Russian President Vladimir Putin left little doubt in his statements earlier this week that he would have sent troops into Ukraine.

That Mr Putin did so on Wednesday, just minutes after the United Nations Security Council began a late-night session focused on avoiding war, spoke to his resolve to escalate the tensions between Moscow and Kyiv, and actually demonstrated the limited ability of the United Nations (UN) to prevent global conflict.

In fact, we were starkly reminded of that yesterday by a wire service news report pointing out that since the creation of the UN in 1945 it has been unable to stop any conflict started by one of its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States.

“The same five powers that emerged victorious from World War II wield all the power today, relegating the organisation to a role focused primarily on providing humanitarian aid in natural disasters and wars, in some cases succeeding in limiting the expansion of conflicts,” the report added.

It is unfortunate, but true. That, though, is a discussion for another time.

As it now stands, Russian and Ukranian troops are engaged in battle, civilians are fleeing Ukraine to other Eastern European countries, most notably Poland, which said Thursday it would open nine reception centres along its border with Ukraine in anticipation of an influx of refugees.

In response to the military invasion, a number of countries have imposed sanctions on Russia, which, we are told, has prepared itself for just that, particularly by growing its foreign exchange reserves to about US$640 billion.

Also, it is difficult to predict the effectiveness of economic sanctions, given that Russia is a major supplier of crude oil and natural gas to Europe — about 30 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively — while trade with Western nations is somewhere in the region of US$200 billion.

There’s no challenging that President Putin was wrong to have invaded a neighbouring country. Additionally, his declaration this week that Russia recognises as independent the rebel statelets of Luhansk and Donetsk and deployed what he termed “peacekeeping forces” to the region only served to heighten the conflict.

However, any dispassionate debate of the current crisis cannot ignore the fact that one of the factors driving Mr Putin’s aggression is Russia’s fear of the possibility of a further extension of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces being stationed on its border, given Ukraine’s application to join the intergovernmental military alliance.

That fear has its foundation in the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 following the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe that ended in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Readers will recall that the Warsaw Pact, which was agreed in 1955 after Western powers admitted West Germany to NATO, strengthened the Soviet Union’s hold over its satellites in Eastern Europe.

As we stated before in this space, Russia seems to believe that its national security is facing danger of encirclement by countries hostile to it. We therefore reiterate that NATO nations could consider signing a pact with Russia aimed at guaranteeing Ukraine’s neutrality.

We hope it’s not too late for that to happen.