Weekly Overview - Ukraine Crisis: Further Indicators of Intent, Diplomatic Ploys, and Maneuvers.
Ukraine Crisis: Further Indicators of Intent, Diplomatic Ploys, and Maneuvers.
This past week has been very extremely eventful for those tracking both major and nuanced ploys and maneuvers by both Russia and the West.
There have been multiple ups and downs throughout the week, but Putin and Xi displayed close affinity to each other during meetings in Beijing, and Russia did in fact secure itself a tactical (too soon to paint it as strategic) diplomatic victory by 1) announcing a major new partnership of ‘‘no limit’’ with Beijing (alongside a new gas supply deal to China), and 2) Securing alignment and backing of Beijing in the joint statement that supported Russian claims against NATO.
We shall take a closer look at the full scope of this ‘‘new level partnership’’ and dilemmas facing Beijing in relation to the Ukraine crisis, in the upcoming cables.
For now, other urgent developments from the passing week require an immediate examination:
1. Further build-up of Russian troops - and dubious claims to explain it
In addition to increasing the number of its deployed Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) at the Ukrainian border to 83 (essentially, half of Russia’s combat battalions), deploying SU- 22SM (designed for ground targets) to Belarus, the Russian military took certain steps that allow for further inferences that an invasion is being planned.
Specifically:
a) Russia moved more troops to Crimea, and supplied the peninsula with marine troops and amphibious assault ships - enabling the Russian military to conduct coastal invasion of key strategic cities like Odessa and Mariupol (and perhaps even attempting to close off the Black Sea coast to Ukraine altogether) as suggested in December’s cables.
b) Deployment of Rosgvardia to Ukrainian border - essentially, a riot control force.
A significant indicator: suggesting plans to control occupied towns and cities, and prevent widespread public disturbances.
(side note: and Saturday’s pro-Ukraine rally in Kharkiv - an ethnically heavily Russian city 26 miles away from Russian border, indicates that occupying even cities that were hitherto considered most pliable, could actually end up being very challenging, and that heavy Rosgvardia presence will most definitely be needed in the event of an invasion)
Rosgvardia furthermore, has a unique expertise in both counterintelligence and logistical support - and was deployed to Syria for precisely such operations.
It is still unlikely that Putin is planning to occupy large swathes of Ukrainian territory - but seizing key strategic cities could well be within his plans - and now, there is Rosgvardia to ensure control over these locations.
c) Creation of field tents in proximity to the potential areas of combat.
In particular, several military hospitals were spotted - a further indicator that the Russian military may be ensuring the efficacy of its combat units by providing necessary operational and logistical support.
Previously, these recent deployments were rationalized away by:
1) Taking Putin at his word that these were simply preparations for planned military exercises with Belarus (we have debunked these extremely tenuous claims in previous cables - proponents also fail to explain exactly why Russia would need large amounts of blood to accompany its field tents - unless Russian soldiers are planning to shoot each other with live rounds during these ‘‘military drills”), and;
2) Arguing that this was simply part of Putin’s ‘‘heavy metal” coercive diplomacy. But this line of thinking is hard to square with the Kremlin’s outrageous demands and over the top aggressive rhetoric - if this really was part of coercive diplomacy ploy (absent intent to escalate militarily), then Putin surely wouldn’t have set himself up for failure by trapping himself between escalation and capitulation - without securing significant concessions (which he most probably will not - and he was surely aware of this) he has gone too far to back down without a significant loss of face.
In addition to the aforementioned rationalizations, however, there is a new proposed interpretation: that Russia’s goal is to maintain the pressure and build-up of troops over a longer time period in order to destabilize and weaken Ukraine.
Mainly proposed by the Ukrainian government officials (and a few Western foreign policy think tanks), this is perhaps the worst analysis of the situation.
Putin would surely not pursue such an exceptionally self-defeating strategy since (among a long list of implications):
a) Ukraine will only continue to receive more military and financial aid. The NATO member states will equip Ukraine with more defensive weaponry, technical tools, and expertise to repel cyber attacks - overall, with such significant backing, Ukraine will both become internally resilient, and externally harder to invade.
b) Europe will have more time to adjust to the new status quo and weaken Russia’s leverage by diversifying its energy sources - the longer this conflict drags on, the weaker is Russia’s leverage over the EU.
c) Russian threats and warnings will lose their credibility and potency - similar threats against Ukraine or another country may not be treated with similar seriousness and alarm.
This is not to say that other players will be correct to dismiss future Russian threats, but only that the coercive, threat-based diplomacy as a tool, will not be as effective.
(side note: Indeed, the UK has already started a campaign to ridicule Russia’s overt aggression as mere attention-seeking behavior. The message being: you want status and prestige, but contempt is all you will get. This naturally has a further triggering effect on the Kremlin - reminding them of the potential reputational losses of maintaining loud aggression without following through.)
d) NATO will have an excuse to revitalize and re-energize its raison d'etre - and this renewed sense of purpose, will most certainly have a spillover effect beyond the European theater.
