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"  UPDATE: Ukraine says today that it attacked and destroyed the Russian military vehicles that crossed the border.    These guys. Lots of them. pic.twitter.com/XM1QCCpmNQ \u2014 Roland Oliphant (@RolandOliphant) August 15, 2014    There&amp;#039;s big news today in the ongoing saga between Russia and the Ukraine as Russian troops have moved across the border. &amp;quot;We saw an incursion (into) Ukraine,&amp;quot; NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today. &amp;quot;What we have seen last night is the continuation of what we have seen for some time.&amp;quot; Russia denies that it crossed the border, but journalists in the area (including the Telegraph&amp;#039;s Moscow correspondent, Roland Oliphant, and the BBC&amp;#039;s, Steve Rosenberg, have tweeted pictures of Russian troops in armored personnel carriers moving toward the border and setting up new air defense radar sites. The White House and European Union leaders were hoping Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2014finding himself beset by international sanctions, shamed by the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile, and sated by the successful annexing the Crimea\u2014would back down from aggressive action. That does not appear to be happening. Instead, it seems like he&amp;#039;s doubling down on his Ukrainian gambit by stirring up trouble in the eastern part of the country, where separatists are fighting (and losing ground to) Ukrainian government forces. So what is his strategy? As with Crimea, Putin&amp;#039;s approach blends public relations with martial might, media manipulation with military maneuvers. So don&amp;#039;t expect an all-out invasion. Instead, expect a &amp;quot;humanitarian intervention&amp;quot; into eastern Ukraine. The Russian APCs seen today are marked with something that, to English speakers, looks like &amp;quot;MC&amp;quot;. In Russian, that designates &amp;quot;peacekeepers.&amp;quot; What would these peacekeepers be doing? Putin has an answer for that. Russia had sent the convoy of roughly 200 aid trucks to eastern Ukraine, aimed at separatist-controlled areas. Fears immediately rose that this convoy is a ruse, but Putin appears to be a step ahead: Today he allowed Red Cross and Ukrainian officials to inspect the convoy, knowing it is filled with humanitarian supplies. If the aid convoy is held up, Putin can cast Ukraine as the ones who let the crisis fester and use that as a pretext for a more forceful entry, supposedly in the name of creating safe conditions for aid distribution. If the trucks get through, the aid workers could be attacked\u2014or if they&amp;#039;re not, Putin could manufacture such an incident. The Red Cross demands that no military escorts accompany aid vehicles, so they are sitting ducks. If such an attack happened, Putin could be ready to move the APCs into the conflict zone, claiming they are backing up a humanitarian effort. He will use language honed by NATO interventions in Somalia, Iraq, and Libya to create moral defense for his invasion. And under this guise, he&amp;#039;ll gain control of those Ukrainian regions. Putin can say the government in Ukraine, which he argues is illegitimate because it seized power from an elected official, can&amp;#039;t preserve the peace in the east. And once Russian troops are in eastern Ukraine, who will be able to push them out? NATO could, at great risk and cost, but the Ukrainian government will be outmatched. So that aid convoy is Putin&amp;#039;s Trojan horse. Those trucks are filled with non-lethal supplies, but there&amp;#039;s a string attached that leads all the way back to Moscow, and to Putin&amp;#039;s dream of expanding Russia to encompass lands it lost after the Cold War&amp;#039;s end. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a11181/vladimir-putins-trojan-horse-enters-ukraine-17098538/>