UPDATE: Here's a report:
Details of a classified intelligence assessment viewed by CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr show a "more probable" likelihood that Russia could move into eastern Ukraine. ...
Among new details about Russia's possible intentions in the report:
Russian troops on the border of eastern Ukraine — now more than 30,000 — number "significantly more" than what is needed for what Russia is calling a training exercise.
These troops include a large number of motorized units, which have the ability to deploy quickly. There also appears to be a higher level of activity among special forces, airborne, and air transport troops inside Russia.
Additional intelligence shows more Russian forces "reinforcing" the border region.
I doubted reports that the Russians could run to Transdniestria with 20,000 troops near Ukraine's eastern border.
Could it be that the pristine nature of the Crimea invasion force made it easier to use most of those for a follow-up invasion of southern Ukraine? That is, will Ukraine regret not fighting even a losing battle for Crimea because it both encourages Russia to think they can get more while they can and because Russian troops that took Crimea don't have to rest, refit, and replace casualties?
And another television reports say 80,000 Russians are now massed across from eastern Ukraine. That's a real threat.
But could the Russians pull off more than a road march that deep through Ukraine? Do the Russians think that they just need to march through Ukraine without effective resistance? Are the Russians right?
UPDATE: Could John Kerry set aside his global warming and Palestinian obsessions and actually work on the crisis at hand? Our Pakistan land lines of supply to Afghanistan should be nailed down any day now, okay?
If Russia just wants a land bridge to Crimea and Transdniestria:
Amphibious forces and airborne forces would hit Odessa while other unused forces in Crimea strike north into the mainland. Russian mechanized forces supported by airborne and airmobile troops landing ahead of the mechanized troops push into eastern Ukraine to take the biggest cities and to control the major east-west roads in the south.
Would that green east-west route north of my projected lines of advance be used, too? That would give the Russians more depth, but potentially face opposition from the Ukrainian 8th Corps in the Kiev region.
It would help to know where the purported 80,000 Russian troops are massed. The news isn't being more specific than being on Russia's border with eastern Ukraine.
Spetsnaz organize militias as they did in Crimea to give the pretense of rescuing Crimeans some apparent substance.
But this is a bigger deal than Crimea. Ukraine says they'll fight. The Russians will have to do more than a road march or landing at an airport to pull this off.
And if 80,000 are poised off of Ukraine's eastern border, if you include the troops in Crimea, that pretty much soaks up all the available decent Russian troops.
Unless some of the 80,000 are the less-ready troops being committed--which would increase the chances of mistakes if the invasion is resisted.
Ukraine's 6th Corps will be tested quite a bit in this scenario. Unless the Russians are bluffing. And the Russians did say they weren't going to invade. We can trust them, right?
UPDATE: I don't know how many landmines Ukraine has left, but they should be dusted off pretty darn fast.
If Ukraine survives this crisis, they need to withdraw from the treaty.
UPDATE: Could Turkey close the Turkish straits to Russian ships as a punishment for invading Ukraine? Could a NATO declaration of a threat to member states as a result of a Russian invasion of Ukraine provide added justification?
Closing the straits to Russian warships would pretty much make the Russian conquest of Crimea moot in regard to power projection ambitions.
UPDATE: Note that I speculate on a mostly southern route to avoid having to make a major river-crossing operation across the Dnieper River. Except at Dnepropetrovsk, the Russian advance mostly gets to avoid the river in order to link up with Crimea.
At some point, to reach Odessa and points west, the Russians have to cross the river in the south, but they delay that operation perhaps past the point when Ukrainian resistance collapses.
UPDATE: There is still uncertainty as to Russian troop strength. Is it 20K? 30K? 80K? 100K?
Varying numbers could be the result of counting troops exercising in the field and adding or excluding troops in normal bases nearby. But when I hear a report that says intelligence people say an invasion is "imminent"--with all the baggage that term holds these days--it seemed, well, possibly imminent.
UPDATE: We say the activity is not consistent with spring exercises, but the numbers involved don't seem to indicate a drive on all of southern Ukraine:
The United States sees no indications that Russian forces along the border with Ukraine are carrying out the kind of springtime military exercises that Moscow has cited as the reason for their deployment, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
Ukraine's government has put its heavily outnumbered and outgunned forces on alert for an invasion from Russia in the east following Moscow's seizure of Crimea, as the West moves to isolate Russia diplomatically and pressure it economically.
U.S. and European security agencies estimate Russia has deployed military and militia units totaling more than 30,000 people along its border with eastern Ukraine.
Thirty thousand army troops seems more in line with my pre-war speculation of what the Russians would use to take a stretch of eastern Ukraine from Kharkov to Donetz.
But they seem ready to do something.
Note that the Ukrainians aren't as badly outnumbered as it is being made out. If the Ukrainians can put three divisions in the field plus reserves, you are talking more troops than the Russians seem prepared to invade Ukraine with.
Granted, even an efficient Ukrainian army couldn't abandon the rest of Ukraine to defend the east, but Ukraine can resist. And can make the Russians pay a price for further aggression.
Put those surface-to-surface missiles within range of Sevastopol just to strike back at Russia's new naval base there.
And I wonder if intelligence warnings of an imminent invasion overcompensate for missing the Crimea invasion until shortly before it began.