In fact, Putin most probably already achieved something that consecutive American Presidents failed at accomplishing: convincing all NATO member states to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense (agreed NATO standard).
e) Russian troops and the military leadership will lose morale - constant movements without action will sap the vigor from the military.
f) Putin will suffer a significant reputational loss amongst both his inner circle, and also the security/siloviki faction - there will undoubtedly be many whispers that Putin was forced to back down and was in fact deterred.
g) Maintaining such a lengthy deployment will be very costly - both in terms of treasure, morale (especially for those in tents - and if those tents disappear, the sense of urgency and thus of military threat will also melt away with them), and will have further domestic political costs.
Sense of urgency will disappear, and it will be harder to sell the prolonged conflict to Russian citizens - who are about to face another year of inflation eating into their disposable incomes.
There will be an increased pressure to redirect valuable monetary resources towards improvements of the Russian economy and living standards.
It is therefore extremely unlikely that Putin is taking all these steps to trap himself into a significant policy failure.
Indeed, his recent public remarks provide further proof against the theory that Putin is merely bluffing.
2. Putin’s ominous statements
With latest public remarks (during a joint press-conference with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán - where he knew that Orban wouldn’t openly contradict him, and would therefore ensure another display of misalignment within the EU), Putin managed to grab and maintain the global public and media attention.
First off, there were propositions of some extremely unlikely scenarios - such as a warning that if admitted to NATO, Ukraine could (by attempting to regain Crimea) drag the whole alliance into a war with Russia.
Let’s be clear about this: the chances of Ukraine ever being admitted to NATO without a full resolution of all potential military issues with Russia (meaning that in some future hypothetical post-Putin era, Donbas crisis is fully resolved, and Crimea is either returned to Ukraine, or Kyiv gives up on its claim) is close to zero.
NATO membership requires a unanimous assent of all member states, and there is going to be at least one country amongst the thirty (more likely, all of them) that will stop this from happening.
Indeed, Hungary (with PM Orbán apparently more loyal to Putin than to his NATO allies) already blocked a far lesser integration with NATO - preventing Ukraine from joining NATO’s Cyber Defense Center (making it more likely that the future cyber attacks targeting Ukraine from Russia’s SVR and GRU face little opposition - Putin’s Hungarian asset is paying off big time).
Consequently, Putin is merely reframing the conflict and providing red meat to all those media pundits in the US, and the rest of the NATO states, that keep spreading over the top, and outrageously unrealistic concerns that “Our boys are going to fight Russians for some Eastern European country that doesn’t even matter to us”.
Not a single American soldier is going to fight Russia over this - but if enough people believe that it might, the electoral pressure on the Biden admin (to reduce rhetorical and military support to Ukraine) could strengthen - Putin is unlikely to achieve this particular political objective, but he is trying.
But going back to his remarks, with some specific comments, Putin really did put himself in a hole and a trap between capitulation and military escalation - that is, if he really wasn’t planning to use his military anytime soon.
This is because, Putin essentially announced that none of Russia’s three core concerns (public commitment to guarantee exclusion of Ukraine from a potential NATO membership/commitment to prevent future expansion of NATO, offensive weapons guarantees, and return to the 1997 status quo) were addressed by the US.
The de facto demands for a sphere of influence and treatment of Ukraine as a pawn (and not a sovereign state with independent foreign policy) were of course, never going to be accepted.
The leaked documents published by El Pais do however demonstrate that the US was willing to engage in (mutual) offensive weapons guarantees and verifications (such as: conditions-based and reciprocal commitments to avoid placement of offensive weapons close to Russia, and offers to verify the absence of the offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles in Poland and Romania).
These were however, conveniently ignored by Putin - and even though the Russian Foreign Ministry delivered a written response to the US offer, instead of waiting for further negotiations, Putin decided to focus on the lack of diplomatic accomplishments.
Reminding everyone of the exceptionally high threshold of demands advanced by Russia, isn’t a good way of preventing a significant loss of face - that is, if your plan doesn’t include taking actions.
The choice of words and framing are also crucial - Putin claimed that Russian concerns were essentially ‘‘basically ignored’’.
If Putin was really only bluffing and hoping to gain diplomatic concessions (without needing to escalate militarily), why would he emphasize the diplomatic rejection and dismissal of Russia and its concerns?
Accusing the US and NATO of being dismissive to Russian needs, only to thereafter de-escalate and backtrack (since those three specific needs will not be met - and Putin must surely be aware of this) doesn’t go well together - in the absence of concrete retaliatory measures, Putin is setting himself up for a very significant reputational loss.
