Here are a few of the words you might use to describe what's happening in Ukraine right now.

You might call it an incursion of Russian troops.

Maybe the beginning of an invasion.

But one word some are resisting using, so far at least,

is war. This is not the all-out nightmare scenario we were fearing.

Josh Keating covers global security for the new site grid.

It was always clear that if a war started, that Danyetsk and Lujansk, these two breakaway

regions, would be the kind of tripwire for it.

It's less clear that it's how that conflict's going to end.

Separatists in Danyetsk and Luhansk have been fighting to join Russia for years.

And Josh says, when Vladimir Putin recognized the so-called independence of these regions on Monday,

and then sent what he calls peacekeeping troops in to defend them,

he was pulling out a page from a familiar playbook.

Russia has traditionally used these kind of frozen conflicts or breakaway regions as a way to, you know, sort of expand Russia's influence in its region.

It's what they did in Georgia in 2008. There were these two breakaway regions there, and they basically sort of goaded Georgia into attacking them first, which then gave Russia all the pretext it needed to launch an all-out invasion.

This time, I think Russia was trying to kind of do the same operation, but the difference is that Ukraine hasn't taken the bait so far.

If you look at a map of these regions,

you can see they've got a seam down the middle of them.

That's the front line, where Ukraine and Russia have been battling for control.

It's emblematic of the divided public opinion here.

Though you don't hear about it so often,

about half of the people polled in Dhenitsk and Luhansk have actually said they want to remain as part of Ukraine.

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