We don't want a war, says Russia. Ok so well then...

It's difficult to believe someone who says he doesn't want a war but still takes all the appropriate steps to launch one at short notice. Vladimir Putin has been pretty quiet on the subject for some weeks now but a lot of Russian officials have gone round saying Russia isn't about to invade Ukraine and doesn't want a war.The lugubrious Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said it many times that Russia is not in an invasion mood. But then he has warned that the West/Nato hasn't offered any concessions vis a vis Moscow's demands for a change in the security architecture in Europe - no Nato troops in Eastern Europe and no offer of alliance membership to Ukraine. This is diplomaticspeak for, if there is an invasion it won't be Russia's fault it will be Nato's fault. So he's kind of playing both sides of the argument. But the message from Moscow is, there will be no invasion. Yet absolutely no one in authority in the West believes this Moscow mantra because of what is going on right now along the Russian/Ukrainian border and on the Belarus/Ukrainian border. If Putin has decided to invade whatever happens in the next few days, he's not going to preannounce it. We will wake up one morning to find that 100,000 Russian troops are going hell for leather for Kyiv. It might even surprise Sergey Lavrov. Only those really close to Putin will get the nod about when the invasion is on. They include his defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, and his national security adviser, Nicolae Patrushev. They are both hardliners who would like the same thing as their boss, a revival of the Soviet empire and that's not possible in their eyes without absorbing Ukraine into the family of Russian-dominated nations. So both Shoigu and Patrushev I'm sure will be bending Putin's ears about the importance of acting now before it's too late. Lavrov is probably not part of these inner discussions. So as the United Nations Security Council meets to warn Russia of the perils of bringing large-scale war back to Europe after the prolonged peace since the end of the Second World War, Putin is holding his cards so close to his chest that all these Russian officials going around saying the last thing they want is war actually haven't a clue what the Kremlin boss is thinking.