There are those that believe that Putin’s accusations that the US was dragging Russia into war was a setup to de-escalate honorable later on, and even reframe the situation - creating a virtue out of a necessity: that Putin (thanks to his wise and prudent statesmanship) was able to avert a US trap, refusing to be played into starting a bloody military conflict.
Admittedly, if Putin was to decide against the military escalation, this would probably be the best way to reframe a humiliating affair (whether the lie could then be sold effectively to both domestic and foreign audiences is another matter).
But yet again, the statement could also serve a diametrically opposite objective: the narrative that Russia did its best to avoid the war, but the malicious US manipulations created a situation where Putin simply couldn’t de-escalate without abdicating Russia’s national interests.
Under this scenario, Putin starts a war and then blames the US for it all.
Indeed, the full quote (alleging that Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict) allows for precisely that:
‘‘In this sense, Ukraine itself is just an instrument to achieve this goal… This can be done in different ways, by drawing us into some kind of armed conflict and, with the help of their allies in Europe, forcing the introduction against us of those harsh sanctions they are talking about now in the U.S.[emphasis added]’’.
And Putin’s overall remarks (and the difficulties and traps that he imposed on himself - those that no one trying to avoid a conflict would do) such as the threat that without a dialogue there could be certain “negative consequences”, indicates that this route could indeed be taken.
All of these (in tandem with observable military movements, and the fact that Putin has assembled 70% of the troops that he needs for a full-scale invasion) suggest that a de-escalation is indeed unlikely.
3. Russia’s further divide and conquer attempts against the EU
The Russia vs US drama at the UN consumed most of the media attention and left little bandwidth to put a spotlight on more insidious Russian ploys.
After receiving a rejection from the US for its outrageous sphere of influence demands, Russia resumed a divide & conquer campaign within the EU.
Targeting mainly the neighboring Nordic states, Russia demanded a “clear answer’’ to its ‘‘security needs’’.
Naturally, the Russian interpretation of the OSCE commitment (that states don’t strengthen their security at the expense of others), is wholly different from the original principle: what Russia really wants is that the Nordic states commit to not joining NATO (and in the process stop acting like sovereign nations).
(side note: and let’s be clear - the original OSCE commitment is quite nebulous, and means very little in practice. National security is always a zero-sum game. Unless two states are formally allied with each other, the increase in the security capabilities of one necessarily implies a decrease in the security of the other. This is an inescapable basic reality of relative military prowess, and will be most pronounced when two states are neighbors without being part of the same military alliance)
So far, initial responses have been rather encouraging.
Although Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto’s response that Finland would first ‘‘see how other countries react to it’’ prior to submitting a formal response, wasn’t exactly the most confident display of a united front (signaling passivity and lack of certainty instead), the EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen’s statement was far more forceful:
‘‘We are working on the coordination of the response...We are united in the European Union and therefore it is clear that the response will mirror, will reflect that unity’’.
But this is just a start, Russia will continue to probe for fragility within the alliance - the upcoming Macron - Putin meeting in Moscow, will undoubtedly be another opportunity for precisely this.
The French President is already eager to deal with Russia independently of the US oversight - and Putin is likely to use this opening to push for a new EU-Russia security architecture agreement.
The crucial post-meeting indicators will reveal a lot about the possibility of this taking hold.
4. Allied resolve, more sanctions & attempts at a diplomatic blockade
a) Further NATO displays of support and resolve
The US deployed 2,000 troops to NATO’s eastern flank - there is a practical utility to this, as thousands of Americans may need to be evacuated from Ukraine.
But the tenuously argued pronouncements by certain media pundits that this amounts to the US provoking Russia are completely wrongheaded.
Several thousand additional US soldiers will not cause a security threat to Russia - but they will reassure regional NATO allies, and will ensure that they remain confident about provisioning Ukraine with lethal military aid.
In other words, this is an essential deployment to preserve the balance of power on the ground.
In addition, the UK, Ukraine and Poland, are currently in talks about a possible new security pact, and the Turkish President Erdogan visited Ukraine, expressed support to its territorial integrity, and offered to jointly produce Turkish drones in Ukraine (same ones that alarmed Russia so much back in last October - when Ukrainian forces used it to target Russia-backed separatists in Donbas).
Turkey has now arguably supplied the most impactful weaponry to Ukraine - in terms of the overall support given to Ukraine, it is certainly on par (or at most, slightly behind) with the US and the UK.
So much for the intellectually deficient arguments that Turkey was not a reliable NATO ally, steering towards Russia.
In fact, no other NATO member is currently engaged in so many conflicts with Russia across so many theaters (Libya, Syria, Karabakh and now Ukraine).
