If Vladimir Putin does decide on war in Ukraine, few Russians will be expecting it

isn’t used to playing down the idea of a Russian advance into Ukraine. As the Russian army veteran who led the first major armed group into provincial Sloviansk in April 2014, in effect he started the war in the Donbas region. Once there, he spent the next few months urging Vladimir Putin, with increasing desperation and belligerence, to back him the whole way: to link Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa and recently-annexed Crimea. That would have put a vast swathe of additional territory under Russian control. But the troops never came.Now, Mr Girkin says the moment has passed. Ukraine has armed itself with modern weapons, and a ground invasion would be a huge and protracted undertaking. “There aren’t nearly enough troops mobilised, or being mobilised,” he says. “The maximum Putin is doing is a military distraction, possibly to draw troops away from an operation in the Donbas.”