My latest Ukraine/Russia piece for Telegraph Comment today must have been good – it has smoked out an unusually nasty set of Russian trolls.

Here it is:

Negotiation is often presented as a choice between carrot and stick: what can one side do to affect the positive or negative incentives for the other side? But carrots are a credible incentive only if they are close and edible – and, crucially, if the donkey thinks you’ll hand them over. Likewise a stick is credible only if it’s big and strong and close – and, crucially, if the donkey thinks you’ll use it. Even then, if the donkey refuses to move, it comes down to sheer willpower: is your willingness to thrash or starve the donkey greater than the donkey’s determination to stay put?

The immediate issue in Moscow today is the obvious one: how to establish a peaceful, sustained process that stops the fighting as a precondition for looking in a systematic way at the wider knot of problems? But as Merkel and Hollande sit across from Putin, all three of them will know that the real issues are psychological.

How much pain are Western sanctions inflicting on Russia? Is Russia’s collective willingness to withstand such pain greater than the Western willingness to sustain it? And what about Ukraine’s willingness to sustain pain? What does Putin really want, and where might he be persuaded to stop along the way for wider reasons? Does he himself know? Is any deal they might strike simply a trick by Moscow to consolidate existing territorial gains before starting gnawing away for more?

At the level of diplomacy, all three leaders will pretend to agree that European borders can not be changed by force, even though that is exactly what is happening. So a way has to be found to fudge these issues, playing on the familiar legal distinction between de jure (as a matter of law) and de facto (as a matter of fact).

Thus Kiev offers significant devolution to certain territories in the East and does not formally renounce its position that Crimea remains its territory: as far as Ukraine and the rest of the world and international law are concerned, those territories stay within Ukraine’s legal borders. In practice (de facto) Russia will exert direct or indirect control over these areas for most purposes that matter, compelling Kiev into debilitating rows over almost everything down to the symbols on local official headed notepaper. Europe gets a new frozen conflict, where the thermostat is controlled in Moscow…

It concludes thusly:

The other day a group of us veteran UK diplomatic experts mulled over this problem. The argument was made that Putin was doomed to fail eventually, as his policies were crassly Russia-specific and had no wider ideological appeal.

In my view that way of looking at things is wrong and dangerous: plenty of countries and fanatical movements (see eg ISIL and Al Qaeda) are impressed by the Putin neo-imperialist proposition that ‘might is right’, especially when it comes to confronting head-on ‘Western’ policies and interests. Plenty of European and US Leftists and Rightists alike find quick common ground around such nihilistic useful idiot propositions as “at least Putin is standing up for Russia’s interests” and “who seriously thought that Russia would not respond as NATO expanded to Russia’s borders”?

The core point here is simple. Does the world respect the right of Ukraine, a state whose legitimacy and borders are recognised by every other state on Earth other than Russia, to decide for itself how it organises its affairs?

Or do we instead respect a crude, supremely cynical rival proposition: that any country gets only the freedoms and rights that Moscow from time to time decides are acceptable? As the Bolsheviks might have put it: kto kogo?

I included another paragraph that did not make the final version:

All of which said, not all ideas emanating from Moscow for looking at wider European security principles should be rejected in principle. A deal for Ukraine that becomes part of a process for redefining in a principled historic way the relationship between NATO states and Russia could be a good outcome, as long as all concerned can show they are taking seriously some basic principles and are recommitting in a transparent, verifiable way to cooperating when things get difficult without resorting to force.

* * * * *

The current sharp-end policy question in Western capitals as they wait to hear how the Merkel/Hollande mission has gone is stark: should Western leaders start actively helping Ukraine and ukrainians defend themselves?

The risks are obvious. Escalation and intensification. Modern military hardware comes with trainers and intense support – aren’t we getting sucked in to something we don’t want to be sucked in to?

But is it OK to sit back wringing our hands and watching as Russia throws heavy weaponry into brutalising fellow Europeans with no end in sight? If you see someone being tortured by a death-by-a-thousand-cuts madman, aren’t you somehow complicit in the torture if you deny the victim the means to fight and, yes, maybe die faster but with some honour intact?

The mood in Washington is edging towards helping Ukraine fight back: Russia took heavy losses in the Georgia conflict from sophisticated US kit, so that move will catch Moscow’s attention. But Berlin and other Western capitals are not yet ready for this.

This Guardian piece sums up the dilemmas fairly. It gloomily proposes really sharp economic sanctions rather than pouring in Western weaponry, namely cutting Russia from the SWIFT financial system.

That would deliver a ghastly jolt to Russia’s whole economy, but again the consequences (including Russia’s own response – a barrage of cyber-attacks on Western institutions?) might well be unpredictable and radically damaging.

Russia does take this possibility  seriously, hence talk that any such move would be ‘tantamount to a declaration of war‘ by Western capitals.

So a lot depends on Merkel/Hollande making at least some progress today. However, they can no longer be sure that Vladimir Putin is able to calculate sanely what is best for Russia and where Russia now fits in to European security architecture. His bland absurd lies create a disconcerting unbalanced psychological atmosphere that goes far beyond the normal prosaic haggling in the European Union.

Can anything President Putin says now be trusted? And if not, what?