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Putin’s ‘Military-Technical and Other Options if Strategic Stability and Ukraine Talks Fail

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that should Russian-US and Russian-NATO negotiations fail to address Moscow’s concerns, Russia would undertake a ‘military-technical’ response to what it perceives as the growing threat to stability in Ukraine and along its border and its ally Belarus’s border with NATO. Leaving aside the difficulty of getting inside Putin’s head, it is extremely difficult to understand what Putin has in mind by this term. One can guess that it means a non-kinetic, that is non-combat military response of putting military pieces in a more forward position. There also are less traditionally, more hybrid warfare responses available as well as political options. What are some of the possible options that the Russian General Staff, Defense Ministry, and Security Council are likely to propose?