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 Danyatsk and Luhansk, these two breakaway

regions would be the kind of tripwire for it, it's less clear that it's how that conflict

is going to end.

Separatists in Danyatsk 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 into 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 that 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

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