Only Putin knows that.

He may not have originally planned to invade Ukraine. After all, he was probably well aware that whatever short-term goals invasion might achieve were more than likely to be nullified by the long-term consequences: a re-invigorated NATO, a loss of prestige and credibility, a potentially expensive war and occupation, economic sanctions, political repercussions back home.

Still, Putin had to make it LOOK like he was getting ready to invade for his threats to be effective. Ukraine, and the West have to be convinced a full scale assault is imminent or he will not be taken seriously and his blackmail will be rejected. He instructed his generals to prepare for a general invasion, be ready by a certain date, and then wait for further orders. Whether or not those orders were ever issued could be decided later, but preferably sooner. General mobilizations may be good training, but they are outrageously expensive, and damaging to your overall defensive capability, and mobilized armies forced to wait in the field quickly deteriorate. The point is, with the intelligence assets he knows were deployed against him, he had to be actually ready for a genuine attack or he would not be believed and his bluff would have been recognized for what it was. When you pull a gun on someone, you had better be ready to use it, even if it is no longer necessary to do so. Once you have shown your ability to act aggressively, your opponent seizes the initiative. It is HE who will decide to fight or back down, it is no longer up to you. Putin was betting he could get his way by threat alone, but the threat had to be credible or it was no threat at all.

But Ukraine, and the West, did not fold as expected. They have stood their ground (at least, so far). THEY have the initiative. So the ball is now in Putin’s court. He can either invade, or not. The former means he will have to suffer the consequences, and no one knows exactly what they will be. Look at how Afghanistan turned out. All he can say for sure is that no one will ever trust him again, and everyone will be terrified of him. And NEXT time, he will be facing a determined, united and fully nuclear-armed Europe. If he withdraws, the West will have won an immense psychological and moral victory, without firing a shot. And he will look like the one who backed down. Not only that, the West has had a chance to study in detail how the Russian armed forces are mobilized and deployed. We know a lot more about them now than we did a year ago.

What happens next is completely up to Putin. There is no way we can determine if the invasion threat is real or not by intelligence or reconnaissance, alone, because we cannot see into his mind. The smart thing for him to do is cut his losses and back down, perhaps covering his retreat with propaganda, misinformation or asymmetric, cyberwarfare actions. In a way, it would be the wise, courageous thing to do, because he will lose nothing but “face”. But losing face is hard for bullies, especially bullies who may feel threatened by their fellow gang members.