by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I still don’t believe Putin is going to make a major land grab in Ukraine. Until something changes, for the time being Putin is all talk. This is yet another one of his occasional efforts to remind us what a massive cocksucker he is.
And, yet, if he were to attack Ukraine, I think his ultimate war aims would be rather modest. All he would want to do is connect Donbas to Crimea. That’s it. If he was feeling esspecially frisky, he might go for Odessa as well, simply because it would make sense for him to take it while he was at it.
Putin would want to take just enough of Ukraine to connect what he already controls, without causing the collapse of the Ukrainian government. If mass chaos struck Ukraine, there’s a really good chance there would be a far Right coup of some sort and some serious irredentism would take hold of the rump state of Ukraine.
If that happened, that would not be a war that Putin, with a very small economy, could win long-term.
