The Joe Biden administration seemed to promise new sanctions on Russia a few weeks back but since then nothing.
I am wondering if the US president is pulling his punches now because of the Russian military build-up near Ukraine. That would likely send the wrong message to Vladimir Putin: that he can boss the US around. Sure Ukrainians would rather a strong US sanctions response as the best deterrent to Moscow. Sanction them hard for the Solar Winds hack, US election meddling again if they escalate more in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, while we debate whether or not Putin will start a major offensive, on the ground more Ukrainian troops are being killed and wounded. Unfortunately, it’s now 26 Ukrainian soldiers killed in 2021, and feels like we are on a cycle of escalation. Indeed, there is a lot of focus on Russian military drills and whether this is a precursor to “the big one” and a defining Russia-Ukraine war with Russia launching a bigger offensive. The Kremlin already controls 7 percent of Ukrainian territory and has since 2014 — the Crimean peninsula and parts of the eastern Donbas, including the large cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Military types are saying they don’t think Russia will launch an all-out invasion. But something feels different this time.
Maybe what is different is that this is coming after a period of relative peace after the cease-fire agreement reached in July 2020 by the Zelensky administration. But we should remember before then and particularly under the Poroshenko presidency when this was a particularly hot conflict with very regular/daily live fire incidents and casualties. Back then Putin tended to dial up and down the conflict depending on the state of Minsk 2 peace talks. And maybe he is just returning to script.
The July cease-fire agreement probably suited Putin as it coincided with the US elections – likely Putin did not want to embarrass his friend Donald Trump with heavy casualties in the war in the Donbas. With the Biden administration, Putin will likely feel less constrained.
So more likely what we are seeing in the Donbas is a return to the norm by Putin – perhaps prior to July 2020 or more likely 2019 before President Volodymyr Zelensky’s election.
Remember that Zelensky had seemed willing to concede ground to Moscow for peace. After all, he was elected significantly on a mandate to bring peace. But with the onset of the Biden presidency, Zelensky has appeared to harden his stance on the Donbas in relations with Russia by sanctioning Putin’s ally Viktor Medvedchuk and banning some pro-Kremlin TV channels. This might have been to win friends in D.C. but maybe also nationalist votes at home – and his poll ratings have improved.
But it seems Moscow will now ratchet up the violence in the east and the presence of tens of thousands (at least 28 additional combat battalions) on the border with Ukraine adds to the menace. All this is meant to test and probe, and signal that Moscow expects concessions from an array of counterparts:
* From Zelensky – ease pressure on Medvedchuk and lift restrictions on pro-Moscow TV channels;
* The Biden administration, as after all Putin still does craves that great power summit, the Yalta 2. He wants to be accepted by the US as a worthy peer, and to great power status with the US and China. It seems that Putin now wants to extend Minsk 2 to include the US, and likely that would be supported by Kyiv;
* The Europeans – Putin’s actions are meant to “divide and rule” and sow division within the Western alliance by exposing fissures. And this week it worked if the mealy-mouthed statement from the French and German governments was anything to go by – calling for both sides to de-escalate when to any neutral observer it is clear who is escalating and evidenced by the massing of thousands of troops on the Russian border with Ukraine. This kind of showed that the Europeans value commercial contracts with Moscow – Nord Stream 2 – more highly than European security.
I assume that Moscow will have been quite pleased with Kyiv’s call for a fast track to NATO membership as they will understand that for the likes of France and Germany that will just freak their leaders out and encourage them to double down in appeasement with Moscow.
So I think we should expect a gradual ratcheting up of the current conflict in Donbas until something changes – a new Minsk 2 process, albeit given Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s own newfound subservience to Moscow, the Ukrainians are now looking for a new venue for talks – Warsaw?
Unfortunately, more Ukrainian soldiers will be put at risk. And with the presence of so many Russian troops now in the Donbas and the border, Moscow will not mind if this escalates into something more significant.
It is testing Ukraine’s military capabilities and the West’s continued willingness to support Ukraine.
Any weak link that appears Moscow will seek to exploit to the full.
And this could still open the opportunity to drive that land bridge to Crimea or take territory to assure water supplies to Crimea. Maybe not Plan A, but not Plans X, Y, Z either.
