After a confusing month, it is now clear what strategies are being executed in Ukraine: we are watching Vladimir Putin’s Plan B versus Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky’s Plan A. Let’s hope Biden and Zelensky are victorious, because Putin’s possible Plan C is really scary — and I don’t even want to put down on paper what I fear might be his Plan D.
I don’t have any secret sources in the Kremlin that tell me about this; just the experience of having watched Putin operate in the Middle East over many years.
As such, it seems evident to me that Putin, having realized that his Plan A had failed — his expectation that the Russian army would enter Ukraine, decapitate its supposedly Nazi leadership, and then just wait while the entire country peacefully fell into Russia’s arms —, started implementing his plan B.
Plan B calls for the Russian army to intentionally fire on Ukrainian civilians, residential buildings, hospitals, commercial establishments and even bomb shelters — all things that have happened in recent weeks — with the aim of encouraging Ukrainians to flee their homes, creating a crisis. huge number of refugees inside Ukraine, and, what is even more important, a massive refugee crisis in neighboring NATO countries.
I suspect Putin is thinking that if he cannot occupy and control all of Ukraine with military means and simply impose his peace terms, the next best option would be to drive 5 million or 10 million Ukrainian refugees, especially women, children and the elderly, to Poland, Hungary and Western Europe.
This is in order to create such heavy social and economic burdens that these NATO countries eventually end up pressuring Zelensky to agree to any demands by Putin to end the war.
The Russian president likely hopes that while this plan is likely to involve war crimes that could make him and the state permanent pariahs, the need for Russian oil, gas and wheat — as well as help in tackling regional problems like the impending nuclear deal with Iran — don’t delay in forcing the world to go back to negotiating with the “bad boy Putin”, as it has always done in the past.
Your plan B seems to be unfolding as planned. French news agency AFP reported on Sunday (20) from Kiev: “More than 3.3 million refugees have left Ukraine since the war began -the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War-, the vast majority of whom are women and children, according to the UN. Another 6.5 million people are said to be internally displaced”.
The report continued: “In an intelligence update last Saturday, the British Defense Ministry said Ukraine continues to defend its airspace effectively, forcing Russia to use weapons launched from its airspace. Russia was forced to ‘change its operational approach and is now implementing a strategy of attrition. This will likely involve the indiscriminate use of firepower, resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure and intensifying humanitarian crisis’.”
But Putin’s Plan B is colliding head-on with Biden and Zelensky. The Ukrainian’s Plan A, which I suspect is having even better results than he expected, is to fight the Russian army on the ground until it creates a stalemate, destroys its morale and forces Moscow to accept its terms for a peace deal. All this with only a minimum of effort to spare the Kremlin leader humiliation.
Despite all the bloodshed and bombings by Russian forces, Zelensky, acting with prudence, is still eyeing the possibility of a diplomatic solution, always asking for negotiations with Putin, while mobilizing his forces and his people.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that “the war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate after more than three weeks of fighting, with Russia making only marginal advances and increasingly targeting civilians, according to US analysts and officials. Ukrainians defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis. The study concluded that the Russians do not have the troops or equipment needed to take the capital Kiev or other major cities. such as Kharkiv and Odessa, concluded,”
Biden’s Plan A, which he explicitly warned Putin about before the war began in an effort to change his mind, was to impose economic sanctions on Russia such as the West has never imposed before, with the aim of crippling the economy. russian.
The strategy involved sending weapons to the Ukrainians to put pressure on Russia militarily. It is having success that probably exceeds Biden’s expectations, because it has been amplified by the fact that hundreds of foreign companies operating in Russia have suspended their operations in the country, voluntarily or under pressure from their employees.
Russian factories are having to close because they can’t get the microchips and other raw materials from the West they need. In addition, air travel to and around Russia has declined because many Russian commercial planes are actually owned by Irish leasing companies and because Airbus and Boeing refuse to service Russian-owned planes.
Meanwhile, thousands of young Russian tech professionals are demonstrating that they are against the conflict “on their feet” by simply abandoning the country — and all this within a month of Putin starting the war.
So, the question that arises is: will the pressure imposed on NATO countries by all the refugees that Putin’s war machine is creating – a number that increases every day – will outweigh the pressure being imposed on his army? bogged down in the field in Ukraine and its economy in Russia, which also grows every day?
The answer to that question must determine when and how the war will end. Whether it will end up with a clear winner and loser or, what is perhaps more likely, with some sort of shady deal skewed in favor of Putin or against him.
I say “maybe” because it is possible that Putin finds any kind of tie or shady deal intolerable. He may feel that anything other than a total victory will be a humiliation that will weaken his authoritarian grip on power. In that case, he might opt ​​for a Plan C — which, I imagine, would involve air or rocket attacks against Ukrainian military supply lines in Poland.
Poland is a member of NATO, and any attack on its territory would force all other NATO members to come to its defense. Putin may think that if he can force this issue and some NATO members are hesitant to defend Poland, NATO could fracture.
Such a scenario would certainly provoke heated discussions in all alliance countries, especially the United States, about direct involvement in a potential World War III against Russia.
No matter what happened in Ukraine, if Putin managed to crack NATO it would be an achievement that could mask all his other defeats.
If Putin’s Plans A, B and C fail, I fear he will be like a cornered animal and then choose Plan D – drop chemical weapons or the first nuclear bomb since Nagasaki. This is a difficult sentence to write and even more difficult to contemplate. But to ignore that it is a possibility would be extreme naivety.
