Few people outside Putin's inner circle know what he is planning to do. Analysts say this could be another attempt to gain leverage over Ukraine and a warning to the West not to meddle in the Kremlin's strategic and spiritual backyard. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday in Sweden that Russia had plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine and that we are deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for major aggressive moves against Ukraine, as well as a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an international security organization.
He said that we don't know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he s putting in place the capacity to do so in short order should he so decide. A day earlier in the day, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Russia that it would pay a high price if it invaded.
On Thursday, Blinken is scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Stockholm. Blinken is also meeting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Such an incursion is not hypothetical. In 2014 Russia invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea while supporting separatists fighting a war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed 14,000 lives.
Russia's fixation with Ukraine is as much about nationalist emotion as it is about strategy. In July, Putin published a 5,000-word essay arguing that Ukraine is part of historical Russia and that the two countries were essentially the same historical and spiritual space. Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. Russian officials deny they are planning an invasion, saying troops are deployed for military exercises. The Russian Foreign Ministry, which previously criticized NATO for military drills in the neighboring Black Sea, accused Ukraine on Wednesday of sending 125,000 troops to the border region.
These tit-for-tat exchanges are commonplace. Putin's rhetoric has changed. He opposed joining NATO, something that the country has wanted to do for years but has faced opposition from the alliance, which says Kyiv has not done enough to fight domestic corruption.
On Tuesday, Putin said he had new red lines - Washington and its allies must not deploy missiles in Ukraine capable of hitting Moscow. He said that we will have to create something similar in relation to that.
Vladimir Frolov, a foreign policy analyst in Moscow, said that this is no longer just about Ukraine joining NATO. Russia is trying to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO aircraft carrier, he said.
Since 2014, the U.S. has contributed $2.5 billion to Ukraine's military. The most significant weapons are anti-tank Javelin missiles, given on condition they are stored hundreds of miles away from the front lines.
Putin is operating from a position of relative strength. In April, the Constitutional changes removed Russia's conventional term limits and will allow him to rule until 2036. His domestic approval rating, which has soared after the invasion of Crimea, is lower now but still sits in the high 60 s, according to the Levada-Center, an independent Russian pollster.