High-quality commercial satellite photos are a thing now. Is there decent evidence that Russia is building up the sort of supply & logistics tail needed to support a major invasion? Or just a bunch of shorter-range and token actions - which still would give Moscow "Regional 900 lbs. Gorilla" bragging rights, but at <5% of the cost.<p>Maybe western powers are talking big about sanctions & such to make it even cheaper for Moscow to feel big. (Vs. actual military action, which tends to kill a lot of people even when "nothing goes wrong".)<p>And maybe The Guardian does have a passably sophisticated understanding of the situation. But I don't see much evidence of that.
I don't know why any large country would invade instead of just slowly, secretly buying the smaller country and it's power over a decade or two. Take China and Taiwan, or this situation in Ukraine. Even a heavy handed economic hostile takeover would be ignored by the other world powers because no individual politician wants to be responsible for starting the fighting. Eventually you own everything, you've moved a ton of citizens in, you've bought all the politicians with puppet corporations. Then they vote to join your wonderful nation.