I think it my have been this post’s author who, elsewhere, pointed out that Russia was making a mistake staking a claim to the Arctic on the basis that Russians in a submarine had delivered a plaque up there on the ocean floor. This was because, by the same logic, America could be said to own the moon.

Russia may be making a similar mistake here, in justifying an invasion as a defense of ethnic Russians in a neighboring state’s territory. Each year Russia’s vast Far Eastern provinces have fewer ethnic Russians inhabitants and more ethnic Chinese.