The White House said this week that Russia now has more troops near the border with Ukraine than ever since 2014 – when the Crimean peninsula was annexed. Further south, military intelligence reports estimated that about 4,000 heavily armed Russian forces were seen moving in Crimea, a US defense official told CNN.
Moscow is also talking about the game. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has announced quick inspections for the army. The Kremlin envoy to the conflict, the deputy head of the presidential administration, Dmitry Kozak, said that Moscow will, as always, come to the defense of the eastern population of Ukraine, if necessary. He also said that the beginning of a conflict will be “the beginning of the end of Ukraine”. Russia’s statements are quite noisy.
On behalf of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky moved some units closer to the Donbas and made a very high trip to the area on Thursday. Like Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Zelensky’s internal ratings are not as healthy. He spoke the language of peace. He tried to be close to the troops, aware that US President Joe Biden had said he would stand by him.
The White House said it was “increasingly concerned about the recent escalation of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine” and US officials also suggested it could send warships to the Black Sea, a signal of increased involvement, even if US aircraft regularly monitored the area. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on Putin to withdraw during a call on Thursday. Everyone gets very excited, very fast.
Speculation about what follows in Europe’s biggest ground war in two decades is as plentiful as the Kremlin would be. Meanwhile, its only cost so far is the fuel bill for moving many tanks around.
The key question, still unanswered, is what Russia’s goal in a military intervention would be. Some analysts have speculated that it could flood separatist and adjacent conflict zones with a huge Russian “peacekeeping” force designed to impose its will and rules on the area – seriously annexing the Donbas.
However, this would almost guarantee a Western response, probably at first in the form of sanctions. It would also gain for Moscow, in essence, the same control it now has over these areas, albeit with a lot of expensive Russian leather and hardware at stake. It’s still tight, no juice, and it’s probably not so favorable to the Kremlin.
The second option launched by analysts involves the creation of a land corridor between the eastern separatist Donbas and Crimea, the peninsula annexed to southern Ukraine. For years, water has been a limited resource in Crimea, a crisis that a senior Ukrainian official warned me two years ago could reach a critical stage in the summer of 2019. It persists, along with the wider challenge for Moscow to maintain a passable standard of living in the Crimea by maritime supply and over a small new bridge that he built over the Kerch Strait. It is not a sustainable state of affairs for Russia’s latest long-term acquisition.
But a land corridor – a strip that runs through the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to the Armiansk area above the Crimea – would also be extremely vulnerable to any Russian forces occupying it. They would be caught between the Sea of Azov and a very angry Ukrainian army, better equipped than before. To maintain the corridor effectively, it should push deeper into Ukraine and then face even more resistance from the Ukrainian army and the local population. The hope in 2014 that Russian soldiers will be seen as “liberators” of a corrupt government in Kiev has long since disappeared. Hostility is much more palpable.
So the task for the Russian army is either to do so little that the inevitable Western sanctions seem to be imposed for minimal gains. Or do so much (much too much) that you have to occupy large areas of Ukraine for years. It’s a mess in both directions.
In Moscow’s eyes then, perhaps a much better option is to gather strength, make loud noises about Ukraine’s desire for war, suggest diplomacy, and use its hand with heavy metal gloves across the border to force a solution. better and negotiated. Of course, this means that the Kremlin leader always makes the best decisions. Putin is also able to overcome or deceive.
A third invasion of Ukraine in 2021 is also a much more dangerous game for Putin than the one he took in 2014-15. US President Biden said he would offer “unwavering support” to Kiev. Washington’s mentality is irrevocably reinforced by the idea that Russia is a threat. And Ukrainian leader Zelensky, as inexperienced as he is politically and militarily, will no doubt benefit internally from being dragged into a conflict he did not start.
However, two lasting, non-quantifiable risks remain. The first is that Putin may see, among all the chaos of the coming weeks, a moment of opportunity to strike and simply decide to deal with the consequences later. The second is the inevitable danger of gathering angry forces on both sides of an already active front line. An error or an unforeseen increase by either side could lead to a bigger war.
If Moscow hopes that its accumulation means that its phones start ringing more frequently and diplomacy takes over, then it would be better for it to happen soon.