by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
First, a few things. One, I’m not an expert on this situation, just someone who has been interested in the area my entire life. Also, I just don’t think Putin is going to start any type of major war against Ukraine. It just would not make any sense. But, I love to run scenarios, so let’s run this one and see what we end up with.
From what I can tell, at the moment, the Russian build up around the Ukrainian theatre of operations is exclusively in and around the Donbas area. This would lead me to believe that the Russians are thinking about a quick smash and grab operation that would connect their holding in Donbas to the Crimea that they also control.
That’s it. That’s all Putin wants going into things.
Any additional territory that he was able to secure would be icing on the cake. I could see that happening if, say, something happened so the Ukrainian central government unexpectedly collapsed. Then, maybe Putin might drive towards Odessa as well.
But, in general, otherwise, the actual land that Putin wants to take from Ukraine would be modest. Yes, it would be a big deal — a huge deal — if he attempted to take any additional land by force, but I also we’re talking about a war that was started to be brief and sharp. Putin gets his land bridge and then he just stops.
The territory he would be small enough that he could control it long term and he could use it establish the long term idea of Novorossiya. Putin is a really smart guy. Unless he can see some long-term benefit, he will probably stop at a land bridge and ignore Odessa.
His plan would be that in another five years or so, he starts to keep towards Odessa. He does another smash-and-grab attack to get Odessa and so forth and so on for the next few decades. That, at least, to me, seems Putin’s long term goal at the moment.
The brief, bloody attack on Ukraine by Russian forces would scare the shit out of people all over the world because they would think WW3 was about to begin, but, in real terms, the actual war would be so short that it would quickly fade from memory.
Another reason why I just can’t imagine Putin doing anything too big with Ukraine is there are a lot of nations around Russia full of people chomping at the bit to aid the Ukrainians in any fight against the Russians. And NATO would begin to funnel a massive amount of arms and supplies to the Ukrainians if the war lasted too long or got too big.
Hopefully, however, all of this is just a scenario.
