Over the last nine weeks Vladimir Putin has moved more than 90,000 troops to the borders of Ukraine and, according to US intelligence, ordered his military planners to draw up detailed blueprints for a full-scale invasion. Putin insists the build-up is defensive. Russia is acting only in response to a ‘growing threat on our western border’, he told an audience of newly accredited diplomats in the Kremlin earlier this month, and to accuse Moscow of escalating tensions would be ‘laying the blame at the wrong door’.