When President Vladimir Putin of Russia talks about what is happening in Ukraine these days, it is as if he’s looking into a mirror. He says fascists and nationalists are running amok in Kiev, even as Crimea is annexed in the name of Great Russia; he says Russians are threatened in eastern Ukraine, even as Russia directs secessionists there to seize administrative buildings and arms; he calls on President Obama to use his influence to prevent the use of force in Ukraine, even as he puts a major military force on the Ukrainian border.

This ploy was a fixture of Soviet propaganda, and when other sources of information are silenced, it can fool people for a while. But nobody outside Russia is buying it.

What the world sees is an outrageous and highly dangerous power play. A report by the United Nations high commissioner for human rights says “greatly exaggerated stories of harassment of ethnic Russians by Ukrainian nationalist extremists” in Crimea were “systematically used to create a climate of fear and insecurity.”

The same is now happening in eastern Ukraine — and with 40,000 Russian troops poised across the border and the Russian secessionists seizing arsenals and throwing up roadblocks, the potential for bloodshed is alarmingly real.