History could not be clearer.

The diversion of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict into the Sea of Azov is precisely the kind of escalation that has preceded Europe's past cataclysms.

A great power treats a little one with contempt.

A little one responds with violence, expecting friends to come to its aid, diplomatically, economically, then militarily.

For four years, Ukraine has disobeyed the old pragmatism that if you share a border with a powerful dictator, you behave with extreme caution.

Kiev's anti-communists flirted with Nato - with the US's encouragement - at a time when Georgia was also flirting and the Baltic states had already joined. Vladimir Putin echoed Yeltsin, that Russia would "take this as a direct threat to the security of our country".

When Ukraine elected a pro-western leadership in 2014, Moscow supported an uprising in its Russian-speaking eastern provinces.

There followed Moscow's invasion of Ukrainian Crimea, and now a tightening of the noose on Ukraine's eastern ports. Ten thousand Ukrainians have already died in this secret war.

It is classic escalation.

Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, is accused of hanging tough as he faces defeat in forthcoming elections.

On Sunday he appealed to "Ukraine's allies to stand united" against Russia.

He did not specify who they were, or what they should do. After the invasion of Crimea, a ragbag of trade, financial and travel sanctions were imposed on Moscow by western powers.

As usual, such feel-good weapons had no effect beyond counter-productivity.

Sanctions cemented Putin more closely in power and to his cronies.

They encouraged him to ever greater mischief, backing Russian minorities in bordering states and cyber-meddling in western elections.

The thesis that impoverishment would somehow force him to cease from, as he sees it, restoring Russia's pride was absurd. Dictatorship loves poverty.

Sanctions merely fuelled Donald Trump's casual remark last year that Nato was "obsolete".

What is glaring is that Europe now lacks any collective forum in which such escalations can be discussed and possibly resolved. Continue reading

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist, author and BBC broadcaster.
• Royal Oak Foundation

In his opinion piece, Simon Jenkins suggests that we have mistaken electronic connection for genuine conversation. "Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve," he says, "which psychologists have identified ... as 'fear of conversation'. People wear headphones as 'conversational avoidance devices'." While the internet connects us to the whole world, it is not the real world. When every fact can be checked on Google, "doubt and debate become trivial. There is no time for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation".

He offers some practical suggestions about how to start a conversation as well as a list of conversation killers.

• Read Jenkins' article
• Image: Prade Films

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian as well as broadcasting for the BBC.