WHAT’S NEXT IN UKRAINE?

The Russian campaign is going to turn Ukrainian cities into rubble, creating a refugee crisis, overwhelming the borders and the border nations, and destabilizing Central and Eastern Europe. Russian forces are going to target government infrastructure and then means of command and control -- public communications, internet, radio towers, cell phone towers -- anything they can do to disrupt communications, so they separate the people from the government.

With this campaign, they want to create mass shock and panic in the society to create complex challenges for the government and degrade the will of the people. Already about 1.7 million refugees have crossed the borders out of a population of around 41 million. That's going to go up significantly. Several million people are going to stream to the west.

Belarus and Russia will likely declare martial law and they'll be able to clamp down on all manner of public discourse, media, internet, and cut down any potential for resistance or coup attempts internal to their countries.

They likely will combine forces, move to seal off the western border of Ukraine, first, to create a greater humanitarian disaster in Ukraine; and second, to cut off any resupply coming in from the West.

At that point in time, the Ukraine military, will continue to fight primarily west of the Dnieper River. In other places, particularly in the Ukrainian urban centers, there will be  an insurgency. A resistance will rise up either pre-planned or organically, and they will inflict pain and destruction on the Russians to the extent that they can.

The Russians may be able to consume Ukraine, but they cannot digest it. It will be too painful to hold onto it, and eventually they will have to spit it back out. In essence, the cost of occupation is too great compared to the returns.

The Russians may eventually control the urban areas, but there are vast areas between them -- 50 kilometers, 80 kilometers apart -- where there's nothing. There are many small villages and small towns that are not controlled by Russians.

The devastation is going to horrify Europe and North America. The non-intervention argument will eventually be overridden by the human suffering problem. And then, potentially a coalition of the willing might impose something along the lines of a no-fly zone or safe havens for refugees and citizens of the major metropolitan areas.

Putin's circa 175,000 troops which are presently deployed in and around Ukraine are not enough to maintain control of that geography. The Russians must have enough people to coerce the 41 million people in Ukraine to cooperate with the Russian government.

Western liberal democracies have both a moral obligation and a political imperative to support a nation fighting for its independence and the pursuit of a liberal political order in the Western tradition. If not here, where will we take a stand against autocratic and revisionist forces? What should Georgia and Azerbaijan conclude from our timidity in the face of evil? Surely Taiwan is next.

Russia's assault on Ukraine is the leading edge of militarily strong states preying upon weaker ones. History has been unkind to nations when they tolerate or appease such aggression. The concepts of territorial integrity and democracy cannot end at NATO's borders. Is the rest of the world to be left to the wolves while there is but one island of security? Russia's attack on Ukraine cannot succeed if we hope to build and sustain the benefits of democracy beyond NATO's borders.