So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.
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Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?
Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
This is all Trump had to do.
He was able to leverage the media's reporting on him that he was reckless, dangerous and prone to rash behavior and they were convinced he was going to start WWIII with? Yeap, you guessed it, the Russians. Putin believed what the media were reporting because Trump himself had verbally warned him.
He didn't need forces and cash. He did what OP recommended, he threatened Putin with force and Putin complied and just waited out Trump. It was a gift that Biden was elected in 2020 and if you go through the news reports, literally months after Biden was elected, Russia started massing troops on the border and readying their troops to invade. Its a strange coincidence that they didn't invade in the four years Trump was in office. He leaves and less than a year later, Russia is preparing to invade? C'mon man.
Your timeline is completely wrong.
- Biden's inauguration took place on January 2021.
- The Russians were amassing troops by December of 2021 (less than a year after he took office).
- The Afghan pullout wasn't until the Summer of 2021
- The Russian officially invaded in February of 2022
The green light wasn't needing forces and cash built up, it was Trump leaving office. The Afghan pullout had no effect on when they were going to invade since they were already massing troops and air support to the border regions where they finally launched their invasion from. Its not like the Russians decided to invade during the Afghan disaster as you insinuated, the invasion plans were already established by then.
Again, the tipping point was Trump leaving office.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-putin-no-way-ukraine-mu...
"No way." "Way."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpwkeTBwgs
NOTE: I mostly don't like Trump. But the "Russiagate" angle is ridiculous.
Yeah. Trump talks a lot. Like his best friend, Melon.
Imagine how quickly ukriane would have collapsed if the US was not providing support, and the US was preventing European nations from providing support. And then imagine how well off Russia would be if there were no sanctions placed on it by America. All in all your point doesn't make sense. You don't get an asset sitting in the oval office and then not use them.
They didn't invade successfully in 2022, either. Meaning they were never able to invade successfully at any year before that. The whole war is a gigantic delusion for them, remember.
But as for evidence that they needed about 7-8 years to build their resources to a point where its regime thought they could invade successfully:
One of the pieces of evidence in favor of this view is the graph of the CBRF's (that's the Central Bank of Russia) holdings of foreign cash reserves, over the past 20 years. It shows oscillation or decline up until 2014, and then from 2014-2022, steady increases each year, resulting in a net increase from about $100b to $300b by 2022.
Military analyst say that Russia engaged in similar purchasing patterns internally (building up its reserves of shells and missile stocks, for example).
If they invaded in 2018, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of those things. That is, if Trump actually is a Russian agent. So why did they wait until the situation was much worse for them in order to invade?
I'll leave out whether this was intentional or because he saw peace in putin's eyes (as he himself claimed).
But yes, russia couldn't successfully invade in 2018.
On top of what the GP listed, there was also the post-pandemic uncertainty, soaring inflation and increase in the support of far-right/isolationist politicians in Europe. The Russians probably expected a slow start from them and a quick takeover of Kyiv[0], which would likely mean game over for a big chunk (if not all) of Ukraine. To be fair, they almost succeeded: it came down to the single battle that saved Kyiv from a quick occupation[1].
Last (but not least), there was the Putin's isolation during the pandemic when he might have read too much of Russian fascism philosophers'[2]. To me, the open all-out invasion at that time seemed very much out of his style as he had always preferred covert probing and sabotage before that.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport [1]https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-... [2]https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/inside-putins-head-paranoid-...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17852964/donald-trump-threaten...
“They're all saying oh he's a nuclear power, it's like they're afraid of him,” Trump said in a recording of the phone conversation with Daly. “You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we're hitting Moscow. We're going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5 per cent, 10 per cent - that's all you need.”
He's also said the same thing in several interview. That he told Putin he would make it very difficult to take Ukraine and it cost them economically and militarily. You can infer that meant could mean several things depending on your point of view.