How red are the West’s “red” lines, after all?

By Athena Papakosta

Did anyone wonder how many hours it took Moscow to respond to the West’s announcements about sending tanks to Kyiv?

A whole night passed and nothing, silence. On Thursday morning, Russian missiles started raining down on Ukraine. But again silence until the Kremlin through its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said what it had long warned about. This is an escalation of the West’s “direct” involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

NATO leaders to calm concerns about a further escalation of the war downplayed the fact that the German Leopard 2 and the American Abrams are heavy fire-breathing monsters, as Bloomberg reported almost a month ago. And we heard the same American president, Joe Biden, say that “we are helping Ukraine to defend and protect Ukrainian territory.

This is not an aggressive threat against Russia”. However, Moscow believes otherwise since, for Russia, Ukraine’s Western allies have broken the taboo and appear to be unafraid of further escalation.

With the main battle tanks that will be supplied to Ukraine, the war will enter a new phase and the purpose of the West is to give Kyiv the upper hand on the battlefield in view of the spring offensive that Russia seems to be planning. Of course, the specific vehicles will take time to reach their destination.

This could lead Moscow to accelerate its plans. He has already (officially) taken Solentar, that small town in eastern Ukraine with its cavernous salt mines, and is now aiming for Mahmut, the key town for full control of Donbas. On the other hand, Russia could (and does) target the supply of the tanks once they enter Ukrainian territory.

The war in one month from today will have closed one year (and three days). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after being thanked for the tanks, asked his Western allies for fighter jets.

He knows his new weapons – a gift from the West – won’t start arriving until the spring, and he needs Kyiv to return to the battlefield on the winning side by recapturing territory as Russia pounds the country with missiles and drones and regroups her powers.

After all, Kiev’s fixed goal is to take back all the territories of Ukraine that are under Russian occupation, as well as Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

For Washington the supply of aircraft is prohibited. But so were the HIMARS multiple missile launchers and tanks that until a few months ago seemed unthinkable to send, and now they are on their way to Ukraine.

Will the West cross another red line again? According to American logic, the better Ukraine is on the ground, the stronger its position at the negotiating table will be if and when the Russian president wants to (finally) put an end to it.

The unity of the West at the moment remains a clear political message to Russia but as long as both sides continue to pull the strings of this indirect conflict between them it will continue to be at risk of breaking.

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