I've been writing here for some months that the last thing we - as in non-specific people of the West - should do is send any troops to Ukraine. The MH17 incident and the 39 Australians on that downed plane have forced the issue of Ukraine's situation a lot closer to our shores in Australia. Sometime in the recent days of statesman-like posturing, Tony Abbott has been making noises about putting our boots on the ground in eastern Ukraine to 'secure the site' (whatever the hell that means, many days after there's been looting).
As readers know, I've been dead against sending anybody out there for good reason. If the separatists are dumb and ill-informed enough to down a jet liner from a neutral nation outside of he conflict, what's stop them shooting at our people just for being there? Today we find that some people with professional insight think this is a bad idea too.
"They must be nuts," Joerg Forbrig, a senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the US think tank, said. "It's a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians."
Ukrainians' desire for closer links with Europe, the US and their allies has long been a source of tension with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who intervened in Ukraine after the pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych stepped down in February fueling the five-month long insurgency.
The US says a surface-to-air missile fired from territory held by the rebels shot down the plane, while stopping short of alleging direct Russian involvement. Putin's artillery is firing on Ukrainian military positions from inside Russia, a US State Department spokeswoman said this week.
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A spokesman for the UK Foreign Office said Britain would "offer logistical support and is keeping in close contact with the Australians and Dutch over how it can assist, though it won't be putting be sending police or technicians to Ukraine".
"We believe a UK. armed presence in eastern Ukraine would not be appropriate," the Foreign Office said in a statement. "The UK stands ready to provide constructive support to the mission."
This isn't some trip into a place where there's not much civil authority - it's a place where Russia is using subterfuge to make it look like there's not much civil authority so they can wrest some more territory off Ukraine. The polite realpolitik thing to do has been to ignore the subterfuge and instead place mild sanction on Vladimir Putin and his crony-capitalists but sending troops has been and always will be one of those things we would much rather not do. The reality is that it would be sending people with an immensely blinkered perspective right into a war zone - and if seen with a colder objective view, would rightly be a provocation to the Russians.
In other words, "baby don't you do it".
I was watching The Drum this week and there was commentary to the effect that Tony Abbott's been getting some kudos for being the only Western leader to stand up to Vladimir Putin. This might be true, but this is only because Russia isn't a vital trade partner for us and we're really far away from Moscow's considerations. Sending in troops to Ukraine would change that greatly. The outcome of that shift will probably mean more dead Australians. And how the hell will Tony Abbott explain that when it inevitably happens?
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