And yes, it all presumed only token resistance by such Ukrainian soldiers as would fight at all. They would need to move quickly overland to seize the cities nearest to the border such as Kharkov less than twenty miles away, or by large-airlift to reach distant Lviv, or helicoptered to simultaneously seize the regional capitals, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the north-east, to Odessa in the south west, and Zaporizhia in the center-east, in addition to Kyiv, itself a metropolis of almost three million inhabitants. To do the same thing across the 1500 kilometre width of Ukraine, it would take not less than half a million well-trained soldiers. Both are small but significant territories - Abkhazia because it is the southernmost, most “Mediterranean” of all Russian-controlled territories, with oranges and lemons as well as a nominally independent government, and South Ossetia because it is an Orthodox enclave in the mostly Muslim Caucasus. That is how he gained Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 after inter-ethnic fighting, and broken cease-fires since 1994. Of course, reckless gamblers are undeterred by risks, but Putin’s record until a week ago was that of a very patient hunter, who waits until the target walks into his sights, only then pressing the trigger for a sure hit. The original intel estimate of 127,000 troops was grossly inadequate, and when it was raised to 150,000 including forces already within the Russian-held parts of eastern Ukraine, it was still much too low for a coup de main that would start and end the war in one go - the only kind of war that Russia can fight without quickly incurring dangerous levels of economic damage. There was no sign that the Russian army was stripping its bases as far away as Khabarovsk to assemble enough troops for a swift coup de main takeover of Europe’s largest country. When the US “Intelligence Community” of 17 different agencies started issuing imminent invasion warnings more than a month ago, I disbelieved them.
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