Is Putin preparing for large-scale war?

The Kremlin is modernising its military and threatening its neighbours. Is a confrontation looming?

Why the cause for concern?

In recent years, Russia’s military has asserted itself on the world stage in a way not seen since the Cold War. In early 2014, Russian special forces annexed the Crimean peninsular in Ukraine, while large numbers of well-equipped troops were sent into the east of the country to help pro-russian separatists (although Moscow officially denies this). Since September 2015, Russia has fought a brutal air campaign in Syria, in support of President Assad. Closer to home, Russian aircraft have aggressively buzzed US and Nato forces and intruded into European waters and airspace. In April, two Russian fighters passed within 30 feet of a US destroyer in the Baltic Sea. Russia has also conducted big military exercises near its western borders, some involving nuclear weaponry. The image conveyed by these, says Johan Norberg of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, “is that they’re preparing for large-scale inter-state war”.

What is Russia up to?

Throughout his 16-year rule, Vladimir Putin has used Russia’s military as a blunt instrument of Kremlin policy, to project power abroad and to shore up his popularity at home. But the 2008 war with Georgia was a turning point: the conflict both confirmed that he could deploy forces outside Russia’s borders without risking a Western military response, and also laid bare the weaknesses of the country’s ill-trained conscripts and outdated equipment. Since then the military budget has grown by more than a third, with billions spent on a new generation of missiles, tanks and fighter jets. Russian forces have been reformed: improved pay and conditions, and better-trained officers, have created a much more professional army. The Black Sea Fleet, headquartered at the Crimean port of Sevastopol, recently added around a dozen warships. “The Black Sea has almost become a Russian lake,” said Turkey’s President Erdogan.

Why the upgrade?

Putin wants Russia to once again become a credible counterweight to the US and Nato. He wants to protect Russia’s dominion over its traditional sphere of influence, which was threatened by the pro-western “colour revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, and by the expansion of the EU and Nato to its borders. Russian forces are designed to be deployed fast to any part of the former Soviet Union. New units have been stationed on its western borders, ready to intervene. Further afield – from the western Mediterranean to the Arctic, Putin is determined to maintain a powerful presence.

How powerful are its forces?

Some analysts claim that Russia is the second-strongest military power in the world, with 766,000 active personnel and the largest tank fleet in the world. It devotes a very large proportion of its GDP to military expenditure: 5% in 2015, compared to 3.2% in the US and 1.95% in the UK.

Could Russia rival the US?

There’s no chance of that. Even the Pentagon’s top brass – who are using Putin’s build-up to argue for greater funding – don’t believe American military supremacy is in jeopardy. Last year, the US spent nearly ten times more on defence (about $600bn) than Russia ($66.4bn). It has 19 aircraft carriers to Russia’s one, and 13,500 aircraft to Russia’s 3,500. A series of treaties over the past 50 years have brought Russia and the US to approximate nuclear parity. But Nato’s 28 nations have around four times Russia’s military firepower. Strategically, there’s no contest. However, in smaller-scale confrontations, Russia has shown itself to be intimidating, unpredictable and very effective ( see box).

What are the possible flashpoints?

Nato sources think that the Russians could easily overrun its eastern flank: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are very vulnerable. But more likely than an actual invasion, suggests the FT’S defence editor Sam Jones, would be a semi-covert act of aggression “calibrated to be just below the alliance’s Article 5 threshold, the all-for-one-and-one-for-all clause that triggers outright war” – such as a huge cyber-attack on Estonia’s national infrastructure, followed amid the chaos by a limited, “temporary” invasion to protect the country’s ethnic Russian minority. The real aim of such an operation would be to undermine Nato.

What is Nato doing to counter the threat?

At the Nato summit in Warsaw in July, it committed to deploy four combat battalions to Poland and the Baltic states: one US, one British, one Canadian and one German. Nato is prevented by a 1997 treaty with Russia from deploying any new “substantial combat forces” in the east. The idea is that the battalions fall short of that deterrent, yet create deterrent “tripwires” – making Russian interference in these states too risky to contemplate. Nato has also doubled its existing response force to 40,000 men, and created a 5,000-strong rapid-reaction brigade – and pressed ahead with a missile defence system with a base in Romania, along with a series of exercises across Eastern Europe.

How did Russia react?

With fury. “Nato must stop reacting to a non-existent threat,” said the Kremlin, warning that these “provocative” deployments were putting Europe’s security at risk. And even some EU politicians felt that Nato was engaging in a dangerous game of bluff. The difficulty is in striking a balance: providing a firm deterrent while not risking a dangerous escalation. Russian intentions are hard to fathom. Many in Eastern Europe genuinely fear war. Optimists point out that in Ukraine Putin has shown himself unwilling to incur large numbers of casualties, and that with Russia’s economy stuttering, the current level of military spending is unsustainable: a cut of some 5% is expected over 2016.