Ukraine: if not an invasion, then what?

A Russian Threat to Ukraine?

by Alexander J. Motyl

 Far more in Putin’s interests is a weak and pliant Ukraine.

The Russian armed forces, at about three-quarters of a million troops,

 are several times larger than the Ukrainian army; their budget allocations are much larger, their weapons more modern, their training better. 

Let’s start with the alarming question many people are now asking and then consider other forms of possible Russian intervention in the ongoing Ukrainian Revolution. It was on January 31st that Vladimir Putin’s former adviser, the economist Andrei Illarionov, shocked Ukrainians with his claim that the Kremlin has already developed several scenarios ranging from “control over all of Ukraine” to “control” over several provinces. His views might have been dismissed as alarmist were it not for the fact that Ukrainians have been expecting a more forceful Russian response to the ongoing revolution for weeks.

Imagine two possible scenarios: 

(1) a full-scale invasion of all, most, or much of Ukraine and 

(2) a limited invasion of one or two provinces of Ukraine. 

In both instances, the point would presumably be annexation, occupation, or longer-term control.

Now let’s ask several sub-questions: 

(1) Does Russia have the military resources to pull off such operations? 

(2) Would they succeed? 

(3) Would they make sense strategically? 

(4) Would the external and internal consequences be acceptable? 

We’ll then ask whether Vladimir Putin would be likely to make such moves. Let me state at the outset that, while the answers to (1) and (2) are positive, the answers to (3) and (4) are not. 

The good news is that Putin would have to be deeply irrational to embark on the kind of full-scale or limited interventions Illarionov has in mind.

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