Almost three months after starting the troop movement around Ukraine that put the West on high alert, Vladimir Putin will have to look at the clock: the time to decide whether to take any military action is close to running out.
By close and by the complete opacity of what is going on in the head of the Russian president, we mean maybe a few weeks, especially if the option that seems most logical in the eyes of observers is chosen: not invade at the end.
Several factors can, however, catalyze the military movement. As the American historian Barbara Tuchman famously demonstrated in her “The Guns of August” (1962), in which she traced the plot of alliances and mobilization processes that led to the First World War (1914-18), it is sometimes impossible to stop the train after he leaves the station.
In addition, there is the risk of mistakes made by leaders under pressure, whether Putin with his high-stakes play, American Joe Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson in domestic crisis, not to mention Europe’s usual vacillations.
Finally, accidents. A plane downed, a shot fired or a clash between the Russian naval mega-exercise in the Mediterranean this week with the arrival of a group of American aircraft carriers under NATO command, all of this could set fire to the fuse.
In any case, there is still no idea on the table that Western forces can intervene militarily in favor of Ukraine in the event of a conflict other than sending money and weapons. For now, only symbolic reinforcements of its borders.
The idea of ​​an escalation involves World War III proportions between nuclear powers, at a time when China urges ally Russia to unite against the West. There are steps prior to this, such as a side-by-side cyber clash against infrastructure, plus Western economic sanctions, but the stakes are enormous.
That said, here are some possible scenarios for the crisis from a military point of view for Putin.
1. Full Invasion. In theory, it is the most unlikely of scenarios, but not impossible. For that, Putin would have to rely on what Boris called a “lightning war” to take Kiev, and in this scenario it will also be necessary to use forces from Belarus.
Local dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko recently said it was time to “take back Ukraine”, and Putin considers the neighbor part of Russia. There are already Russian forces there, and the countries have unified their defense policy, with Moscow taking over the sector. Such troops and armored units should descend the now frozen swamps of Pripriat, passing through the area contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear accident (1986), which is not a major problem.
The move should, however, be accompanied by an assault on other large cities, such as Kharkiv, which with 1.5 million people is half the size of the capital. In the Russian press, it is speculated that it would be possible to encircle the cities and force them into submission, but this sounds very much like the Middle Ages. Massive ballistic missile barrages and armored advance also from the east would be more likely, but this would come at an enormous human cost for both sides.
As American George Friedman, from the Geopolitical Futures consultancy, recalls, Russia has not deployed armored forces since the Second World War. Tanks and the like are unwieldy, slow and susceptible to attacks from the air and with the weapons supplied by NATO to Kiev.
To invade Iraq in 2003, the Americans relied on around 175,000 troops, including the British. This is the most inflated estimate for Russian forces around Ukraine today, although there is speculation as high as 100,000. Perhaps more time is needed for Putin to reinforce his flank, and even at 200,000 we are talking about almost a third of all his troops.
With 209,000 men and a large contingent of volunteers, Ukraine’s armed forces are better equipped than they were in 2014, when Putin took Crimea and supported pro-Russian separatists in the east. They now number perhaps 35,000 fighters to help the Russians, and the status of the two “people’s republics” they command is at the heart of the ongoing political dispute.
Against total invasion, there is the Afghan ghost, who was born British, lived Soviet and died American. Death, resistance and an endless financial drain.
2. Partial invasion. More feasible military proposal, limited action could see two scenarios that force Ukraine to capitulate and become a state incapable of being absorbed by NATO and Western politics, Putin’s priority. In one of them, Russian forces in Crimea, western Russia and Belarus would close a movement to consolidate the takeover of the Donbass, a Russian rebel region in eastern Ukraine.
If not combined with attacks elsewhere by Kiev’s forces across the country, this move would tend to be more absorbed in the West, although it incurs enormous costs for Moscow. At the same time, it would oblige the neighbor to accept the terms of a “pax putinista”. There would be heavy penalties, which is already in the account if any shots are fired.
In addition to the annexation, there is the possibility of resuming the Novorossia project, or New Russia, a term Russian nationalists on both sides of the border give to a proposed territory linking Donbass to Crimea along the Black Sea coast.
This would require more sophisticated warfare, with amphibious landings in Odessa, Ukraine’s main port, and would take the fighting to a sea in which there are several NATO forces that could oppose movements of warships from the Sevastopol fleet.
Again, such an arrangement would disfigure Ukraine. Analysts such as Moscow’s Ivan Barabanov say such a strategy would emulate Russia’s 2008 forcible emancipation of Georgia from two autonomous areas. In practice, the country of the Caucasus has not been able to join the West, even though it maintains such rhetoric.
3. Putin blefa. Friedman is betting, but only betting, that the Russian leader has been telling the truth from the start: he doesn’t want to invade Ukraine. That all its movement is just a form of diplomatic coercion, starting from the unacceptable demands to extirpate NATO from the borders it conquered from its expansion to the east in 1999. All the noise would serve to pressure the West and, in the end, extract concessions from Kiev, the weakest part of the deal.
The problem with this view is that Putin cannot simply pull back his forces, as he did last year. That time has passed, although the political objective of making NATO’s divisions explicit has already been achieved. Another problem is that the Kremlin’s action invited a reaction, and even if it sends only 8,500 troops to Eastern European countries, the US will be showing its teeth and putting pressure on the Russian.
So we’re back to the clock ticking and the hypothesis of some kind of show of force, limited or not, to prevent a domestic deterioration for the Russian. The ruble is already suffering from devaluation, which brings dire memories for the Russian middle class of the 2014 crisis, and markets react badly to the war drums heard.
For all the energy he has shown in recent months, he continues a frank campaign of internal repression and has the worst popularity ratings of his term. Unlike 2014, however, a military action against a people considered to be brothers does not seem to suggest an improvement in the situation. Or even a speculated military expansion in Venezuela or Cuba, which would not be accepted in Washington.
Putin is often seen as a brilliant tactician and not a very good strategist, jumping from crisis to crisis to maintain his two-decade rule. Its foreign policy, despite the Foreign Office being recognized as one of the most capable in the world, obeys the 1939 saying of later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which has become a buzzword: it is a riddle, shrouded in mystery, within an enigma.
The answer, however, may be close.
