Ukraine: “a nightmare scenario of military confrontation”
As winter falls, the spectre of war is “casting a long shadow” over Europe, said Oleg Smirnov in Asia Times (Hong Kong). Western officials believe that “a Russian military incursion into Ukrainian territory may be imminent”. In recent months, Russia has massed some 100,000 troops to the north, east and south of Donbas, the area of Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists; the numbers keep increasing. Russia has also set up field hospitals, while “alarming footage” of its military hardware in the region is “spreading across mainstream and social media”. Moscow seems to be reacting to growing military cooperation between Kyiv and Nato nations: foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Nato expansion into eastern Europe risked creating the “nightmare scenario of a military confrontation”. This week, in turn, the US warned during talks with Russia of profound consequences if Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine continues. Adding to the febrile atmosphere is the claim made last month by Ukraine’s President Zelensky, said Valentin Torba in Den (Kyiv). He said that his intelligence services had uncovered a Russian-backed plot to oust him in a coup on 1-2 December. The coup never in fact materialised, but that hasn’t stopped talk of a Russian attack on Ukraine growing louder by the day. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by saying Russia “never does such things at all”.
Some 14,000 Ukrainian and Russian citizens have died since this conflict began when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, said Mark Temnycky in the Centre for European Policy Analysis (Washington DC). It has also cost the Kremlin billions of dollars in military spending and sanctions. Yet for all that, President Putin has “no interest in ending the fighting”. Why? Because by challenging Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in Donbas, he is lending weight to his deeply held belief that “a sovereign Ukraine has no right to exist”. In July, he made his views plain in a 6,000-word essay arguing that
Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”; that Ukraine’s borders are invented; and that the West has “established an anti-Russian project to instil fear in Ukrainians”. Putin’s approach may not be rational, said Natalia Antonova in Foreign Policy (Washington DC), but it resonates with many Russians. Thanks to propaganda which portrays Moscow as the “aggrieved side”, they view Ukrainians as a people who have “lost their way” and are desperate to be liberated. Victory in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be “swift and easy”, they think.
That’s wishful thinking, said Yuriy Onyschenko in Ukrainska Pravda (Kyiv). At a summit in Riga last week, Nato made it clear it isn’t going to leave a “key partner” to fend off a Russian invasion alone. “Russian aggression against Ukraine would come at a high price and have serious political and economic consequences for Russia,” said Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. Kyiv has also been “getting its act together” militarily, said The Economist (London). Its defence spending has doubled since 2014, and it has received $2.5bn of equipment from the US. It now has 250,000 troops and a further 900,000 reserves. Yet the accession to Nato it covets – which would commit the US and 29 other countries to its defence in the event of a Russian attack – looks “highly unlikely”. Nato “does not want an unambiguous commitment to defend a country Russia has already attacked”. And the fact remains that Russia could “pulverise” Ukraine’s troops if it chose to.
The Kremlin is revelling in the “hysteria” it has created over Ukraine, said Lilia Shevtsova in Echo of Moscow. It knows the West is caught between a need to respond to its aggression and a reluctance to provoke Moscow, and is using its position to distract from internal failures and portray itself as still a major player on the world stage. The West hangs in a state of confusion, wondering: “Is the threat phantom, or not?”