The week brought more snow to the Mid-Atlantic region, along with a blast of the Cold War, replete with an exchange of sanctions by Washington and the Kremlin, followed by displays of bravado by the sanctioned. “Big honor for me,” declared Vladislav Surkov, a top Kremlin strategist. “Badge of honor,” came the echo from Senator Mary L. Landrieu, head of the Senate energy committee.

Senator Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, elevated his inclusion on President Vladimir V. Putin’s list of those banned from travel to Russia to the noble wound of a Cold Warrior: “If standing up for the Ukrainian people, their freedom, their hard-earned democracy and sovereignty means I’m sanctioned by Putin, so be it.”

The uncomfortable problem was that the Ukrainian people had not yet achieved much democracy and the West had not found a way to stand up for their sovereignty when President Putin took over the Crimean Peninsula. Senators Landrieu and Menendez and their colleagues in Congress were not of much help, with an “emergency” aid package for Ukraine solidly tangled up in a partisan dispute over the International Monetary Fund.

The big question now was whether Mr. Putin would move on southern and eastern Ukraine — areas with sizable Russian populations — and if he did, what the West could or would do about it. The prospect seemed remote, and both Washington and Brussels seemed firmly opposed to taking military action.