Putin is painting a bullseye on himself. Given his vast wealth i would think it’s not in his best interest to invade the Ukraine.
Ultimately Putin can take or leave Ukraine. The real endgame is fracturing the West. He’s drumming up a border dispute, but in a hazy, deniable fashion*, in order to exacerbate political divisions in the institutions and alliances that have the power to obstruct his other initiatives — inside the US, between the US and Europe, between the countries of the EU. If those are weakened, Russia is elevated in relative strength and can operate more freely. Whether or not any part of Ukraine is actually added to Russia’s sphere of control is more or less immaterial.
The tricky bit is that he has to make the threat of invasion plausible in order to get the West worked up enough to want to respond. If the West correctly reads Putin’s bigger plan and refuses to take his bait to escalate, then Putin can, in fact, take Ukrainian territory with impunity. That would be nice for him, but that doesn’t achieve his larger goal. Everyone here is basically trying to thread their own situationally-specific needle, Putin included.
* I’m actually seeing a few squishy-lefty types in my friend circle saying things like “Putin says he doesn’t want to invade!” and “Ukraine’s president says a Russian invasion isn’t imminent!” in order to say “this is all the US beating the drum of war like usual!” which of course is soft-headed nonsense. The US has bloody historical hands, to be sure, and its realpolitik motives should always be examined, but to say the US is unilaterally manufacturing tension on the Russia-Ukraine border where none exists is a wildly inapposite misreading of the current circumstances.
Putin missed a trick, he should have made his move when Trump was in power.
After the Afghanistan withdrawal, he is maybe testing Biden, see whether the US will withdraw some more in Europe. China is also probing for weaknesses in the US alliances around the South China Sea.
I guess they both will be looking forward to 2024 which might see another change in US leadership that will present opportunities for them to expand their influence.
The US isolationism was a thing during the 20th century and may well feature in the 21st. I am sure there are plenty of voters in the US who are more interested in internal culture wars rather than any of these superpower shenanigans.
The end of the Pax Americana may usher in a Pax China with a different set of priorities. Russia will look for the return of satellite states under its control as a buffer to threats from the West. But what are they? A Germany threatening to buy even more natural gas?
Developed economies are invested in the global trade and that is a lot more powerful than military hardware.
Russians are not going to be dancing around the flag for long if Putin invades Ukraine and the result is a deep recession. Rich Russians will not be happy if their playgrounds around the world are less welcoming of them and their ill gotten gains. The US has a huge amount of economic power it can wield. The Iranians know how bad that can be. Putin knows that. Biden is threatening sanctions. Germany and other states dependent on Russian natural gas will be building wind farms and LNG terminals as fast as they can.
I have a strange compulsion to read the comments at OANN. They’re saying the same thing.
Putin is winning the effort to fracture the west.
I think the ‘end war game’ for Putin is to see how this plays out. He’s got the force in place to take at least eastern Ukraine and possibly even some territory in the southwest and north-central such as Kyiv (Kiev). In theory, at least they should be able to take all the territory east of the Dnieper, and if they can at a minimum threaten Kyiv they could force Ukraine to capitulate on Russia’s terms. They could cut off Ukrainian access to the black sea and have a contiguous corridor with their territory in Crimea.
Of course, this could have a potentially huge political and economic consequence for Russia that will far outweigh any potential gains (assuming this is a cakewalk and they don’t take substantial casualties taking all of this). So, at this point, I think Putin is watching to see what the response is.
Personally, I think he overplayed his hand. Sure, he COULD take at least the eastern half of Ukraine, but the cost would be more than the gain, and it would be a long-term cost. ISTM that the Europeans are starting to wake up and get more or less in line wrt heavy sanctions if Russia pulls the trigger, with even the Germans finally on board…even though they have put themselves into a position where it will really hurt them to do so because they are so dependent on Russia for energy. Still, part of the ‘end game’ for Putin is to try and split up the western European alliances, especially with the US, and to force the US to disassociate itself from outside world events…to go back to basically an isolationist stance and erode any sort of US attachment or alliance outside of our own immediate neighborhood. It’s the exact same thing China is doing, and as others have mentioned they are watching all of this keenly. Both Russia and China were watching the cluster fuck in Afghanistan, and I think both felt this was an opportunity to push the US and see what happened. Russia is or was obviously the first trial balloon on this. It doesn’t seem to be working out as, at least at this time, the US is calling their bluff (not that the military threat is a bluff…it’s very real, and Russia has not just the force structure but the logistics in place to actually take large chunks of Ukraine if they want to pull the trigger).