And in Ukraine especially, Turkey has a dangerous leverage over Russia - ethnically Turkic Crimean Tatars look to Ankara for guidance, and this lever can always be activated if things go further south with Russia.
b) Sanctions targeting Putin cronies
The UK joined the US in warning Putin’s inner circle of sanctions targeting them (and their assets) in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There have been many arguments that dirty Russian money in both the US and the UK (and in Western liberal - democracies in general), should have been cleaned up regardless of what Putin decided to do in Ukraine.
The counterargument to this was that allowing Russian oligarchs to park their assets in the West, provided for an extra lever to be pulled precisely at such moments.
Without getting too much into the weeds here, these proposed sanctions are of course welcome news - but perhaps a bit too late.
These cables have been arguing for imposition of such sanctions back in early December.
Is it too late now? This far in the game?
Perhaps.
But regardless of their utility in affecting Putin’s calculus to dissuade an invasion, they could potentially limit the extent of it.
c) Failed tactic to further isolate Russia
The US State Department’s attempts to dissuade Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s Moscow visit have backfired - when these attempts were leaked by the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.
The Brazilian President emphasized his neutrality in the ongoing crisis (which is bad enough already), but the fact that the US tried and failed to dissuade Bolsonaro is a significant damage to the US soft power and global prestige.
After all, what does it say of the US global influence, if it cannot convince its Major Non-NATO Ally to refrain from tacitly boosting Putin’s global standing in the middle of a crisis - exactly when the US is doing everything to isolate him?
It wasn’t hard to predict that Bolsonaro would refuse to comply with the US calls - it was therefore important to prevent the revelations of such an attempt taking place in the first place.
If the US leadership found it this important, President Biden himself should have reached out to Balsonaro - instead of relegating it to the diplomatic corps, where communication with a Brazilian Foreign Ministry would inevitably take place - where the leaks of such attempts were always going to be more likely.
5. Further warnings of an imminent invasion & fake genocide video revelation
The US provided a further warning of an impending invasion -estimating 50k civilian deaths, and the possibility of Kyiv falling within days.
The National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan then declared that the Russian invasion could come ‘‘any day now”.
(side note: and Ukrainian officials continued with ambiguous and incoherent ‘‘all over’’ messaging. First off, President Zelensky rightly made a U-turn from the previous week, and warned that not only was the war a possibility, but that this war wasn’t going to be limited to Ukraine and was instead “going to be a European war, a fully fledged war”. And yet, his very own Deputy Defense Minister denounced the warnings about Russian frontline blood supply as provocations designed ‘‘to spread panic’’ . It is indeed depressing to see the future of Ukrainian people being gambled away by such an incompetent government)
And all of these were announced after US warnings that Russia was planning to concoct a fake genocide video in Donbas - creating a context for an invasion to defend ‘‘the ethnic Russians’’ from further massacre.
Both allegations were naturally dismissed by Russians.
But the challenge to these claims went beyond the expected Russian side - many Western journalists and analysts joined to question these claims.
Many have agreed with this AP reporter that these allegations were advanced without a shred of evidence.
Although it is technically true that the State Department didn’t reveal any evidence beyond verbal confirmation of existence of the intel, the attacks on the US for the failure to produce proof, fail to consider certain realities of the foreign affairs intel acquisition:
a) Only a limited number of informants would have had access to such evidence. For example: voice, and/or video recordings, photos, download/exported document copies - only a certain (and limited) number of people could have had access to such evidence.
Consequently, revealing the evidence (even without an outright revelation of sources) would allow the Russian counterintelligence officers to make necessary inferences to identify the source/s of this leak.
In other words, in order to avoid inadvertently tipping off Russian intel officers, it was crucial to not reveal even the evidence itself.
b) Why is it so hard to understand that Russia would indeed need an actual technical excuse to invade Ukraine? They have used the same playbook in other theaters of conflict.
c) There is now circumstantial evidence to back the US claims that Russia is planning a provocation in Donbas - Belarusian President Lukashenko himself warning that he would engage in a joint response with Russia if Ukraine started a war in Donbas.
d) It is important to also remember that the US leadership had an extra signaling pressure after the Afghanistan debacle - ‘‘how could you not see this one coming?’’ was a question on the minds of many Americans (and one that was constantly repeated derisively by the global media, in addition to the adversarial propaganda mouthpieces of Russia, Iran and China).
Consider the alternative: what would happen if the US government failed to forewarn an invasion of this calibre and scale?
The damage to the US standing and influence worldwide (and especially in Europe) would be extremely grave.
(side note: this is why the White House backtracking and Jen Psaki promising not use the term ‘‘imminent’’ in relation to a potential Ukrainian invasion wasn’t very wise - it also suggested that the US could be pushed around by allies that depend on it)
Of course, there is another credibility risk of continuously warning of an invasion and of plots that don’t materialize - but on the balance, however, it is far more advantageous and politically prudent that the US officials display too much caution - since mistakenly predicting an invasion can later be rationalized away as Russia being successfully deterred thanks to the US and NATO efforts.