Mr. Putin has additionally deployed Special Operations forces — some 1,500 troops — close to and even contained in the Ukrainian border, the officers advised lawmakers. Those troops, they mentioned, work intently with the Russian navy intelligence company, the G.R.U., which has prior to now directed cyber and different assaults on foes.
European officers are usually extra skeptical that Mr. Putin would attempt to take the nation in a large-scale invasion. Some consider that he would search to take the Donbas area of japanese Ukraine, the place a grinding proxy struggle has been underway since 2014.
Another principle is that Mr. Putin might broaden that operation in an effort to annex all of japanese Ukraine, as much as the Dnieper River. Along the way in which he might attempt to decimate Ukrainian troops in that a part of the nation, roughly half of the Ukrainian navy. That might incite panic within the western a part of Ukraine — the place resistance to Russia is likely to be highest — and immediate folks to flee the nation. Over time, that might lead prime authorities officers to flee or to attempt to rule from exile.
American and European officers have made clear {that a} bodily assault over the borders of Ukraine would result in monumental sanctions on Russia’s banks, commerce restrictions on semiconductors and different high-tech gadgets and the freezing of the accounts of Russian oligarchs and leaders. But there may be far much less unanimity, as President Biden himself has acknowledged, about how to answer a “minor incursion.” Or even what a minor incursion is likely to be.
European and American officers fear that Mr. Putin would possibly attempt to stage a coup in Kyiv. Another chance is a cyberattack devised by Russia that tries to convey down elements or all of Ukraine’s electrical and communications infrastructure, much like the 2015 and 2016 assaults on elements of the nation’s electrical grid.
European officers say it’s unclear how the Western allies would reply to such an assault. If they believed that the cyberoperations had been a face-saving means for Mr. Putin to behave after which retreat, they notice, there is likely to be a temptation to de-escalate and never search to impose main sanctions, particularly if there have been few human casualties. On the opposite hand, a cyberattack might be a prelude to a full invasion, primarily reducing off Ukraine’s skill to speak or observe the place Russian forces had been coming from.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.