Putin’s Ukraine plan is about gaining attention?

The almost theatrical massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border in recent days, which some researchers have described as the heaviest since 2015, brings home to Western leaders an uncomfortable truth: If Russia had the appetite for a major military operation, Ukraine would be at its mercy.
Putin the opportunist, who seized a moment of confusion in 2014 to grab Crimea, surely sees a similar chance now, and he has little to fear at home if he launches a military operation. Yet there are good reasons to conclude that what Putin really wants is not more Ukrainian territory, but greater respect from the US and his European neighbors for what he thinks of as his ability to advance Russia’s interests.
After the Minsk agreements of 2015, which aimed to end fighting in Eastern Ukraine and launch a political process, one could safely assume that domestic constraints tempered Putin’s appetite for a full-scale incursion. To some extent, that argument still holds: Putin’s poll rating (pushed upward by respondents’ understandable caution) is only slightly above historic lows. My analysis of data from GDELT, the Google-backed global database of events, shows that protest activity is about twice as high in Russia as a year ago, which wouldn’t be surprising given the economic effects of Sars-CoV-2.
But Putin’s trampling of the Russian constitution last year, which essentially allows him to hold on to the presidency for as long as he controls the suppression apparatus, has made those constraints less important. Seeing himself as an historical figure, and relying increasingly on brute force to steamroll over any vestige of an opposition, Putin no longer needs to worry about legitimacy.
Russia’s swashbuckling propagandists are more than ready to go into overdrive if they need to justify an onslaught on Ukraine. Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, the state-run network, has long used her Telegram channel to agitate for a full Russian takeover of Eastern Ukraine. And Dmitry Kiselyov, the Kremlin’s top TV commentator, used his most recent program to accuse Ukraine of plotting a war against Russia — a “second fratricidal” war incited by an uncaring US.
The Kremlin also isn’t too concerned about the coronavirus and its fall-out: Minimising deaths is not a political priority when domestic politics are meaningless, and you can manipulate death statistics. (Officially, Russia says only a fraction of its high excess mortality is due to Covid.)
European countries, bound by geography to take the greatest interest in Ukraine of all Western nations, are preoccupied with the virus and with their painfully slow vaccination rollout. Besides, some European Union members are already using Sputnik V, the Russian Covid-19 vaccine. It’s the worst possible political moment for the Europeans to intervene forcefully in Ukraine. Witness the recent toothless Franco-German statement,
calling on “all sides” to de-escalate when Ukraine is obviously incapable of meaningful escalation.
It’s also an extremely inconvenient time for the US to make big, quick decisions on Ukraine: For all of President Joe Biden’s history with Ukraine during the Obama administration, a crisis there would ruin his focus on an ambitious domestic agenda.

—Bloomberg