The single most important sentence in Putin's new comments on Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in expansive comments to a Russian youth forum on Friday just publicized on Saturday, argued that "the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one single people," which is being taken as a major rhetorical step toward occupying or annexing more of Ukraine as Russian territory.

The comments came just a day after Putin referred to the Russia-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine as "the militia of Novorossiya," which means New Russia. Novorossiya is a politically charged, imperial-era term used when southern Ukraine was a part of...