Russia has deployed nearly 100,000 troops near its Ukrainian border in recent weeks. As if that weren’t enough, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski said recently that his security services found evidence of a plot against his government with Russian backing. He also claimed that a prominent Russian oligarch is involved in this conspiracy.
This increases the risk of his ongoing dispute with some of the richest men in Ukraine, some of whom would have close ties to Moscow.
While Russia proves its strength, Ukraine seeks help from the West. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Chancellor Sergei Lavrov to warn him that a Russian aggression against Ukraine would have “serious consequences”. A US intelligence report warns that Russia may be preparing for an all-out invasion, and President Biden will speak to Putin for Zoom.
To reinforce its warnings, the US reportedly sent 80 tons of ammunition to Ukraine. European officials expressed equally serious fears. EU head Ursula von der Leyen is waving new sanctions against Russia. NATO is on high alert. Russia attributes all these tensions to the Ukrainian government, which Kremlin officials say is taking threatening actions.
What’s going on anyway?
As he and his presidency age, Vladimir Putin seems to be moved more than ever by reflexes developed during the Cold War. Perhaps he calculates that threatening the West could boost his popularity — a poll by Moscow’s Levada Center in October found that Russian public confidence in Putin had dropped to 53 percent, the lowest level in nearly a decade.
It is not an absurd political strategy. The sharpest rise in his approval percentage was seen after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. More and more Russians may be tiring of Putin’s leadership, but faced with threats from the West, they will support the president, seeing him as the incarnation of Russian strength and power.
Or perhaps Putin considers Ukraine and NATO to be acting with reckless aggression near Russia’s borders. Zelenski’s war on the Kremlin-backed Ukrainian oligarchs weakens Russian influence in the Ukrainian capital, and it is quite possible that Putin is warning Zelenski not to try to bolster his own popularity with aggression near the Donbass region, where Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists have created a military standoff with Kiev.
He has said the recent increase in Russian troop deployments constitutes a direct response not only to Kiev provocations but also to unannounced NATO naval exercises in the Black Sea, not far from Crimea. The Kremlin is also angered by Ukraine’s recent use in this region of Turkish-supplied drones, which is part of NATO. Perhaps Putin is encouraged to act by the rise in oil prices that spurred the Russian economy, the advance of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline to Europe, and the departure of Angela Merkel, his long-time adversary, from the German chancellery.
However, despite all the implied threats, warnings and scary headlines, it is very unlikely that Russia will launch a war by invading Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Crimea seven years ago, a response to the political turmoil in Kiev that forced the pro-Russian Ukrainian president to flee the country, has benefited greatly from the element of surprise, an advantage that Putin’s government will never again have. . Furthermore, Crimea was the only part of Ukraine where the majority of citizens were ethnic Russians, which ensured a friendly welcome to Russian forces. The Ukrainian region of Donbass, which borders Russia, also includes a large population of ethnic Russians.
There is no other territory in Ukraine where Russian soldiers will be hailed as liberators, and the frozen conflict between these two countries has led tens of millions of Ukrainians to permanently take a stand against Putin and Moscow. With that, any push to dominate new territory in Ukraine would trigger a war that Russia would win, especially since NATO would not intervene directly, but at a prohibitive cost in terms of Russian lives and money.
Add to that the cost of a long-term occupation of land inhabited by people who are refractory hostile to Russian forces. The rusty Russian economy cannot bear the cost of the stringent US and European sanctions that would inevitably follow and stretch out of sight.
Despite all this, Ukraine, Europe and the Biden administration cannot afford to let their guard down. They must continue to signal that they are on high alert and that any hostile Russian action will provoke a strong response.
There is a disturbing Cold War logic at work. As much as Kiev and Western governments fear Russian action that could draw them into a painful conflict, Putin’s government continues to view Ukraine’s future as the central issue of Russia’s foreign policy.
Just as Washington is hypervigilant against efforts by other countries to equip itself with nuclear weapons, Moscow fears the entry of more of its neighbors into a military or political alliance with Europe and America. What applies to Russia’s other neighbors applies especially to Ukraine, a land that for the past thousand years has been a fundamental element of the Russian idea of ​​empire.
The result of this reciprocal reflexive fear is that threats can become self-fulfilling, creating a conflict that no one wants. For now, the war remains far away. But no one will breathe easy until Russia, Ukraine and NATO find a way to take a step back.
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