Eight years ago, Vladimir Putin began
planning the invasion of Crimea, expanding Russia’s territorial reach to
“Novorossiya”, and reducing Ukraine to merely a compliant appendage of
Russia. Midway through his planning,
Victor Yanukovych’s presidency offered the opportunity to achieve his goals
sooner and with lower risk. Yanukovych was bought and paid for, and Putin’s
path to victory seemed assured….until the fall of 2013 when ordinary Ukrainians
gathered by the hundreds of thousands to block his path. He suffered his first
defeat as his “stealth” option unraveled.
The next four months were marked by the
“repressive” option, during which Putin – with and through a submissive
Yanukovych – sought to crush the popular insurrection with brute force. After fierce battles and hundreds of
casualties, Putin again suffered defeat as his minion fled the country. Having
failed through “democratic” means, his only recourse was covert aggression, but
made to look like civil war.
From the comfort of his residence in Sochi,
Putin looked west to Ukraine and saw a fruit ripe for the taking. The country
had no governing body except a squabbling legislature dominated by traitorous
communists and the fleeing president’s loyalists; its military was small,
poorly trained, under- funded, and equipped with moth-balled, soviet-era
armaments; its treasury was emptied and on the verge of bankruptcy; its
intelligence and security agencies weak, corrupt, and riddled with spies,
traitors, and Russian sympathizers; its media dominated by Russian propaganda;
its eastern and southern regions containing large numbers of disaffected
Russian nationals still resentful of
lost empire and nostalgic for the
past. Putin then turned towards his
mighty army, 10 times larger than Ukraine’s, and equipped with the latest
weapons; took note of Gazprom, ready to cut off Ukraine’s energy lifeline; and
surveyed his formidable media/lobby propaganda machine, eager to engage this
still relatively unknown Ukrainian state in an
“information war” unprecedented in its ferocity and disinformation. By
all objective measures, his take-over of Ukraine was going to be a piece of
cake.
Putin unleashed his dogs of war – but
slowly, so as not to disrupt the Sochi Olympics and cause alarm in Europe and
the U.S. His attempts at provoking
confrontation between the Ukrainian military and native Crimeans failed. Although mainland Ukraine was forced to trade off Crimea for desperately needed
time to organize and survive this sudden threat, Putin suffered his first major defeat. The world, instead of turning a blind eye to
his subterfuge, recognized Putin as a fraud and a rogue; and Russia’s newly
acquired Crimea was to become a burden on the state and an international
outcast.
After his mixed gains in Crimea, Putin
turned his attention to the rest of Ukraine. At first he trotted out Yanukovych
to claim presidential authority, but quickly became the butt of Ukrainian
jokes. Then he tried intimidation with
the encampment of tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border.
Ukrainians responded by enrolling in combat battalions and raising funds for
the military. He tried disrupting
presidential elections but Ukrainians flocked to the polls. He set up goofy “republics” with very limited
local support, but had to deploy heavily armed and financed swarms of
mercenaries, cut-throats, and Russian officers to simply keep this freak show
afloat. He entrusted them with a sophisticated anti-aircraft system, only to be
held responsible for blowing a passenger airliner out of the sky. He cut off Ukraine’s energy life-line, but
merely succeeded in pushing Ukraine on the road to alternative sources and
energy independence. . He banned the import of Ukrainian products, but simply
accelerated the implementation of “association” trade with the European
Union.
We can go on and on, but it should be
obvious that – from Putin’s perspective – Ukraine had bested him at every
turn. With the prospect of imminent
defeat in the Donbas, he had no other recourse but to risk a direct,
cross-border invasion with his army – unequivocally exposing Russia as the
aggressor and threat to world peace. Although he expressed confidence that he
“could take Kyiv in two weeks”, is he equally confident that he could keep Kyiv for more than two days?
NATO has been reactivated. Putin’s credibility has shrunk to zero. Russia has become a pariah state and its
soldiers are returning home in coffins by the hundreds. Its economy – always
fragile – has been hit hard by the effects of lower gas prices, reduced sales,
capital flight, and sanctions. And Ukrainians have been united as never before,
and daily improve their ability to safeguard their independence and territorial
integrity.
Ukraine’s rise from the ashes of February
has been near miraculous. It has capable leadership; is back on track to
Europe; and can expect a better parliament next month with less Russian
ballast. It still is not out of the woods, and has a ways to go to clean up
Putin’s mess, while its warriors have promised to march on Kyiv if the
government fails the equally important task of freeing the country from the
thralls of corruption and self-serving, traitorous relics of the soviet
past.
But my advice to Putin is to cut his losses
or else he may have to retire to beautiful Solovetsky Island.
George Woloshyn worked in the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He is a former naval intelligence commander and former director of U.S. National Security Preparedness and a former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Security Investigations.
