Duma maneuver indicates the impatience of the Kremlin in the Ukrainian patient situation

The Russian legislator has directed a direct appeal to Vladimir Putin, to recognize the separatist states Donetsk and Luhansk controlled by Russia and thus offer a way to increase the use in the regional crisis without starting an attack on Ukraine.

Putin said that he will not recognize the so-called republics immediately, but he will probably use this option as a fist pan, since it continues to demand security guarantees from the West.

The staged maneuver took place on Tuesday, when Putin also confirmed a "partial" deduction of Russian armed forces from the Ukrainian border, a decision that would reduce the potential for a war if a large number of troops were involved. It is not yet clear whether this will be the case.

since 2014 Russia has been using the deadly Donbass conflict to distract the attention of his annexation of the Crimea and as part of his strategy to keep control of the geopolitical future of Ukraine.

The ceasefire agreement of Minsk, signed in 2015, formalized a plan to bring Donbass areas back into Ukraine, but to give them a veto about Kiev's foreign policy decisions, including a possible accession to NATO.

But due to violations of the ceasefire, disagreements, disagreements about which steps are to take first, and a growing faith in Ukraine that the agreement was signed with a weapon and is no longer politically sustainable.

Hawkish civil servants and prominent personalities in Russia, such as the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, have asked for the independence of the regions. But this is anything but a popular opinion and would remove a key element of the influence of the Kremlin on Ukraine by destroying the Minsk Agreement.

"The recognition of the LPR and DPR [Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics] by Russia would mean his deliberate withdrawal from the Minsk Agreement," said a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday.

Moscow has already made it difficult to reintegrate the areas by issuing hundreds of thousands of Russian passes there and has been arming and supporting its governments since 2014.

Nevertheless, formal recognition of independence would be regarded as a significant escalation. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the recognition was a "blatant violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine". And some European officials said that sanction packages would trigger that was put together to deter a Russian invasion.

"The call of the Russian state duma to recognize the occupied areas of Ukraine is an open escalation," said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. "The approval of the Kremlin should be answered with quick and determined sanctions."

Putin could give a way to keep his face before the crisis after trying and so far failed to ensure that NATO will not absorb Ukraine and remove its infrastructure from countries that joined after 1997.

instead of starting a war, he could put his legs away from the ceasefire agreement and relocate troops to Donbass or even provoke a Ukrainian attack, which would give Russia a casus belli.

While Putin argued in his explanations that his MPs "followed public opinion", it is clear that the Duma vote on Tuesday was largely controlled by the Kremlin. As Putin stated, the decision for a partial withdrawal from the borders was directly associated with the coordination of the recognition of the republics. A form of pressure on Ukraine was exchanged for another.

in a dead end in the negotiations with the West threatens Putin to destroy the status quo. It could mean that Russia is considering other options in addition to the war to achieve its goals, but it also signals that the Kremlin becomes impatient.

"Russia hears that Ukraine is not ready to join NATO today and we know this premise," said Putin after a conversation with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "And you immediately say that it will not be approved tomorrow, but will be approved if you prepare it for it. But that could be too late for us. Therefore, we want this problem to be solved in a peaceful way now, now in the near future."