Steven Lee Myers, Ellen Barry, and Alan Cowell, writing for the New York Times:
Mr. Putin acted despite the first of a series of threatened sanctions imposed by the United States, Canada and Europe on Monday. He did so using the same arguments that those countries used to justify the independence of Kosovo — which the West generally supported — including a passage from an Obama administration document establishing the legal rationale for recognizing that country.
Welcome to the dangers of realpolitik.