Forces target breakaway regions near the border as army tries to frame this as a ‘war of liberation’

Two things were clear by the end of yesterday’s session of the Russian security council: Vladimir Putin would recognise the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent states, and he will send regular Russian troops to defend them.

The question is what they do next. The best case is that Mr Putin is continuing his game of incremental screw tightening, and the Russian army will halt at the current line of contact. But what if they do not?

Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the Russian interior minister, called on Mr Putin to recognise the republics “in their historic borders”. Mr Putin later did just that, signing two decrees one recognising the Donetsk People’s Republic, and the other recognising the independence of the Luhansk People’s Republic.

When Russian-backed “people’s parliaments” proclaimed independence in the spring of 2014, they claimed as their legitimate territory all of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

That implies a war of “liberation” to seize Ukrainian-held cities like Mariupol, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

In the process, the Russian armed forces would seek to destroy Ukraine’s strongest and most battle-hardened military units, all of which are concentrated in the east.

Some officials in Kyiv have long considered that a more likely option than the full invasion Western governments are warning of. But Western intelligence and security officials are not giving up on those warnings. If anything, they are getting louder. One said they still expected a full-scale invasion along multiple axes of advance, including a rapid thrust from Belarus towards Kyiv. On all those axes, Russian troops are now deploying to their start lines, the official added.

It is not clear how that would end. A full occupation of left bank Ukraine and Kyiv is the worst case scenario, but one that also seems unsustainable.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, likened the current situation to Georgia in 2008, when Russia carried out air strikes all over the country and Russian tank columns pushed towards Tbilisi before going home. The whole thing only lasted a few days.

There will be enormous costs for Russia. Despite disagreements, Western leaders are united in promising extraordinary sanctions if an invasion goes ahead. That is one reason some optimists may still hope the Russian army will stop at the current line of contact. Perhaps Mr Putin thinks other world leaders will be so relieved to have escaped mass carnage that they will relent on sanctions.

It is the kind of manoeuvre Mr Putin has pulled off many times before. But nothing in yesterday’s security council meeting pointed to that.

Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, briefed the security council meeting that the risks are well known – and said that the economy was well positioned to bear them.

Mr Medvedev said the Russian people would support the move and be ready to make sacrifices for it – as if readying the public for an economic blow.

Mr Putin is ripping up the Minsk II agreement – the 2015 peace plan he imposed on Ukraine’s then-president Petro Poroshenko at the point of a tank cannon. In a way, that is an admission of defeat – the goal of that deal, Ukrainian leaders believe, was to undermine their sovereignty and allow him to control the country from within. If Mr Putin is still determined to control Ukraine, he could use a new war to force an even more punishing Minsk III, or even directly impose an occupation or puppet government.

There is a madly optimistic scenario in which this is all a retreat. The Western official claimed – without evidence – that some senior Russian officials have deep misgivings about the current course.

Maybe those people have persuaded Mr Putin that recognition will allow him to stand up to the West and hurt Ukraine while avoiding a war.

Sadly, that is not the message coming out of Moscow, Kyiv or the West. Many more people are likely to die before the horror that began in 2014 is over.