“We believe President Putin has made the decision,” Mr. Blinken said Sunday, “but until the tanks actually roll and the planes fly, we will use every opportunity and every minute to see can diplomacy still dissuade the president. Putin from further promotion.
Information passed to Mr. Biden from the intelligence services left it unclear whether Mr. Putin’s orders would lead to a massive invasion or a more gradual approach that would give the Russian leader more opportunity to exploit cracks beneath the surface in the Western alliance opposing him. He could, for example, test the assumption that Germany or Italy, the two Western European countries most dependent on Russian gas supplies, may waver in their resolve.
It is these scenarios that were discussed most intensely this weekend at the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of government ministers, corporate executives and strategists in which participants play Mr. Putin’s choice.
“If it’s set to escalate, I don’t think it’s a sudden blitzkrieg to Kiev and the overthrow of the Zelensky government,” said Jan Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical consulting firm. “It is much more likely that this will look like a recognition of the independence of the breakaway territory” around Lugansk, in the east.
“You are hoping that if you are Putin, then this will lead to more fearfulness of some NATO allies, less rapprochement with NATO, more opportunities for Russia to get what it wants without the need for a full-scale intervention in Ukraine,” Mr. Bremmer. .
Updated
February 20, 2022 6:57 pm ET
A few weeks ago, some US officials shared this view. They noted that Mr. Putin appeared to want to achieve his goal of regime change and halting Ukraine’s drift toward the West as cheaply and with as little casualties as possible. All he wanted was a friendly, pliable government like the one he has in Belarus, said one senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to ongoing diplomacy. President of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko linked the security of his country with the presence of the Russian military. (“They will be here for as long as it takes,” said Mr. Lukashenko, who is considering inviting Russia to once again deploy its nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.)
Many suspect that this will be an improvement on Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy. “Putin has designed and demonstrated over a decade of aggressive action that he knows how to fine-tune a half-tone war that is hard to attribute,” said Sen. Chris Koons, a Delaware Democrat close to Mr. Biden.