Owen Matthews writes:

The evidence for Vladimir Putin’s apparent intent on reinvading Ukraine is familiar enough, not least because it has been trumpeted by top officials in Washington and London over recent weeks with unusual and increasing emphasis. Some 170,000 Russian troops have been building up on Ukraine’s borders since October. According to U.S. intelligence sources, those troops’ commanders have been given orders to prepare detailed tactical plans for a land invasion. Russian agents have been preparing attacks and provocations on the ground inside Ukraine, and last week the U.K. government accused Moscow of plotting a coup against Kyiv’s government and lining up a group of pro-Kremlin, Ukrainian politicians to take over. Supplies and reinforcements have reportedly been sent to Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Last summer Putin published an essay casting doubt on Ukraine’s validity as an independent country. He’s also on the record as saying that Ukraine’s move toward NATO is an existential threat to Russia’s national security.

On the face of it, it’s no wonder that Western capitals are buzzing with talk of war, nor that NATO countries have stepped up supplies of “defensive” weaponry to the Ukrainians. The U.S., British and Australian embassies have even ordered the evacuation of staffers’ families from Kyiv. And though Putin has not threatened an invasion — indeed, he has repeatedly denied that he has any intention of any such thing — Western leaders insist that war is not just likely but imminent.

And yet there’s one significant disconnect in this picture: There’s no talk of imminent invasion plans in Moscow, not on state media, not among political journalists, not among the political class. Even the Ukrainians themselves, supposedly in the firing line, don’t seem worried. “These risks have existed for more than a year. They haven’t become bigger,” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week. Ukrainian government spokesman Oleh Nikolenko called the evacuation of Western embassies “premature and overly cautious.” [Continue reading…]