The only question, really, is how far Putin wants to go toward a trade war, economic collapse, further status as a pariah, maybe even open war, only in order to save face. The conventional wisdom is that he has to cut the insurgency loose.

Maybe. But if he doesn’t want to, he may settle for leaving a grinding conflict in place for now, and will claim that any real investigation and closure is impossible. He can then place his hopes in the West’s short attention span, and wait until all this blows over.

That would all work if it were 1975. But it’s not. I suspect the investigation and the tick-tock of the moments before the BUK fire are already clear and widely distributed enough that we have the complete case against the “separatists” with a bill of particulars that stretches right to the rug in front of Putin’s desk.

He knows it, and he knows that we know it. And until he finds a way to square this circle, panic—and more death—will be the order of the day. I wish I had good advice for him to extricate himself. But there isn’t any, and it would not be mine to give even if there were.