The Kremlin is playing a long game that may extend the current Ukraine crisis for months, if not years, a Russian top academic from an elite university run by the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.
Andrei Sushentsov, dean of the school of international relations at MGIMO University, told The New York Times on Feb. 8 that he believes the diplomatic impasse over Ukraine between NATO and Russia may well extend past 2022, as will the presence of the 140,000 Russian troops currently massed along Ukraine’s borders.
“I expect we’ll have this crisis with us, in various forms, for all of 2022, at least,” Sushentsov said in the report.
He explained that the Kremlin’s goal is not necessarily a full-scale attack on Ukraine, but to “keep the threat of war ever-present, and thus compel negotiations that Western officials have avoided until now.”
Because Sushentsov is the dean of a school closely associated with Russia’s Foreign Ministry, every reason exists to believe his statements reflect the Kremlin’s longer-term strategy.
Some analysts are suggesting that in such a scenario Russia could use means other than a direct military assault on Ukraine to keep the pressure on, including intermittent cyber attacks and military maneuvers at various points of Russia’s extensive border with Ukraine.
Even if NATO agrees to concessions and comes to some sort of agreement with the Kremlin on a short-term solution that leads to military de-escalation and a degree of stability, President Vladimir Putin could revert again to a military build-up and the threat of war next year, understanding that the tactic works, a Russian military analyst explained, according to the article.
Ruslan Pukhov, who runs the Moscow-based, privately-owned think tank, Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said that the U.S. and NATO don’t understand the existential threat posed to Russia if Ukraine is offered NATO membership.
“The West just doesn’t understand how much this is a question of life or death for us,” Pukhov explained in the report. “Ukraine in NATO, from my point of view or Russia’s, would be the equivalent of nuclear war.”
NATO has not offered Ukraine membership and the general consensus among NATO watchers is that Ukraine would not be ready for NATO membership for years to come, even if an offer to join would appear. NATO has refused to bend to Putin’s demand to exclude any possibility of alliance membership for Ukraine, emphasizing that it has no right to tell an independent and sovereign state what it can or cannot do.
