But, she admitted, there was nothing in their analysis—or imagination—that suggested Putin was readying himself to launch the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. “There was a real concern before the Geneva summit,” Haines later told me, that the Russians might use their military to force Ukraine to concede parts of the Donbas, near the Russian border. “At that time, the most significant and aggressive move we could imagine was an incursion into eastern Ukraine.”
