First, I do believe that the Russian troops on the border with Ukraine are for show. I don't think that Putin wants a traditional invasion of Ukraine as he knows how costly it will be.
That doesn't mean he doesn't want to capture all of Ukraine and its resources and make them part of mother Russia. Let's look a few years back at what happened. Russia and Ukraine were at odds. The Russian naval station (its only warm water port) is located in Crimea, which was part of Russia, until it was given to Ukraine. Putin used “little green men” to invade Crimea. The Ukrainian military was afraid to send troops against what Russia labeled as upset citizens, for fear of looking bad to the world and guilty of war crimes.
Right now Putin has lots of Russian troops who are now assigned as mercenaries on the Ukraine border. I fully expect that Putin will play the political game until things are so tense that Ukraine will do something militarily and then the little green men will be sent in to really turn up the heat. At that point Ukrainian military forces will be forced into all out combat and Russia will complain to the world of Ukrainian military attacking Russian citizens in eastern Ukraine. At that point Putin will either send in troops hoping that the west demands a truce and ceasefire or Putin will conduct a devastating attack that will scare the West into telling Ukraine to submit. I could envision an a non-nuclear missile attack against either Kiev or Odessa that destroys large parts of the city, or maybe even a blockage of the Black Sea by the Russian military.
While I agree, that Putin is not ready for a land war on the Ukraine border, I do believe he is planning on conquering it very shortly and making it either part of Russia or a Russian puppet state.
“While I agree, that Putin is not ready for a land war on the Ukraine border, I do believe he is planning on conquering it very shortly and making it either part of Russia or a Russian puppet state.”
It seems as if Putin is trying to reestablish the borders of the Soviet Union. Russia is in a demographic collapse. The Russian education system disappeared. The technically trained and competent Russian military and scientists are soon to retire or die at their desks from old age. At a recent fire on board a submarine where new technology was being tested the many deaths were all senior captains. A room full of technically trained men who were all so long in the service (old) they were all senior captains...working as technicians. One of them grabbed the youngest man in the compartment and threw him through the hatch before sealing them all inside so they could try (and fail) to stop the evolving disaster.
If Russia doesn’t retake the old borders, which are defensible, then the only alternative they’ll ever have when threatened is to go nuclear.
At best improving the borders will only save Russia for about forty years. Probably along about that time it will become a majority Muslim country...with a huge nuclear arsenal and very few technically trained people.
........”The Ukrainian military was afraid to send troops against what Russia labeled as upset citizens, for fear of looking bad to the world and guilty of war crimes”.........
Actually when Ukraine lost Crimea they had zero ability to do anything.....Putin shut down all their military communications. They had no way of communicating. In fact our Leading Military Officers at Nato spoke about how impressed and astounded they were how Putin pulled it all off.....but that it also revealed Putins technical capability at that time.