As this edition of the Trends Journal publishes, pro-Russian separatists are holding fort in Ukrainian communities along the eastern border, as Kiev threatens to intervene. It’s a battle Ukraine cannot win. Washington’s grand scheme to envelope all of Ukraine into EU and NATO embrace backfired because Russian and Russian-speaking Ukrainians would not buy in. Crimea is already lost. Others can easily follow. Washington grossly miscalculated and is incapable of admitting its own miscalculations. As a result, Washington is left with no other choice but to push this conflict further, perhaps even to the brink of war.