What is the explanation given for the money and effort wasted by massing forces at the border, in that case?
I don’t think Putin et al have to give any sort of explanation, but they could basically say it is a readiness exercise if they ever have to do a full deployment. That’s actually plausible, as it’s important to know, especially wrt the logistics, if they CAN do something like this. There are going to be a lot of lessons learned (or relearned, as this is something the old Red Army would have been familiar with doing), and it shows the current state of the Russian military and its capability.
Why would he undermine his biggest asset like that? The time for Putin to act is now, when he can undermine Biden and lay the groundwork to reinstall Trump.
Of course, 2022 is not a Presidential election year, but it’s a midterm election that decides 2 important things:
- Who counts the electoral votes in 2024
- Whether the Jan 6th commission continues
So if Putin wants to get more mileage out of Trump as an asset, or at least a useful idiot lapdog, now is the time for him to act. And all signs point to something happening mid-February.
You seem to be making several assumptions in this, the biggest one being that Biden et al will screw up by the numbers and/or back down completely. Why? There doesn’t seem to be any indications Biden is screwing this up or is planning to back down in any way…in fact, it looks to me as if the US is doing a pretty good job of ramping up the pressure and especially the consequences IF Russia decides to pull the trigger on this. I’m unsure what else the US could or would do in this case and I’m curious why you think the blowback would tar Biden or the Democrats to give them some sort of black eye wrt the midterms or next presidential election.
A potential problem with that, is that might actually put the Madman deterrence theory to the test. Most likely Trump would play to good lap dog and bow down, but there is also the possibility that Trump or one of his “advisors” would say “What have I got all these Nuclear weapons for if we don’t use them against an invading Russian army”.
I know how much 'dopers hate when I link to YouTube videos, but I thought this one was well done, giving several of the pro-invasion/anti-invasion arguments I have also been thinking about. Anyway, here is the link. The Too Long Didn’t Watch/Spoil it for me XT version is that the reasons against an invasion are that he’s really missed his optimal chance to invade with the least potential consequences because NATO nations have come to a consensus on heavy sanctions and other economic hits to Russia if they decide to invade, after all, secondly, Putin actually hasn’t prepared the Russian people for war or its consequences as he did in other cases, and third that Russia has already pushed Ukraine to be more anti-Russian and another invasion and territory grab will irrevocably push them away from Russia and also prep NATO, even more, to invite in whatever is left. He goes into detail about each of those, but I find it pretty good logic that also coincides with my own thinking on this, FWIW. The pro-invasion points are that the window of opportunity for Putin is closing and he knows it, the second being the troop build-up itself and the fact that Putin seems to be doubling down by bringing in additional forces from their eastern districts (over 6000 miles away) at huge cost, and third that despite the consequences he had to know about wrt Crimea he went ahead and pulled the trigger on that anyway.
I think the video is a pretty good thumbnail take on the pros and cons of Russia pulling the trigger on this thing. The keen-eyed observer will note that Trump is never mentioned in either pro or con. 
Russia is very almost certain to roll through Ukraine in the next 2-3 weeks, with no significant opposition. Militarily, there’s almost nothing Biden can do to stop it. It will likely roil international energy markets, spike the price of gas, add fuel to inflation, and throw the stock market into turmoil.
None of that is Biden’s fault… he has no good options here… but Republicans will have no problem spinning it into a narrative of “America in decline, faces stunning humiliation under Biden’s weak hand.” Which is dishonest and unfair, but again we’re talking about Republicans here.
Simply, they don’t have the military force to roll through all of Ukraine in that time frame. That level of force could probably take southeastern Ukraine…where they have a lot of local support and where there are several rebel factions…in that time frame with what they have. But not all of Ukraine. Sorry, that’s just not realistic unless we are talking Afghanistan levels of collapse, which I’m not seeing.
