Moscow: A year since the start of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may not have emerged the winner in his showdown with the West but he has not lost either, analysts say.

By supporting Ukrainian separatists, they say, he took a huge risk but it largely paid off as it allowed him to punish Kiev’s pro-Western authorities for seeking to turn their back on Russia and stand up to the West.

Most importantly for the Kremlin, the annexation of Crimea and support for fellow Russian speakers in Ukraine’s east have given a huge boost to Putin’s popularity ratings at home.

According to a February study from the Levada Centre independent polling group, the number of people who want Putin to seek a fourth term in 2018 has more than doubled to 57 per cent since December 2013.

“What Putin wanted was clear a year ago — he wanted a blocking stake in Ukraine or — the next best option — a manageable conflict,” Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, told AFP.

“To a large degree the Kremlin has achieved what it wanted.”

Ukraine marks the first anniversary of the start of the conflict in a hugely demoralised state with its economy shattered and NATO membership a very distant, if not impossible, prospect.

“They managed to keep Ukraine out of Nato because it is struggling with two unresolved territorial disputes,” Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told AFP. If Putin gambled that the West would not move to burn all its bridges with Russia nor engage the former Cold War foe militarily, he was right.

While Washington has been vocal in its assertion that Moscow has been sending troops over the border to buttress Ukrainian separatists, it has held off on supplying Kiev with lethal weapons over fears of escalation.

Economy-wise, the US and European Union have forged a united front, slapping Russia with several rounds of sanctions, but decided against radical measures like cutting Moscow off from the SWIFT banking system.

Russia has withstood the blow, and the government recently declared that the worst was over for the recession-hit economy.

“Putin will neither give up nor back off,” Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent report.