If Russia decides to invade eastern Ukraine, extending its grip on its neighbor's territory from the Crimean peninsula to its eastern and southern provinces, how would it do so?
Since Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, the prospect of a full-fledged Russian invasion has gained new currency with Ukraine's government locked in a bitter stand-off with separatists in the country's east. Pro-Russian activists and gunmen have seized government buildings there, and while the government in Kiev has pledged to oust them, that ultimatum has so far gone unenforced.
Many observers speculate that the seizure of government buildings have come at the behest of Moscow -- senior U.S. officials have claimed as much -- in order to stir up a pretext for invasion. Once Moscow's agents have sowed sufficient chaos, the thinking goes, Russian forces will swoop in from their positions just outside Ukraine's borders and restore the peace, selling their invasion as a peacekeeping mission.
But what will Russian forces do once they cross the Ukrainian border? In a little-noticed and increasingly prescient report from earlier this month, analysts at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank, lay out a series of scenarios spelling out possible courses of actions for Russian troops invading the eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine.
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