So what? I mean, frankly, Republicans and conservatives are going to be against anything he does, so it seems moot. Unless you are thinking that this will also affect unaligned independents and the fence Democrats, I don’t see how the points you made that I was responding to make any sort of difference. Republicans and conservatives are ALREADY not going to vote for Biden, regardless, and this isn’t going to undermine Biden one bit with his own base or with those on the fence or unaligned. At least I’m not seeing it. I also don’t see how Putin could be making the calculations you are attributing to him wrt having to act ‘now’ because of any of this. In fact, as I said, I think the opposite is the case…he’s already missed his opportunity if he wanted to make Biden look bad or weak or undermine him. Biden…the US really…has already gotten the rest of NATO on board with tougher potential sanctions IF Russia invades, including getting the Germans to change position wrt sanctions and the Nord Stream II project being on the table as potential blowback. That’s huge. And, frankly, no one on either side would want the US to commit to deploying troops in Ukraine against Russia, and if the Republicans tried to say that we needed to do that they would just undermine themselves. We are doing what can be done, and the ball is in Putin’s court…and the Biden administration has done the spadework to hammer Russia if they choose to go forward, as well as sent direct military aid to help the Ukrainians, which is the best we could do.
I’m not sure why Putin’s held off on the trigger so long. Is the ground still as frozen hard as ever and no danger of the spring thaw making it a muddy mess? The Russians just moved a lot of blood into the theater, and that stuff goes bad quickly if not used. When Europe gets warmer it won’t need Russian gas as much as before. Seems like half a month ago was already Putin’s best time.
Is the weather still a factor like it was during WWII? Even Ukrainian has modern roads and highways now.
Well, it’s always a concern. If you have a column of tanks advancing down a paved road only wide enough for one tank with muddy fields on each side, and you hit a tank at the front and at the back of the column, you may have stranded the column. If the fields are dry and passable, they can maneuver around the immobilized tanks.
It’s hard to say why he held off as long as he did. My WAG is he never intended to pull the trigger, that this was a way to threaten and get the west (and Ukraine) to make concessions, the biggest was that NATO would not allow Ukraine in as a member. He also probably wanted to push the west into not supporting Ukraine wrt military weapons as well. Secondary goals were probably to fracture NATO to some extent, or at least undermine it. He knew (or thought he did) that the Germans especially wouldn’t push things and would be more on Russia’s side simply because of how dependent they are on Russian energy, and that Nord Stream II especially would break the Germans off of any sort of hard core response. He also might have figured that Biden wouldn’t risk getting the US involved here when our focus is on China and the Taiwan Straights these days and also might have thought Biden couldn’t pull together the political capital and will to stand up to Russia over Ukraine. It wasn’t going exactly as he wanted, so he doubled (and now tripled I suppose) down by addressing one of the criticisms of the last time he tried this…namely that it wasn’t a credible threat since he hadn’t included any of the logistics tail you’d actually need to do anything substantial in Ukraine. Now he’s caught and it’s a matter of finding a way to back down or pull the trigger. It’s why he’s now coming out, saying ridiculous shit like the US/NATO are ignoring their security concerns and not taking any of their reasonable demands seriously.
Ukraine has asked the West, and particularly the United States, to stop exaggerating, panicking, and talking bullshit (in diplomatic language, of course).
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has again insisted that Russia does not currently have enough troops in place to mount a further invasion of Ukraine
Also on Wednesday, the White House said it would stop referring to a Russian attack as imminent after Ukrainian complaints.
…
It comes after a period of mutual frustration between President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s team and US officials, with those in Kyiv repeatedly saying Washington is exaggerating the imminence of the threat.
One factor which has particularly irked the Ukrainians is the decision by the US and Britain to remove some non-essential staff and dependents from their embassies and advise their citizens to leave the country.
…
At a press conference last Friday, Zelenskiy criticised that decision, and also said he judged the threat from Russia to be no higher than during a previous troop buildup in spring last year.
Zelenskiy said, “We don’t have any misunderstandings with President Biden. I just deeply understand what’s happening in my country, just as he does with the US.” – which, translated from diplomatic language, means “Biden understands fuck all about Ukraine.”
Strange comments from Zelensky but perhaps he’s playing politics too. The Ukrainian populace is generally quite “meh” about this threat, so it makes sense for him to downplay it too. But objectively speaking, this is one of the largest deployments seen since WWII and on multiple fronts with all the logistics apparently ready for an invasion. And Russia relatively recently annexed Crimea.
It would begger belief for the international community to not take this as a severe threat, and not consider the likelihood of invasion to be very high.
People who are “meh” about threats of invasion deserve to be invaded.