Ed Morrissey already got us started this morning with the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (which Putin promised for months wasn’t going to happen) before heading off to host the Hugh Hewitt Show. News from inside the war zone is rather sporadic as people continue to hunker down amid reports of shelling and large explosions in multiple cities around the country, including the capital of Kyiv. (And make no mistake. This is definitely a war, no matter what Putin says and it has been since the Russian military crossed into eastern Ukraine.) Russia claims to have taken out the entire Ukrainian air force in a matter of hours and rendered most of the military airfield inert for the time being, but that report has also been disputed. We’re hearing that at least 40 people have been killed, but that also remains to be confirmed and we don’t know if the casualties include any civilians.

The lies coming out of the Kremlin continue to pile up. The Russian Defense Minister claimed this morning that the “special military operation” was only targeting Ukrainian military assets, not the civilian population. That doesn’t exactly jibe with the verified reports of “large explosions” taking place in Kyiv. Putin is saying that he is not interested in regime change unless it’s done by the Ukrainian people themselves. Of course, which Ukrainian people would do that probably depends on who is allowed to vote once the military action slows down. As Axios reports this morning, Vladimir Putin is “encouraging” all Ukrainians to lay down their arms. He also claims this is simply an effort to “demilitarize” the country after they allegedly started the hostilities and he doesn’t plan on an “occupation.”

Putin said the military operation would be intended to “demilitarize” Ukraine, but not to occupy it. That message appeared to be aimed not at the separatist republics where Putin had already deployed troops, but to the country as a whole and its leaders in Kyiv.

Putin called on Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms, and claimed “all responsibility for possible bloodshed” would fall on the government in Kyiv.

He claimed Ukrainian forces provoked the conflict, despite the fact that Russia has built up a force of over 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders over several months. He argued on Monday that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent country.

Don’t mistake the overt threat that Putin already made for anything other than what it is. He warned last night that if anyone (meaning the United States and NATO) interfered from the outside, “you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me.”

In other words, he’s claiming that he’s ready to expand the war as far as he needs to go. And Russia’s recent nuclear weapons drills were a stark reminder that he has the big guns to call in if he needs to. He’s basically threatening to start World War 3 if anyone opposes him inside of Ukraine.

So what, if anything, is anyone going to do about this aside from imposing more sanctions and economic punishment? From the looks of things, Ukraine will have effectively fallen in a matter of days or a week at most. Boris Johnson wants NATO to “act decisively” and plans to address the nation, but he doesn’t seem to be talking about any sort of military action.

This is a catastrophe for our continent.

I will make an address to the nation this morning on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I will also speak to fellow G7 leaders and I am calling for an urgent meeting of all NATO leaders as soon as possible.

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) February 24, 2022

Mitt Romney was rather dour about the whole thing, noting that everyone saw this coming, or should have. He also got in a bit of a punch line reminding us about Barack Obama’s 2012 comments about how “the ’80s called.”

pic.twitter.com/1sVNk4RiJa

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 24, 2022

I’m not going to claim that I saw this coming because Putin has kept us guessing right up until the last minute. Even when he went into eastern Ukraine earlier this week, it still seemed possible that he might be willing to settle for “partitioning” Ukraine and expanding his foothold around the Crimean Peninsula. But it’s now clear that he plans on basically wiping out Ukraine as an independent democratic state and reestablishing it as a Russian vassal state.

It’s not as if the west didn’t practically invite him to do this. Washington and virtually every European capital repeatedly assured him that there would be no military response. And it’s equally obvious that the threats of harsh economic sanctions and damage did not sway him. The door was opened and now his military is strolling through. As we’ve discussed here before, the only thing the former KGB honcho respects is power and he is not currently afraid of either the United States or NATO.

But where does this ride go from here? Biden just moved more troops to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Other NATO forces are expected to follow suit. Putin has made it clear that he doesn’t want any NATO entities or forces on Russia’s border. Would he really move into one or more of those nations? We can’t write off the possibility entirely, particularly given the unstable nature of his recent actions. But if that’s the case, Biden has already sworn that we will defend “every inch” of NATO territory. So if that happens, we could literally be looking at another world war, and China has made it clear that they will have Russia’s back. We are living in exceedingly dangerous times, and no matter what happens, the geopolitical map is going to look markedly different when this is finally over. (Or at least when the situation settles back down to a slow simmer.)