seeming arms-length relationship with the regular military are among the reasons they are feared, and effective. But their alleged brutality in combat is adding to the risk of provoking a Russian response, analysts say.
Reining the paramilitaries in, if the Ukrainian military leaders chose to, might prove difficult.
The Azov battalion that captured the village of Marinka took its orders from a local army commander, rather than from Kiev.In the video of the attack on the village, which was portrayed by Azov as the first ground assault on the Donetsk metropolitan area, no restraint was evident. Gesturing toward a suspected pro-Russian position where shots rang out, one soldier screamed, 'the bastards are right there.' Then he opened fire.
Entities 0 Name: Ukraine Count: 12 1 Name: Putin Count: 10 2 Name: Russian Count: 9 3 Name: DONETSK Count: 8 4 Name: Russia Count: 7 5 Name: Kiev Count: 5 6 Name: West Count: 3 7 Name: Ukrainians Count: 3 8 Name: Marinka Count: 3 9 Name: Eurasia Group Count: 2 10 Name: European Union Count: 2 11 Name: White House Count: 1 12 Name: Anders Fogh Rasmussen Count: 1 13 Name: Aleksei Dmitrashkivsky Count: 1 14 Name: Abkhazia Count: 1 15 Name: Europe Count: 1 16 Name: Israel Count: 1 17 Name: Vladimir V. Putin Count: 1 18 Name: Cliff Kupchan Count: 1 19 Name: Malaysia Airlines Count: 1 20 Name: NATO Count: 1 21 Name: Yuri Count: 1 22 Name: Iraq Count: 1 23 Name: Azov Count: 1 24 Name: Obama Count: 1 25 Name: Georgia Count: 1 26 Name: Donald Tusk Count: 1 27 Name: Maria Zakharova Count: 1 28 Name: Josef Venskovich Count: 1 29 Name: Petro Poroshenko Count: 1 30 Name: United States Count: 1 31 Name: Oleh Voloshyn Count: 1 32 Name: South Ossetia Count: 1 33 Name: North Atlantic Treaty Organization Count: 1 34 Name: Hamas Count: 1 35 Name: Reuters Count: 1 36 Name: Voloshyn Count: 1 37 Name: Luhansk Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1sCCwPb Title: We Come in 'Peace' Description: The joke among Ukrainians goes something like this: "What's happened today? Has Russia invaded us yet?" For those living the reality of having a portion of their country occupied by Russian intelligence agents and insurgents -- all armed with Moscow-dispatched weapons, of course -- the question isn't whether Vladimir Putin will launch a full-scale assault on his neighbor, but when he'll do it.