Vladimir Putin’s control of the Russian regime may prove brittle if his assault on Ukraine is not rewarded with swift success, Western officials believe.
While the Russian president made a display of his authority in a meeting of his Security Council at the Kremlin on Tuesday, intelligence suggests that elements within the Moscow establishment believe his military strike to be a mistake which could destabilise his 20-year rule.
The inner core of Putin’s administration are understood to expect that Russian troops will be welcomed by significant portions of the Ukrainian population, a belief which Western officials regard as a severe misjudgement.
Western officials said it was clear that Mr Putin was intent on securing control over a large section of Ukrainian territory and that he was also expected to try to seize capital Kyiv to install a pro-Moscow puppet government.
Faced with attack on many fronts, Ukrainian forces face a challenging task to resist the significantly larger Russian military, much of it war-hardened from service in Syria, Crimea and Georgia.
Early missile strikes were targeted at Ukraine’s air defence system in a clear attempt to secure Russian dominance of the skies to provide devastating support for ground forces.
But there are indications of Ukrainians mounting a defence against the onslaught, with at least one Russian aircraft believed to have been shot down this morning.
An eventual assault on Kyiv may come up against stiff resistance, potentially requiring protracted and bloody street-fighting to subdue, Western officials believe.
The history of Russia’s brutal approach to urban warfare in Chechnya – where much of capital Grozny was levelled to the ground – is prompting fears in Western capitals of significant civilian casualties in a no-holds-barred assault on the city of 3m people.
And there are concerns of a refugee crisis as Ukrainians flee the capital as well as other areas menaced by Russian forces.
Western officials said that this morning’s attack saw a combination of precision missile strikes and air strikes followed by an unknown numbers of Russian troops entering Ukrainian territory from Belarus to the north, Russia to the east and occupied Crimea to the south.
Special operations forces are believed to have moved into Ukraine in advance of the conventional forces in order to soften up opposition before the main assault.
And cyber attacks on Ukrainian financial institutions and government departments late last night are also thought to have been directed from Moscow.
The vast scale of the 200,000-strong force assembled by Putin in the region means it could be a matter of days before the full military strike is deployed.
It remains unclear whether Putin’s goal is to seize the entire 230,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory, or to focus on strategic priorities such as the Donbass region and the Black Sea ports of Mariupol and Odessa or to establish a “land bridge” between Crimea and Russian territory.
