The hallmark of Russian President Vladimir Putin's campaign to reclaim parts of Russia's lost empire in Central Europe has been the forceful denial of any Russian government role in the creeping annexation of territory. Moscow has rejected the notion that there is any official involvement of support for the separatists in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, advancing instead the fiction that any Russians present are volunteers acting without coordination with the Russian government.
That story was hard enough to swallow when first told, but Moscow's credibility has been further eroded by increasingly assertive activity by the Russian armed forces on its borders.
In Europe and in Asia, recent Russian military behavior looks a lot like that of the darkest days of the Cold War, when Soviet forces routinely violated the territory of neighbors, tested their military readiness and signaled a barely concealed disregard for, if not hostility to, their sovereignty.