Russia 'likely' to invade Ukraine without 'enormous sanctions'

High-quality commercial satellite photos are a thing now. Is there decent evidence that Russia is building up the sort of supply &amp; logistics tail needed to support a major invasion? Or just a bunch of shorter-range and token actions - which still would give Moscow &quot;Regional 900 lbs. Gorilla&quot; bragging rights, but at &lt;5% of the cost.<p>Maybe western powers are talking big about sanctions &amp; 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 &quot;nothing goes wrong&quot;.)<p>And maybe The Guardian does have a passably sophisticated understanding of the situation. But I don&#x27;t see much evidence of that.

I don&#x27;t know why any large country would invade instead of just slowly, secretly buying the smaller country and it&#x27;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&#x27;ve moved a ton of citizens in, you&#x27;ve bought all the politicians with puppet corporations. Then they vote to join your wonderful nation.