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Notes -
The Southeastern border region of Poland is pretty mountainous which would make an armored thrust a lot more difficult. Then you would have to fight through 400 miles of Belarus before you got to the Russian border, and another 200-400 miles of Russia before you a start to get to the important rail network terminals around St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Invading from the Baltic states, you either have the same problem of fighting through Belarus, or you would have to confine your offensive to the very small section that is the Latvian border, because Lake Peipus makes most of the Estonian border unusable. If you did that and are successful you could potentially cut off St. Petersburg pretty fast but it would be a slog to get to Moscow.
Any attack from the Baltics would also have two additional logistical problems: First you would have to concentrate your entire invasion force in a pretty small area of Latvia, making it vulnerable to a tactical nuclear attack or a conventional thrust into your staging areas. In the event of a conventional thrust you are backed up against the ocean, and risk having your invasion force overrun before it can even start moving. Secondly, Russia owns Kaliningrad and has a substantial force garrisoned there so you risk being attacked from your rear and potentially pincered between two Russian forces. You could deal with Kaliningrad before your invasion, but that could take a while and gives your game plan up weeks or months early unless you are planning on a first-use nuclear strike to deal with it.
Invading from Ukraine has none of these problems. You can attack through the Sumy region along a wide front line and it’s just a straight shot of about 350 miles over flat open steppe and major road systems directly to Moscow. Additionally you can easily divide the Russian force from any potential Belorussian force.
Thanks, I did not realize that Moscow was that close.
Still, I think that 400km is still a lot of strategic depth, and trying to take that much quickly when your enemy has prepared fortifications seems over-ambitious.
I mean, look at Putin trying to take Kiev, which is half that distance to the border. From my understanding, Ukraine had not made it a top priority to defend against a Russian incursion before he attacked, and yet managed to fend off his initial attempt to take it. I do not think that NATO would manage to take Moscow from Kharkiv in a single decapitating strike, nor am I convinced that taking Moscow would cause Russia to surrender.
And all of that war gaming is contingent on nuclear fission magically stopping to work, because externally threatening the existence of the owner of the world's second largest nuclear stockpile seems like a utterly foolish thing to do.
Nothing Russia has is worth even the risk of getting bogged down in a conventional war like we see in Ukraine, never mind a nuclear war which would quickly escalate to an ICBM exchange.
To the point where the Prigozhin mutiny was able to get from the Ukrainian border to the outskirts of Moscow in force in about 12 hours. Admittedly they were not opposed in the way NATO would be.
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