The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting on Wednesday in Moscow with top officials of economic ministries and leaders of the southern and Azov sea regions — ‘Novorossiya’ historically — signifies a major initiative in the Kremlin’s geo-strategy, with global ramifications, as the conflict in Ukraine meanders toward a new phase.

What lends poignancy to the occasion at once is that Putin is beating the swords into ploughshares at a juncture when the US and its allies sounding bugles. Indeed, one way of looking at Wednesday’s meeting is that it is a riposte to the fanciful conjecture 10 days earlier by French President Emmanuel Macron that European armies might march into Ukraine to push back Russians.

Putin signalled something profound — that war cries to defeat Russia is already time past.

There is much unfinished business still. A big concentration of Russian military facing Kharkov is ominous. Odessa is also in Russian sights.

Reacting to the West’s thickening plot in Moldova, Transnistria has sought protection from Moscow. There is a big population of ethnic Russians in that region. The response from the Kremlin has been positive and swift. Shades of Donbass!

The crux of the matter, in geopolitical terms, is that Novorossiya is rising from the ashes like the phoenix and becoming, as Catherine the Great envisaged, Russia’s most important all-weather gateway to the world market connecting its vast untold mineral resources and huge agricultural potential.