The Ukraine crisis may be more intractable, and therefore more dangerous, than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev did not risk a vital Soviet interest in provoking the latter, thus he was able to declare victory with just Kennedy's public pledge to never again aid an invasion of Cuba, which having failed once, he was loath to repeat anyway. In contrast, it is difficult to disagree with Putin's assessment that keeping Ukraine in the Eurasian sphere is a vital Russian interest; however, the Ukrainian people are looking to Europe for their future, not to Eurasia, and Putin's only hope of holding onto Ukraine is via the use of force, as Khrushchev put it, to pull tighter the knot of war.
Putin has trapped himself by framing the Ukraine crisis in terms of changing the lines on the map: annexing Crimea, and carving rump states out of eastern Ukraine that would be subservent to Moscow. Unfortunately, changing the lines on the map is inherently a zero-sum game; someone wins territory, and the other side loses territory. Kennedy was able to finesse the trade of Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey, but there is no way to hide the trading of territory. Chamberlain gambled on giving the Sudetenland to Hitler without putting up a fight. The European Union will not make that mistake with Putin, and so he has already lost his gamble.
Despite coming way from the Cuban Missile Crisis with the semblance of a victory, Khrushchev was weakened in his standing within the Presidium, and his political rivals deposed him two years later. It is safe to say that Putin understands Russian history as well as anyone, and that he knows that to lose Ukraine is to lose his presidency. He has no choice but to pull tighter the knot of war. He has already lost, but he may believe that the semblance of a victory lies in making Ukraine and the West pay dearly.
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