Political scientists are often asked to make public assessments about strategic events.The tendency to rely on historical analogy is problematic as method, while academicmethod proper is to slow, and the problem addressed in this article is how to improveanalytical assessments in strategic affairs. I use and develop an analytical frameworkintroduced during the Cold War by Sovietologist Michael MccGwire in order to systematizeexpert assessments. In the empirical section I illustrate it with an inquiry into theprelude to the escalation in Ukraine 2022. The inquiry shows that the Russian actionsto subordinate Belarus in the Spring of 2021 is key to the understanding of the ensuingmilitary and diplomatic events that often was mistaken as Russian coercive diplomacy.The empirically grounded assessments show that the framework could have improvedprecision in assessments in the run-up to the approaching war.