Who would have thought that it is the hard power driven Vladimir Putin who would demonstrate to the world the use of the whole spectrum of power tools in the 21st century. He learned from his past mistakes, picked up our debate on soft/smart power, and, by the time he decided to invade Ukraine, he knew exactly how to wield the whole set of his tools.

While Russia pulls its troops back from the Ukrainian border, a second instrument of Russian power remains firmly in place: a network of Kremlin-funded media outlets that is bringing news of the Ukraine crisis to millions of people worldwide. RT, a state-owned multilingual television network that’s Russia’s answer to CNN(TWX) and Al-Jazeera, made headlines earlier this year when one of its American anchors announced her resignation on the air, saying she did not want to work for a network that “whitewashes the actions” of President Vladimir Putin.

President Obama urged the world Wednesday to help Ukraine as it faces economic challenges, Russian threats and separatist violence in the eastern and southern regions. "We're confident that Ukraine can, in fact, be a thriving, vital democracy that has strong relationships with Europe and has strong relationships with Russia," Obama said after his first face-to-face meeting with Ukraine President-elect Petro Poroshenko.

The president will land in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday morning where he will help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the solidarity movement. He then heads to Brussels for a G7 summit on Wednesday. He’ll dine privately with French President François Hollande in Paris on Thursday and commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy on Friday — all while Russian President Vladimir Putin is nearby.

Vladimir Putin uses an invisible army of social media propagandists, in addition to conventional media, to support his narrative of an out-of-control Ukraine, to spread fabrications of atrocities by Ukrainian extremists, and to unleash destabilizing rumors on east Ukraine.

Putting his personal seal on the annexation of Crimea, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in the naval port of Sevastopol on Friday, where he used the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany to assert that Moscow had the right to take over the Black Sea peninsula.

As Ukraine's political divisions play out on the geopolitical stage, the country also faces an unsettling schism among its main churchgoers.  Now Filaret says that Ukraine's growing political crisis is a signal from above that it's time to unite all of the Orthodox faithful into a single church.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the internet as a CIA project. During a speech at a media forum in St. Petersburg, he said Russia would have to "fight for its interests" online. New laws passed in the last few days show just how serious he was.