Russia may invade Ukraine, warns US

Tens of thousands of troops massed on the border, Washington tells its EU allies

THE United States has warned European allies that Russia could be plotting to invade Ukraine in a repeat of the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

US officials have privately briefed EU counterparts on a possible military operation as tens of thousands of Russian troops amass near the border.

Senior Whitehall sources said the Government was concerned about the reports and that there was “twitchiness” and “anxiety” among officials.

It came amid heightened tensions as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was accused of orchestrating a migration crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland to destabilise Europe.

Yesterday the Kremlin claimed that it had scrambled a fighter jet to intercept a British spy plane operating in the Black Sea region.

Meanwhile, Russian forces, including elite troops, are gathering near the Ukraine border, with some deployed covertly at night.

The invasion assessments are believed to be based on US intelligence not yet shared with Europe, multiple sources told Bloomberg.

Joe Biden, the US President, discussed the Ukraine situation with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, at the White House on Wednesday, and Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, met Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in Paris this week.

Last week, Mr Biden dispatched William Burns, the CIA director and former US ambassador to Russia, to Moscow where he spoke to Mr Putin by phone and conveyed the Mr Biden’s concerns.

US officials warned Moscow against making a “serious mistake” amid its build-up of troops.

They have shared intelligence on the Russian movements with allies, and briefed them on the possibility of a military operation. The US also said its commitment to Ukraine’s security was “ironclad”.

The Kremlin has denied it is an aggressor and has accused the US and Nato of provocation.

Mr Putin repeated that message yesterday in a call with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed the incident involving a British Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance plane was part of a wider uptick in military activity by the US and its allies. It said the Russian military scrambled a Sukhoi SU-30 fighter jet to intercept, and that the British plane changed course away from Crimea.

“The Russian Defence Ministry treats the military activity of the US and its allies in the Black Sea region as scouting out a potential theatre of war in case Ukraine prepares a military operation to solve the crisis in eastern Ukraine,” said Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said its planes operate in accordance with international law.

Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said: “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook. And our concern is that Russia may make the serious mistake of attempting to rehash what it undertook back in 2014.”

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister who met Mr Blinken in Washington this week, said the US had shared new details about the troop build-up.

Ukraine’s defence ministry has said about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border.

Meanwhile, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, was threatening to cut gas supplies to Europe amid the escalating migraton crisis on its border.

Poland has sent 15,000 troops to the border and closed down a key crossing.

In the forests of Poland, the steppes of Eastern Europe and the mountains of Bosnia, the subject of conflict lingers uncomfortably close. The very fact of the US warning about the possibility of Russian action in Ukraine is testament to how dire the security situation in Europe has become over just a few months.

On Poland’s border with Belarus, troops are massing to repel an influx of migrants that has been engineered by Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Vladimir Putin, with the express purpose of destabilising his Western neighbours.

In Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Republika Srpska, is threatening de facto secession and claiming Russian backing for his plans. Bosnian and Western observers say that could restart the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

And now American officials are briefing their European counterparts that Moscow may once again be preparing an invasion of Ukraine, where a static war with Russia has been rumbling for seven long years.

All these places have one thing in common: they are theatres of confrontation between Mr Putin’s Moscow and the global West. There is little doubt Cold War Two is at one of its most dangerous points. That does not mean it will turn hot, however.

Some of the troop movements in western Russia in recent weeks have been routine. Others have certainly raised eyebrows. And even the most sober analysts of the Russian military – the last people to join in the hysteria of invasion scares – have warned that something is afoot. But what they are up to is not exactly clear.

Ever since 2014, when Russian tank brigades crossed into Ukraine, there have been periodic invasion alarms. The most recent was in spring this year, when Mr Putin massed thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border and deployed warships to the Azov Sea. It looked like preparations for war. But after a couple of weeks, Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, decided that the “exercise” had achieved its purpose.

This autumn scare could go the same way. If the tanks do roll, it will be a bloody affair. Russia’s forces would prevail on the battlefield, but at a very high cost. The Ukrainian army today is entirely different to the emaciated, underfunded force that Russian tank and artillery divisions pounded into submission in 2014. It is better equipped, better trained, and has had seven years of combat experience against Russian forces in the trenches of Donbas. It has also spent that time preparing for just such an attack.

And even if Russia’s motor-rifle divisions captured the countryside, they would struggle to take Kyiv and other cities. A largely hostile and highly-motivated population would make occupying the captured areas a nightmare.

None the less, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will be well aware that his country could only survive such an onslaught with Western support. And that would present US President Joe Biden with a dilemma.

Ukraine is not part of Nato. Technically, the US and other allies, including the United Kingdom, are not obliged to defend it. When the war in Ukraine began in 2014, Barack Obama refused to supply arms to Kyiv because he feared it would only provoke Russia to even more aggressive actions.

Mr Biden, like both his predecessors, has presided over a gradual American withdrawal from foreign entanglements. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a dramatic betrayal that shook the faith of US allies around the world. But it kept to a trend followed by Mr Obama and Donald Trump, both of whom were responding to the American public mood.

Mr Biden’s justification for the withdrawal was to refocus on America’s central foreign policy priorities, including the transatlantic alliance and facing down Russia.

An attack on Ukraine or a new war in Bosnia would present an awful dilemma: risk nuclear war with Russia in order to save a non-nato country of which Americans know little; or see American credibility as a reliable ally shattered forever.

Mr Putin will also be weighing up that dilemma – and his own perception of Mr Biden’s will for a fight.

If the tanks do roll, it means the Kremlin has figured out the American president does not have the stomach to oppose them.

Nato would be proven nothing but a paper tiger, and the Kremlin would have achieved the strategic objective it has harboured for more than two decades: the rewriting of the post-cold War settlement in Europe.

It is not unusual for Western allies to discuss the possible implications of Russian sabre-rattling – including worst-case scenarios.

That is not the same as predicting a war. But nor is it a claim of special understanding of Vladimir Putin’s opaque intentions.