I am puzzled.
Why would Putin do this apparently half assed intervention with handfuls of paratroopers? This has been going on for days without them getting anywhere.
Why haven’t they gone in all guns blazing with a couple of armored divisions? This by itself should outnumber the available Ukrainian armor by 3:1 or so. Russia should be able to annex those two republics in days.
Something doesn’t add up.
Could the Russians be much weaker than they’ve been letting on ?
“Why haven’t they gone in all guns blazing with a couple of armored divisions?”
Russia is hurting badly from a pre-existing recession, and the sanctions are greatly exacerbating this problem. The majority of Russia’s exports are oil and gas natural resources. The prices available for the sale of these resources had taken serious decisions threatening the entire funding of the Russian government and its system of corruption and bribery. Putin is therefore constrained in his choices for committing aggressions. He is currently trying to achieve his imperialist aims while asserting claims of implausible/plausible deniability his foreign supporters can use as a fictional excuse for Russia.
Putin, however, miscalculated the weakness of the Ukraine and its severely compromised internal security. He mistakenly assumed the reports that a small number of Russian military infiltrators would be capable of leading Russian-Ukrainian separatists in a relatively cheap and quick overthrow of the already heavily infiltrated Ukrainian government. So, Putin keeps trying to up the sizes of the forces he can put together using Russian mercenaries bolstered with a cadre of professional Russian soldiers. When that too failed, he trained and prepared Russian ground forces to supplement the Russian trained and equipped mercenary volunteers. Now that too is failing to be effective enough to outright overrun the Ukrainians.
It remains to be seen just how far Putin is willing to up the ante before he abandons the direct efforts to reconquer the Ukraine for Russian dominion. In the meantime, Putin is walking a dangerous personal tightrope, risking an overthrow other removal from power to be followed with his termination with extreme prejudice by the same people who are keeping him in power now.
Because the news is a lie. The whole article is based on a Facebook post by a person claiming he's a Ukrainian paramilitary.
Maybe Russia would rather avoid war with Kiev, but is not ready to give up its strategic interests.