AP--with this announcement today from Russian FSB officer Girkin--- Putin has a choice---cross over and provoke a war with the Ukraine and far more serious sanctions or pull back and lose his reelection.

Do you honestly think he will negotiate his way out? He has been offered a number of times from the West an exit ramp--did he take those offers?

DONETSK, Ukraine — The enigmatic commander-in-chief of Russian-backed rebels in this separatist stronghold conceded on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had seized control of a strategically important city in neighboring Luhansk region, and now has his fighters “completely surrounded.”

Igor Girkin, a Russian citizen better known by his nom de guerre Strelkov or “The Shooter,” said Krasnyi Luch, a town located at a junction of important east-west highways and has been a main artery for the rebels to transport reinforcements from Russia into the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, “has been taken by the enemy.”

“The Donetsk-Horlivka group of the fighters of Novorossiya is completely surrounded,” Girkin said, using the term meaning “New Russia.” Horlivka, another rebel stronghold some 20 miles north of Donetsk, has been under siege by Ukrainian forces for weeks. In previous days, they have heavily shelled the city of 250,000, resulting in dozens of civilian deaths and severe damage to infrastructure.

In announcing the loss, which Girkin said was “nothing strange” since he had “repeatedly warned” it would happen, the pencil-mustachioed self-declared defense minister of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic recognized the significant advancements made by government troops in recent days.