My take on the current situation and the removal of all of the mercenaries and the associated leaders by the 18th August is that Putin has had enough of failure by 'loose cannons' and he is about to up the ante by using a more professional leadership and much more direct chain of command with regular 'plausibly deniable' troops and if this does not stop the ATO and roll back the ATO gains, than as a last resort he will invade to achieve his objectives.

These I think are the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts as a minimum and may also include the Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts as well, the former so he has a complete Eastern buffer and the latter so he has a direct route to Crimea, which is currently reliant on Ukrainian food and water supplies across the border. I can't see the objectives being more than this with the reported 45,000 troops on the Ukrainian border as to secure and hold the whole country he would need many more.

Like Afghanistan, I think winning and holding against a mainly hostile population will be a whole different ball game, when the famous Ukrainian Partisans come to the fore again.

To me this is the most dangerous current conflict strategically as once he has sorted Ukraine, he will then attempt to finish NATOs credibility and split the Western alliance and build a bridge to Kaliningrad through the Baltic countries. Where Putin is trying to rebuild an empire to prolong his time in power from a position of weakness, this will involve taking risks with unintended consequences like MH17, which makes him a particularly dangerous dictator.