Growing Crisis in Its Backyard Snares Russia - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/putins-silence-on-ukraine-adds-to-confusion.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edi
MOSCOW — Despite repeated vows not to interfere or intervene, President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia has now found itself more deeply ensnared than ever in Ukraine’s worsening political crisis, facing appeals to support the country’s ethnic Russians, provide haven for its deposed president and perhaps even undertake a military response. The question is whether he intended it that way.
Mr. Putin himself has made no public remarks on the turmoil in Ukraine since President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev last week. That coincided with the end of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which officials here have celebrated as proof of the emergence of a new, powerful and proud Russia nearly a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union.