Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a slow and relentless march

MOSCOW Speed ​​and stealth were once the keys to a successful military campaign.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The Allied invasion on the Normandy shores. The Greek soldiers hiding inside the Trojan Horse. The Israeli air assault that ensured the Six-Day War was so brief.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a different strategy. No flanking maneuvers. Do not sneak attacks. Instead, he is executing a relentless, step-by-step progression — one watched from the sky by spy planes, captured by automobile dashcams or announced live on Russian state television.

If the world is watching the wholesale invasion of Ukraine, as western leaders claim, it may go down as the slowest, most-telegraphed invasion in military history.

Rather than displaying the brutal might of the Russian bear, it is the angry Slavic snail on display, moving slowly-but-steadily toward an as-yet-undefined end-point.

With a simple signature, Putin has defied international law and secured a dubious prize — the economically devastated war-weary Donbass region. The only mystery is where he intends to stop.

“We still believe that Russia is poised to go much further in launching a massive military attack against Ukraine,” US President Joe Biden said Tuesday.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added that, in addition to more than 150,000 troops, Russia has missiles, armored vehicles, battle tanks, drones, electronic warfare systems and anti-aircraft missiles in place.

“This is a force which is not only strong and well-equipped … but it is also a force which is now fully resourced with ammunition and fuel,” he said.

But it isn’t entirely true, as Stoltenberg said, that a Russian attack would be without warning. There have been months of warnings to the world. Hysterical warnings. Ukrainians have been living with the threat of invasion for much of the last year.

Since last spring, Putin has been massing troops around Ukraine’s borders, building them up, drawing them down and shuffling them about under the pretext of conducting training missions.

Last fall, Moscow made demands for security guarantees from the west and a promise that NATO would pull back troops and weapons from eastern European while warning of unspecified “military technical” responses if its demands were not met.

NATO and the US flatly refused to agree to Putin’s most important demands — to deny Ukraine NATO membership and have the alliance retreat from Russia’s western borders.

And Russia’s response has been about as “military” as it gets, “technically” speaking.

If there has been any feint at all on Putin’s part, it came on Monday.

In an after-midnight telephone call, Putin somehow convinced French President Emmanuel Macron that he was open to a “summit” with Biden. When the sun rose a few hours later, he denied any such agreement and instead set the next stage of his strategy into motion.

At mid-afternoon in Moscow, state television broadcast pleas for protection from the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine. They appeared shortly before a televised meeting of Putin’s National Security Council — a piece of political theatre, in which members stood one by one and urged their president to come to the aid of the Donbass republics.

Putin returned shortly after, delivered a strident address to the nation laying out why — eight years after the war between Ukrainian forces and the Donbass separatists began — it was of such dire necessity to acknowledge their independence declaration and protect residents from the “genocide” being carried out by Ukraine.

Late on Monday night, in the fine print of the deal signed between Putin and the republican leaders revealed plans for a Russian “peacekeeping” force to be dispatched into the newly recognized territory.

The even-finer print in additional documents provided further details about the deal.

A 10-year agreement with provisions for a joint border-protection force, the use and maintenance of military infrastructure and bases and a mutual-defence provision.

The two sides agreed to prevent the “territory (being) used in any way for the purpose of preparing or carrying out aggression or violent actions.”

Before the ink had dried on the agreements, unverified videos on the internet purported to show Russian military vehicles rolling over the border into the newly recognized states.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson emerged early Tuesday to address the UK Parliament, saying there was “no doubt that the deployment of these forces in sovereign Ukrainian territory amounts to a renewed invasion of that country” en route to “a full-scale offensive.”

Putin countered that he is simply following through on an offer of defense to people in need.

A chorus of condemnation on Tuesday — from Washington, Brussels, London, Germany, Paris and Ottawa — didn’t seem to face the Russian president. Nor has the introduction of so-called “calibrated” economic sanctions — financial penalties that can be ratcheted up the further Russian forces progress into Ukraine — knocked Putin off of his path.

Instead, he cast his gaze further into enemy territory.

On Monday, Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border.

On Tuesday Putin indicated that he is willing to cross the Rubicon.

He said the borders of the independent states Russia have recognized end not at the line of contact where Ukrainian and separatist forces are squared off, but far beyond.

“We recognized them, which means we recognized all their fundamental documents, including the Constitution, and the Constitution spelled out the borders within the Donetsk and Luhansk regions at the time when they were part of Ukraine,” he said.

This sets the stage for the logical next step: a potential confrontation to push back the Ukrainian forces. This, the most alarming of scenarios, envisions a Russian offensive that might not stop until the largest country in Europe is under Putin’s control.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has so far rejected the suggestion of imposing martial law. So far, he has ignored those urging him to leave Kyiv for the western city of Lviv, lest he needs to evacuate to Poland.

Instead, he has called for strength and courage in the face of the threat that appears to grow closer and more real with each passing day.