by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing about the situation in Ukraine is you just never know. It could be yet more posturing on the part of the Russians and it could be Something Big. As you may know, the Russians have begun to — yet again — throw troops at the Ukrainian border as if they’re about to do something.
While it would, on the face of it, make sense for there to be a spring offensive, that misses how small the Russian economy is in real terms. The Russians can want to eat up a big chunk of Ukraine all they want to, but they just don’t have the economy to support such a thing. And the last thing Putin wants right now is to destabilize his country even more.
I guess he might think a general war in Ukraine might bolster his support, but even if he got what he wanted in Ukraine, he would struggle to actually keep it. But there have been rumblings that it might be the Ukrainians who did a spring offensive so throwing that into the mix really scrambles some assumptions we have about any conflict.
All I can say is, this is something to keep an eye on. The situation in eastern Ukraine flares up every once in a while and so it’s possible nothing will come of it. But it is of note that Ukraine is one of three other potential hotspots that the Biden Administration is going to have to deal with sooner or later. The other two, of course, being Iran and the DPRK.
