Why doesn’t Putin just have his army start on the east end of Ukraine and proceed west, killing every single person and destroying every piece of infrastructure in their way?
Anything up to (and perhaps including) that point clearly won’t result in direct intervention, whether due to the fear of nuclear holocaust or for other reasons.
So then why not? If he needs to win at all costs, and he doesn’t care about anything but power, what is holding him back?
Is it because he wants to occupy Ukraine and get its people to contribute to his GDP and their resources to sell? Russia is already devastating Ukraine to such a degree that there will be constant guerrilla fighting as an occupied state and it will take substantial investment to rebuild industry. Russia doesn’t seem to have the people or resources for a long term occupation.
Because there are escalations that can still happen besides direct intervention? The US and EU could do more, but not that much more. China is the only one that can really put the heat on at this point, and they probably do have a limit at which they would.
Or is it because he can’t? Even with the total commitment of all of Russia’s resources, can they not utterly annihilate Ukraine? That seems unlikely (although the cost seems to be far greater than previously believed), although it may require nuclear escalation.
So it seems to me like we’re in a waiting game for Russia’s other trade partners (mostly China) to drop severe sanctions, or for Russia to escalate to nuclear conflict and let that genie out of the bottle, or for Russia to bow out due to lack of resources or regime change.
I think of those options, the most likely is that Russia continues throwing bodies into the Ukrainian meat grinder until they can finally claim a pyrrhic victory. I can’t imagine NATO intervening, no matter how terrible the events, when nukes are on the table.