This is one of the faster-evolving developments in the entire Russia-Ukraine saga. Just this morning, Ed was covering a reported conversation inside the Russian government where their Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, was advising Vladimir Putin to hold off on invading Ukraine while there was still some wiggle room for a diplomatic resolution. My immediate response to that news was to think, ‘why would the Foreign Minister be advising his boss to “hold off” on something his boss continues to swear isn’t going to happen?‘ But perhaps that’s a tale for another day. In the meantime, on Sunday we learned that the Ukrainians were considering the possibility of offering to abandon their hopes of joining NATO if that would calm Putin down sufficiently and avert an invasion. But by this morning, that possibility seemed to have been pulled off the table and the Ukrainian president was not about to abandon his dream of joining, no matter how unlikely it might be in the near future. (NBC News)

Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko said Ukraine was willing to be “flexible” over its goal to join the alliance, which would be a major concession to Moscow.

“We might — especially being threatened like that, blackmailed by that and pushed to it,” Prystaiko said when asked if Kyiv would contemplate not joining NATO to avert war.

But a day later, Ukrainian officials appeared to walk back the statement, saying there would be no change in Ukraine’s constitutional commitment to become a member of NATO, which it made in 2019.

It’s unclear how much of an “offer” that was from the Ukrainians to begin with. Saying that “maybe” we won’t apply to join isn’t remotely close to the sort of ironclad agreement that Putin is allegedly looking for. (Assuming that’s what he really wants to begin with, which I’ve grown less confident about by the day.) Ukraine could easily change their mind later once Putin’s troops were withdrawn from the border region. Also, it’s not Ukraine’s decision to make, as Zelenskyy himself has already admitted. There has been no formal offer from NATO for Ukraine to apply and no assurance given that the application would be approved if they did. What Putin claims to want is essentially a documented change to the NATO charter saying that no offers will be made to Ukraine or other nations bordering Russia, something both the White House and NATO leadership have continually described as a “non-starter.”

But none of that matter as of this afternoon. Ukraine’s president came out today and said that he is convinced that the Russian invasion is not only a real plan but that it will happen on Wednesday of this week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that his government has been told that Wednesday, Feb. 16, will be “the day of attack” when Russia invades Ukraine.

The United States and its allies have repeatedly warned of an imminent invasion by Russia, which has stationed some 130,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders to the north, south and east. Russia denies it is planning an invasion.

“We are told that February 16 will be the day of the attack,” Zelenskyy said in a statement posted on Facebook, without saying who provided this information.

I somehow doubt that there is much of a mystery as to where Zelenskyy is getting his intelligence info. That’s basically what the White House has been saying for a week, citing that as the reason for pulling all of our people out of the embassy in Kyiv. If Zelenskyy is resigned to the fact that his nation will be invaded in 48 hours, there’s really no point in offering any concessions because the diplomacy portion of this exercise would be effectively over and now we’re just waiting for the tanks to start rolling.

But is that really the case? I’m still not ruling it out, but I’d like to toss out one other possibility for your consideration. If you are Vladimir Putin and you’d like to collect a lot of information about not only how the west would respond to a full-scale invasion of a neighboring nation, but the intelligence capabilities of your allies, what might you do? By staging all of these troops on the border while simultaneously claiming that you have no intention of invading, Putin has been able to watch and evaluate the collective solidity of the NATO alliance. He’s also no doubt been following the international media to see how much of his alleged plans have leaked out and made their way into the hands of the American intelligence community and our allies.

That’s some pretty useful information to have in your pocket, along with offering some hints as to where there are leaks in your security system. If Putin is really playing the long game here, is it conceivable that he never intended to launch an actual invasion – at least right now, anyway – but was using this as an expensive exercise in intelligence gathering to evaluate the most likely response and intelligence capabilities of his adversaries? The man may be a despotic megalomaniac, but he’s not stupid. He’s been playing this game for a long time and the sort of data being generated right now in the full view of the world could prove quite valuable. This is just another possibility to ponder as we wait to see what happens next.