More than 100,000 Russian troops remain massed on the Russian-Ukrainian and Belarusian-Ukrainian border and a Russian invasion is feared
by Ajai Shukla
Defence News of India, 30 January 22
As Russia continues its military buildup of approximately 100,000 troops and combat equipment in and around Ukraine, the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have all two transmitted, on January 26, their written proposals to Russia to resolve the crisis.
Moscow also released a list of demands, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V Lavrov said on his ministry’s website that the US document contained “no positive reaction” to Russia’s main demands, including the explicitly ruling out the possibility of Ukraine and others ever joining. the Covenant. Moscow has warned of “retaliatory measures” if Washington and its allies reject its security demands on NATO and Ukraine. The White House said President Joe Biden warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that Russia could invade in February.
While diplomacy is making little progress, Russian military maneuvers are raising tensions. Associated press reported that “Russia has launched a series of military exercises involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of war in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian warplanes and paratroopers in Belarus (which is a satellite of Moscow).
In an obviously lukewarm response, the The Pentagon has placed 8,500 US troops on standby for deployment to Eastern Europe. NATO said it was sending ships and jets to bolster the region’s defences. Manybelieve that President Vladimir Putin is expecting February, a better campaign month than January, when the ground is frozen in Ukraine and Belarus.
It goes back centuries
If Russia were to invade, Biden says the resulting suffering would represent “the most significant thing that has happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War II (WW2).”
While post-WWII map making is the source of many of Europe’s lingering problems, the reason Putin – as a metaphor for Russia – behaves aggressively towards Ukraine has its roots at least four centuries earlier.
The Russian psyche, shaped in blood over the centuries, sees European expansionism as an existential threat. Every century from 1708-09, one or another Western European power invaded Russia, advancing as far as Moscow twice. In 1709, an invasion by Sweden, then Europe’s preeminent power, was defeated at Poltava by Tsar Peter the Great, who established the Russian Empire. A century later, in 1812, Napoleon’s “Grande Armée”, 600,000 strong, advanced as far as Moscow and occupied it before capitulating to fatigue, hunger and the Russian winter.
Then, between 1941 and 1944, Hitler’s armies invaded the Soviet Union in the bloodiest campaign in human history. Millions of Russians, along with millions of German invaders, died in a cruel scorched-earth retreat towards Moscow and the advance of the Red Army into Berlin. Given this timeline – 1709, 1812, 1941 – Moscow predictably thinks the next invasion is overdue.
Determined that any future invasion would be met and fought outside of Mother Russia, Joseph Stalin set up the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO and establish his iron-fisted control over Eastern Europe. East. This created a security buffer for Russia and for 45 years maintained a balance of terror with NATO.
This fragile balance was shattered when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989-90. Mikhail Gorbachev recounts that President George HW Bush (Senior) then assured him that NATO would not expand eastward. Yet NATO did just that, giving membership to East Germany in 1990; in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; in Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2004; and in Croatia and Albania in 2009. Today, NATO has 30 members, up from 16 in 1990.
With NATO now on Russia’s doorstep, US bases in Central Asia and the looming prospect of US missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland, Moscow has drawn its first red line on Georgia. After the pro-democracy “Rose Revolution” in Tbilisi in 2003, and Western pandering to Georgia joining NATO, Russia invaded in 2008 and created de facto the independence of two pro-Russian regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Now Moscow has drawn a second red line in Ukraine, warning Kiev not to seek NATO and European Union (EU) membership. Since 1990, Russia has gritted its teeth and tolerated NATO and EU enlargement, including the admission of the Baltic republics – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – into NATO. A weak Russia had no other choice. But now a hydrocarbon-fueled economy and Putin’s nationalist politics are bringing a tougher response from a military eager to show off its capabilities.
The brand new Russian army
During Putin’s first years in power in Moscow, the bankrupt economy had reduced Russia’s mighty military to a shadow of its former self, unpaid soldiers seemingly begging in the underground metro. Today, the 900,000 strong army is based on a hard and well-trained core of around 400,000 soldiers, who earn significantly more than the average Russian salary. Last year, Putin said a Russian lieutenant earned more than $1,000 a month.
Putin’s years in power have restored much of the Russian military’s conventional capability. He demonstrated his power during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the intervention in Syria in 2015, the negotiation of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020 and the support of a puppet, President Kassym -Jomart Tokayev, recently in Kazakhstan. Capturing large parts of Ukraine is entirely within Russia’s power.
Putin can call on an arsenal of T-72B3 tanks and Iskander-M rockets already deployed on the Ukrainian border; and on Kalibr cruise missiles deployed on ships in the Black Sea. The Russian Air Force can fly in nearly 1,000 state-of-the-art combat aircraft, such as the Sukhoi Su-35S.
Russia’s combat doctrine has evolved even more than its equipment. The approach it now follows in combating such “asymmetrical warfare” has been variously referred to as “hybrid warfare”, “grey area operations” or “cross-domain coercion”, in which the use of force – real or threatened – is mixed with diplomacy, propaganda and cyberattacks, aimed at causing a collapse of the will of the target audience.
When it comes to full-scale warfare, many of the older forces the Kremlin has deployed on the Ukrainian border may not be up to par with modern armies such as the US military or forces that the NATO could put to use. However, Russian doctrine aims to achieve political goals through psychological disruption, eliminating unnecessary bloodshed.
The intervention in Syria has hardened Moscow’s soldiers. After the extensive combat experience gained there, Russian Defense Minister Sergei K Shoigu said that all Russian ground commanders, 92% of air force pilots and 62% of the navy had now a combat experience.
The way to go
Ukrainian journalist Veronika Melkozerova claims Moscow is creating fake panic with the threat that “Russia could invade at any time. Run for your life.”
Melkozerova writes: “Russia invaded (Crimea) 8 years ago and waged Hybrid War against Ukraine, which has already killed 14,000 people. So “Russia could resume the active phase of the war” would be more accurate.
If so, what could happen to Ukraine? Western nations have lent their support to Kiev, but very few of them want to engage in a fire or even hybrid war with Russia.
The United States and the United Kingdom supplied arms to Kiev. Germany plans to send a field medical facility next month but will not transfer military equipment. This is the advantage of “hybrid warfare”: it creates denial, which makes it difficult for other countries to take tough action.
Economic sanctions offer perhaps the best way to punish Moscow. The United States and its European allies have promised to hit Russia financially. No details have been publicly discussed, so Putin can keep guessing.
Washington is considering removing Russia from the SWIFT financial system, which moves money around the world. This would deal a blow to the Russian economy, in the short and long term, by cutting Russia off from most international financial transactions. This includes profits from oil and gas production, which currently account for more than 40% of Russia’s income.
