Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to invade Ukraine

The threat is real, but the Russian president may be playing a wholly different game with the weak West

You only had to look at the contemptuous smirk on the face of Vladimir Putin as he prepared for his video conference with Joe Biden this week to see that, so far as the Ukraine crisis is concerned, the Russian president believes that he holds all the aces.

In a rare public appearance, the US leader seemed to struggle with the technical challenge of activating the video call, prompting Mr Putin to suppress a condescending snigger. Nor, to judge by the outcome, does Mr Putin have much to fear from an American president who is still struggling to restore his credibility after the fiasco of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

While the White House sought to present the two-hour meeting in a positive light, claiming that Mr Biden had given an explicit warning to Mr Putin not to invade Ukraine, the Russian president will have heard nothing to deter him from persisting with his confrontational attitude towards the West.

Mr Biden did his Russian opposite number an enormous favour by agreeing to the summit in the first place. There is nothing Russia’s despot likes more than to mingle with the leaders of major powers. It helps him burnish the “strongman” image that maintains his domestic support base.

Moreover, Mr Putin will not have been fazed by Washington’s threat that it would respond with “strong economic and other measures” if Russia did invade Ukraine. Sure, removing Russia from the Swift banking system, which is said to be one of the options on the table, would cause Moscow extreme difficulties. But it would also cause disruption for the rest of Europe.

As for imposing more sanctions, Mr Putin has seen it all before, and the Russian economy has already made structural adjustments to mitigate the impact of sanctions introduced in retaliation for previous Russian indiscretions, such as invading Crimea and carrying out the Salisbury poisoning.

The bigger concern, certainly from a Western perspective, will be that the widely reported claims that Russia is planning to invade its neighbour – with an estimated 100,000 troops camped on Ukraine’s eastern border – amount to nothing more than a massive bluff on Mr Putin’s part, one that is designed solely to sow further division and discord within the Western alliance.

In the two decades he has been in power, Mr Putin’s primary objective has been to weaken the Western democracies, which he holds responsible for the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

To this end, Russian spies have infiltrated key institutions such as the European Union and Nato. Only in October, Nato expelled eight Russian “diplomats” who were found to be working secretly as intelligence officers.

More recently, Moscow has been implicated in causing the migrant crisis in eastern Europe, with the military build-up on the Ukrainian border seen as being yet another provocative act against the West.

Mr Putin deserves credit for his tradecraft on the Ukraine issue, for he has succeeded in creating a scenario where the combined intelligence resources of what used to be known as the Western alliance seem incapable of divining Russia’s real intentions.

After the catastrophic events in Afghanistan, the Biden administration certainly cannot afford another foreign policy disaster, which would explain why US officials have spent the past few weeks providing alarming accounts of how Moscow is preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine over the New Year.

Russian incursions over the festive period are not without precedent. The former Soviet Union famously launched its invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979. And, given the ease with which the Kremlin has conquered territory in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, the West needs to be prudent that Moscow does not seek to exploit signs of Western weakness to launch another land grab.

In this context Washington’s leadership is welcome, as in times of crisis Europe tends to look to the US for clear and strong leadership. Furthermore, with a new government finding its feet in Germany, French president Emmanuel Macron distracted by re-election concerns, and Britain struggling to define its postbrexit destiny, Mr Putin no doubt believes this is an opportune time to exploit Western weakness.

Even so, the Russian leader must also realise that undertaking a full-scale invasion of Ukraine could prove disastrous for Moscow. The Ukrainian military has received a serious upgrade in its capabilities since 2014, and would put up a ferocious defence, possibly with active Western support. Moscow could also wave goodbye to approval being given to the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would inflict serious harm on the Russian economy.

Mr Putin might delight in causing mischief, but he is by no means stupid, which is why it is entirely feasible that Moscow’s military build-up could ultimately prove to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax designed to unsettle nervous Europeans.