War in Ukraine

I had been thinking, or perhaps hoping, that the Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine was an elaborate feint, intended to provide cover for a smaller-scale operation, such as a partial occupation of the Donbas, but today’s events seem to indicate that Vladimir Putin has a bigger objective in his sights, though exactly what that is is still unclear. An invasion of the entire country would surely be significantly more trouble than it was worth, so Putin may be content to inflict a heavy defeat on the Ukrainian army before withdrawing to the newly-declared republics in the east, perhaps retaining territory along the Sea of Azov to secure a land corridor to Crimea.

Of course the war is unlikely to play out exactly the way that Putin intends, and there is always the risk of unintended escalation, but one does not get the impression that there is any appetite in the West for a general continental war, so the actual violence will probably be confined within the borders of Ukraine. The diplomatic and economic effects of the crisis will spread more widely though, and the long-term consequences of a full-scale renewal of the Cold War are unlikely to be benign. I’m clinging to the hope that, contrary to recent appearances, Putin is in fact a rational actor who has some sort of strategic plan, and that things won’t get too out of hand, but that belief may prove hard to sustain in the days ahead.