Just six months ago, Vladimir Putin opened a 7,000-word manifesto on the historical ties between Ukraine and Russia with the statement that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people,” part of “a single whole.”
But to “the common misfortune and tragedy” of both countries, Putin said, in recent years “a wall has emerged” between Russia and Ukraine.
Some see Putin’s comments as part of the explanation for the massing of tens of thousands of troops on his borders with Ukraine, a move that has prompted Western officials to issue increasingly dire warnings that Russia is preparing to an invasion.
Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov warned on Wednesday that Russia would take “necessary countermeasures” if the West “continues its aggressive course”, but Moscow has denied it is planning an invasion.
Russia views Ukraine’s increasing integration into NATO as a threat to its national security and has demanded that the military alliance not expand east into Ukraine or other former Soviet states. It has also demanded that NATO reduce its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.
And while no one knows what will happen next, analysts say Russia’s military buildup is greater this time, with fears ranging from Putin escalating the war in eastern Ukraine to launching a full-scale invasion.
What is happening on the border between Ukraine and Russia?
Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, US officials say, including moving troops to neighboring Belarus for military exercises.
This has included sending more equipment to separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian defense intelligence.
He said Russia had this month shipped “7,000 tons of fuel, various tanks and self-propelled artillery systems, other weapons and ammunition, including artillery systems and mortars” to breakaway regions.
“It’s a fundamentally different operation than anything we’ve seen before,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and a former US State Department official.
“The case of Belarus is illustrative. Never before has there been such an instant drill in quotes in Belarus. You’ve never seen this kind of deployment for an unscheduled exercise.”
Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said NATO was paying too much attention to Russia’s internal troop movement.
“The redeployment of units during combat training is routine practice for the armed forces of any state,” he said.
Gerasimov added that reports that Russia plans to invade Ukraine are a “lie.”
Meanwhile, Western warnings have recently increased in intensity, with US officials stating in mid-January that Putin could invade Ukraine ‘at any moment’.
They had said after the negotiations that a Russian effort was underway to create a pretext his troops invade Ukraine. The warnings came on the same day that Ukrainian government websites were targeted in a cyberattack that Ukrainian authorities blamed on Russia.
The UK Foreign Office warned on January 22 that the Russian government was seeking install a pro-Russian leader in Kiev.
Charap characterized these reports as “flashing red warning signs” that Russian plans “extend beyond, you know, flexing military force.”
Russia has denied the Western accusations, calling them “disinformation” and emphasizing that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) poses a threat.
Putin said in December that Russia was not putting missiles near US borders, but that the US had its missiles at Russia’s “doorstep.”
How did we get here?
In late 2013, Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, a friend of Moscow, canceled plans to sign a deal that would bring the country closer to the EU after Putin proposed a customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Yanukovych’s move sparked protests and civil unrest in Kiev, ultimately resulting in his impeachment.
Shortly after, Russia annexed Crimea in a move that was denounced as illegal by a UN General Assembly resolution. The largely Russian-speaking peninsula had been transferred to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
The Kremlin said it acted on a Crimean referendum in favor of rejoining Russia, but Western countries, including the EU, said the referendum, which took place after the troops invaded, was “illegal and illegitimate”.
Conflict later broke out between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists who declared two regions in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Lugansk, known as Donbas, self-proclaimed republics.
Although Russia and Ukraine signed agreements in Minsk in 2014 and 2015 with the aim of reaching a ceasefire, the conflict has already caused the death of more than 14,000 people.
Since that agreement, there have been repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement with the conflict morphing into trench warfare.
There was hope for progress in 2019 when Russia and Ukraine swapped prisoners and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Euronews in 2020 that he thought there was a “high probability of ending the war” but the clashes have continued.
In the spring of 2021, Russia began amassing tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine in response to what described as NATO threats, a move that was widely condemned internationally. He then said that he withdrew those troops.
However, officials have said that since at least November, Russia has been moving troops to the border.
“Today we view the current buildup as the second stage of the first buildup,” said Oleg Ignatov, International Crisis Group senior analyst for Russia.
“There was some kind of logic in the previous buildup and, for example, that we can understand them as a kind of preparation for the current military activity.”
Could Ukraine defend itself against Russia?
A former Ukrainian defense official says the country is more prepared this time than it was in 2014, with its military capacity changing “drastically”.
“Each battalion has combat experience,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, chairman of the Kiev-based Center for Defense Strategies and a former Ukrainian defense minister.
“Psychologically, the military is much stronger because they have been living with the understanding that they are in a war for eight years.”
He says that Ukraine will soon have more than 260,000 active troops in addition to reserve forces and territorial defense.
It is still a long way from the million-plus forces Russia is estimated to have at its disposal.
But Zagorodnyuk says Putin would need some 400,000 troops on the Ukrainian border to launch a full-scale invasion of the country. He considers such a possibility unlikely, but said an escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine is, in his opinion, very likely.
“The problem that Russia is going to have is not really advancing into the territory of Ukraine,” Zagorodnyuk says, but what happens next.
“Moving forward is one thing, but holding the territories is totally different, and actually holding them would be impossible.”
David Marples, a professor of Russian and Eastern European history at the University of Alberta who has written several books on Ukraine, said he did not think Putin would launch a full-scale invasion unless he had gone “completely insane.”
“That would bring no benefits at all, just massive losses on both sides. Ultimately it would be successful, but the costs will be too high,” Marples said.
What are Putin’s possible motivations?
Analysts can only speculate whether Putin is using the troops to bring the West to the negotiating table or whether Russia is planning some kind of military action, be it a small-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine or a full-scale invasion of the country. .
Many pundits cite Putin’s article on Ukraine’s historical ties with Russia as his most forthright public statement about how he sees Ukraine as part of “essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” a view shared by many Russian officials.
Marples called Russia’s demands that NATO not expand eastward “a shopping list.”
“If you propose 100 things, you might get five. This is how the Russian leadership operates… Create a crisis and see what happens,” Marples said.
Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said he used to think it would be irrational for Putin to invade Ukraine, but after spending several days in Moscow, he was beginning to think it’s possible.
“There is also a growing resignation here in Moscow that a military option is in the making,” Radchenko said.
Former US intelligence officer in Russia Fiona Hill wrote in an essay in New York City Times this month that Putin was furious after a 2008 NATO summit that welcomed Ukraine and Georgia’s aspirations to membership in the alliance.
Hill says he had warned then-US President George W. Bush that Putin would view bringing Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as “a provocative move.”
Multiple experts say that while they don’t think NATO is ready to accept Ukraine as a new member, Putin sees the geopolitical cards stacked against him.
“There is no love lost now between Zelenskyy and the Russian government,” Marples said, with Ukraine drawing ever closer to NATO.
Zelenskyy this year alone placed Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who has ties to Putin, under house arrest.
Ignatov of the International Crisis Group says one theory is that Putin understands that Ukraine is increasingly working with NATO and that the military has rapidly modernized. It also points to Russia’s upcoming presidential election in 2024.
“The main event of his previous term from 2012 to 2018 was Crimea. It was like his main political achievement for the last 10 years,” Ignatov said.
“What will be the main achievements of your current term?”
Radchenko says that Putin could be thinking about his future legacy.
“On foreign policy, he seems to think he can still deliver a great legacy by bringing Russia back into the ranks of this great power that has its own sphere of influence. That is why I think he is so determined not to allow Ukraine or Kazakhstan to slip out of the Russian orbit,” Radchenko said.
www.euronews.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism