With rebels having seized extra 200 square miles of territory, US’s leaking of talks about sending weapons to Kiev may be Obama’s way of warning Putin to back off

The public disclosure that the US is considering supplying lethal weaponry to Ukraine in its battle with Russian-backed separatists, reflects heightened American concern that Moscow is intent on carving out an expanded, economically viable enclave in eastern Ukraine that could in time declare itself an independent state.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, pursued this policy in Georgia after the 2008 war, when he encouraged separatists in the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to proclaim their independence from Tbilisi. Pro-Moscow forces in Transnistria, legally part of Moldova, have taken a similar path.

US concern that Putin, despite previous assurances to the contrary, is now seeking effectively to partition Ukraine has been fuelled by rebel territorial gains. Nato estimates that the separatists, backed by Russian reinforcements including T-80 tanks, have seized control of an additional 200 square miles in the past four months.

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“The assessment of some senior western officials is that the Kremlin’s goal is to replace the Minsk agreement [the September pact that proposed a ceasefire and territorial guarantees] with an accord that... would leave the separatists with a more economically viable enclave,” the New York Times reported.

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Resumed peace talks in Minsk at the weekend collapsed within hours after rebel representatives sought to redraw the proposed demarcation line between the two sides to include their recent territorial gains. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the rebels “were not even prepared to discuss implementation of a ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons”.

By leaking internal discussions about supplying lethal weapons to Kiev, the Obama administration may be warning Putin to back off. US and EU sanctions, renewed last week, have failed to stop him. Diplomatic interventions by Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s François Hollande have also proven ineffective. Instead, US officials say Putin has deployed new heavy weapons and 1,000 specialist military and intelligence personnel, and the fighting has intensified. About 5,000 people have died since last April, with more than 1 million displaced.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, is due in Kiev on Thursday and will use the visit to take the temperature in the Ukrainian capital as the US administration weighs its options.

Lt Col Vanessa Hillman, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the administration’s focus “remains on pursuing a solution through diplomatic means,” but added, “we are always evaluating other options that will help create space for a negotiated solution to the crisis.”

But Washington’s threat risks turning what is currently a largely contained, internal insurrection into an international proxy war, pitting the US and Nato against Russia. In prospect now is the killing or maiming of Russians by American anti-tank missiles, a scenario not seen since the cold war-era occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces. The impact on wider European security could be deeply destabilising.

Tensions are already running high, not least with the increase in air and sea incidents involving the Russian military, such as last week’s provocative over-flight of the English channel. Nato’s decision to set up permanent military command centres in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and its creation of a 5,000-strong rapid response force are characterised by Putin as an attempt by the west to contain Russia.Last week, he ridiculed Ukraine’s army as Nato’s “foreign legion”.

Such an American escalation would probably deepen European divisions over Ukraine. Greece, heavily indebted, and Hungary, which has close economic links to Russia, take a very different line, for example, from that of the UK, which American reports suggest could follow any US lead in supplying weapons.

Uncertainty about Russian intentions has already caused a bad case of the jitters in Finland, Sweden and the Baltic republics. In the Czech Republic, the army chief of staff, General Petr Pavel, was quoted last week as predicting that an escalation in Ukraine would lead to the biggest military manoeuvres since 9/11, with troops being posted to the borders and to guard strategic plants. There are also wider European fears of mass refugee movements and manufactured unrest among expatriate ethnic Russian and Ukrainian minorities.

Judging by past performance, Putin is more likely to up the ante than back down if the US goes ahead. Retaliatory Russian escalation, which could include wider military intervention in Ukraine, renewed interference in Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic region or, for example, stepped-up deployment and testing of Iskander-M nuclear-capable cruise missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

Putin may calculate that, as with Georgia in 2008 and Crimea last year, the US and Nato will not move militarily to thwart him in the end. He would use any Ukraine escalation to boost his narrative to the Russian people that the Fatherland is under siege by the west. But the obvious danger is that he may over-play his hand and, in his hubris and arrogance, provoke a wider calamity.