https://www.vox.com/22917719/russia-ukraine-invasion-border-crisis-nato-explained
Putin himself has to decide what he wants. “He has two options,” said Olga Lautman, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. One is “to say, ‘Never mind, just kidding,’ which will show his weakness and shows that he was intimidated by US and Europe standing together — and that creates weakness for him at home and with countries he’s attempting to influence.”
“Or he goes full forward with an attack,” she said. “At this point, we don’t know where it’s going, but the prospects are very grim.”
The best theory I heard is that, assuming NATO doesn't remove troops from the Baltics and confirm that Russia can have them back, Putin will skip the border war, land troops in Kiev, capture the government and install a new one from his local supporters. It has the advantage that it can be done quickly and by the time Biden wakes up from his nap and Johnson sleeps off his latest binge, it'll be over and then what do you do?
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