RUSSIA-UKRAINE CRISISUkraine: What Would a Russian Invasion Actually Look Like? These Are the Three Most Likely Scenarios

By David J. Galbreath

Despite suggestions to the contrary from the Kremlin, Ukraine remains surrounded by Russian troops, both along its long border with Russia and from within occupied Crimea. The Russian Federation has deployed land, air and naval forces that give the Kremlin a range of possibilities should it seek to initiate military action.

Not for the first time, Russian forces look set to challenge the sovereignty of Ukraine, and the west appears no closer to knowing what to do about it without risking war between nuclear armed states.

Russia has been laying the ground for military action against Ukraine since 2014, when it seized Crimea and thereby gained a more substantial military foothold to the south. Meanwhile, the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbas region allowed Russian security and intelligence units to continue to gauge Ukrainian military and paramilitary operations.

In spring 2021, the Russian Federation ramped up actions against Ukraine, stopping short of actual war. It launched cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns as well as disrupting the energy supply. The Ukrainian Security Service has identified operational and sleeper units from Russia’s Federal Security Service, Foreign Intelligence Service, Military Intelligence and Special Forces operating within its borders.

If military action does occur, there are three likely scenarios for how it would play out.

Scenario 1: Decapitation
The first is the decapitation approach. Russian military and security forces would seek to remove the current government and state powers in order to insert replace them with people more favorable to (and owned by) Moscow. Perhaps surprisingly, this would entail keeping on some people who are already working in the Ukrainian state. There are figures who have shown sympathies for and have worked with the Russian Federation.

This scenario would probably entail security and intelligence units on the ground in Ukraine as well as units from the military exercise currently being conducted in Belarus. The greatest concern for Russia in this scenario would be how the Ukrainian military and police would respond. There may also be a significant public backlash against a change of government led from Moscow.

Scenario 2: War in the East
The second possibility is the eastern war approach. Here, Russian forces would seek to reinforce the breakaway regions in the Donbas with arms, supplies and intelligence. These areas would then be used as a springboard to take more Ukrainian territory to more fully cover those areas where ethnic Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians are located.