Ukraine: How an armed conflict could play out and can Kyiv resist Russia?

The signals are more than clear: after annexing Crimea in 2014 and sponsoring separatist movements in the Donbas, in the country's east, Moscow is directly threatening a third incursion

Talks between Russia and the west have failed. Moscow has described the situation in Ukraine as “intolerable” and “a matter of life or death”. The US president, Joe Biden, has predicted the Kremlin “will move in” to Ukraine.

The impasse was reached when the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, insisted that the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine “looks like genocide”, adding massive pressure to his diplomatic demands. Russia insists it is prepared to deploy unspecified but alarming sounding “military-technical” means to pursue its ends.

The signals are more than clear: after annexing