It looks like Vladimir Putin will spend his second summer in a row going to war.

So now the question becomes: What—if anything—will the United States and Europe do in response?

On Wednesday, Ukrainians awoke to the all-too-predictable news that Moscow-backed separatists—a contingent that consists of quite a lot of Moscow-dispatched Russian soldiers—launched a fresh, multi-pronged assault on Ukrainian-held territory.  The primary targets lie west of a line of the demarcation meant to keep a cease-fire that was over before the ink had dried on the so-called “Minsk II” accords.

“Although we’re still assessing details, this is clearly a major, multi-front escalation that reflects continued non-compliance with Minsk by the combined Russian-separatist forces,” a senior Western diplomat told The Daily Beast.  When asked if this was the start of a big Russian push for more terrain in the Donbas—the name for the regions encompassing Donetsk and Lugansk—one European leader replied: “Sure looks like it.”

So here’s what we know. The two main towns hit today were Marinka and Krasnogorovka, both not far from the major industrial city of Donetsk. The nearest separatist lines to these targets are the Petrovsky district of the city to the east, Aleksandrovka to the south-east and Novomikhailkovka to the north-east. Video footage, purportedly shot in Petrovsky today, clearly recorded the sounds of outbound artillery fire, with the attendant description of the footage claiming that the separatists were firing from positions in the immediate vicinity of residential high-rises. (Of course, firing from civilian areas doesn’t just violate Minsk II, but the Geneva Conventions.)  SOURCE