Ukraine would face a massive task confronting the well-trained and technologically advanced assets of the Russian Aerospace Forces, as Alexander Mladenov explains.
The rapid and massed build-up of Russian military forces around Ukraine’s borders began in early January and continued in the last week of that month with deployment of forces to Belarus for participation in a large-scale exercise. As the 19th century Russian playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov said: “If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.”
![Russian Su-34 [Andrey Zinchuk]](https://fullfatthings-keyaero.b-cdn.net/sites/keyaero/files/styles/article_body/public/inline-images/01_Su-34_11.jpg?itok=1hcfD9mc)
There is some resemblance to the quote in the build-up of military forces in the initial act of the operation, and a possible campaign to be launched against Ukraine in the follow-on ones. There are simply too many guns hanging on the wall, and it is difficult to see everything concluding nice and peacefully.
