Roland Oliphant
World News, Jan. 15, 2022
“If the air, missile and artillery campaign does not succeed in forcing concessions, it will be followed by ground forces.”
Discerning Vladimir Putin’s military plans for Ukraine quickly runs into a simple problem: he has the capability to do almost anything.
He could launch airstrikes similar to NATO’s campaign against Serbia in 1999. He could try a demonstrative but destructive ground incursion, as he did in Georgia in 2008. Or he could launch a grand Second World War-style invasion, encircle Kyiv, and annex half the country. But war, to cite Carl von Clausewitz’s over-quoted truism, is the continuation of policy by other means. And that can give us some clues about the looming campaign.
More intimidation
“Everyone is talking about invasion, but I can think of lots of things Putin could do short of invasion,” said Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine analyst at the Chatham House think tank. “And the West would be left wondering, again, what to do.”
