Fears of
Russia launching an offensive against Ukraine have raised tensions between
Moscow and the West. Russia’s massing of troops near Ukraine is fueling fears
that Russian President Vladimir Putin may once again invade the
former Soviet state.
President,
Joe Biden is emphasizing diplomacy to cool tensions and avoid a military
confrontation, while the US is a key supplier of arms to Ukraine.
Reported
intelligence is raising alarm that Putin is amassing more than 100,000 troops
along Ukraine’s border and preparing for an invasion in early 2022 — raising
the stakes over a planned call between Biden and Putin. Here are five things to
know about the emerging crisis:
1- Could be more
serious than 2014 invasion
Experts warn
Russia’s military buildup on the border of Ukraine is posing a more serious
threat than its previous invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in
2014 and its ongoing support for pro-Russian separatists in the east of the
country, called the Donbas.
"Russia
is not signaling a repeat of its 2014 operations on the Donbas, in fact they
are signaling this current situation could be larger and more overt,” said Dara
Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.
“I am
concerned about the impact of Russian air and missile strikes conducting rapid
punitive strikes on Ukrainian military facilities or other important locations
— in many cases from Russian territory or Russian proxy-controlled territory in
eastern Ukraine,” Massicot said.
Putin has
issued a demand that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) not expand
eastward nor deploy weapons systems that are viewed as threatening
Russia, the Associated Press reported.
Russia’s
posturing and more heated rhetoric is aimed at forcefully testing the Biden
administration’s resolve to support Ukraine in the face of aggression, said
retired Lt.-Gen. Ben Hodges, who served as US Army Europe Commander until 2017.
“I think the
Kremlin is testing how high a priority that is and what we’re willing to do to
protect and respect Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said in an interview with C-SPAN
on Sunday.
2- Biden is
upping the diplomatic consequences
The Biden
administration has raised the possibility of action against Russia including
economic measures and increasing the delivery of lethal defenses for
Ukraine.
“We’ve been
very clear that there would be serious, serious consequences,” if Ukraine
invades Russia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an
interview Sunday with a Swedish television network.
“We’re
looking, for example, at economic measures that would have a very high impact
and things that we have refrained from doing in the past when we’ve had
profound differences with Russia,” he added.
Army Chief
of Staff Gen. James McConville said at the Reagan National Defense Forum on
Saturday that deterrence should be a “whole-of-government” effort.
“The way you
deter is you impose some type of cost — to make sure the cost is worth more than
the benefit,” McConville said. “Making sure people understand you just can't go
into another sovereign country and conduct malign activities without having
some type of cost.”
3- Yet US troops
maintaining readiness
A senior
administration official hinted on Monday that an invasion would result in US
troops being deployed in the region, noting that the 2014 invasion was followed
by the US sending additional forces to NATO's eastern flank.
“I think you
could anticipate that in the event of an invasion, the need to reinforce the
confidence and reassurance of our NATO allies and our eastern flank allies
would be real and the United States would be prepared to provide that kind of
reassurance," the official said.
But Pentagon
Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters that there’s “still space
and time for diplomacy and leadership,” echoing comments Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin made at the Reagan forum.
Angela
Stent, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and
East European Studies, suggested that Russia could launch a limited incursion
to retake the Donbas “quite soon”, but would likely hold back from launching a
major offensive on the capitol of Kyiv.
“In Russia,
this conflict is not popular. … People don’t want to see Russian soldiers
coming back in body bags," she said.
4- Part of
Russia’s broader destabilizing behavior
Along with
Russia’s amassing tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine, US
officials have also denounced Moscow’s support of Belarus’s illegitimate President
Alexander Lukashenko and his alleged efforts to spark an immigrant crisis in
Europe.
This is on
top of worries that Russia may use its position as a key supplier of energy to
Europe — in particular for the cold winter months — as leverage to extract
concessions from the West.
“What we’re
seeing in Belarus on the borders of three countries, the really outrageous use
of migrants as a political weapon — well, that can sow chaos and
instability and at the same time the mounting pressure against Ukraine, and
yes, energy too, especially heading into the winter. I think these things
are joined,” Blinken said in an interview with Reuters on
Friday.
Minsk said
last week that it would conduct joint military drills with Russia near
Ukraine’s borders in response to new military deployments to the west and
south of Belarus, Reuters reported.
"We see
troop formations around our state borders... We can only be concerned by the militarization
of our neighboring countries, which is why [we] are forced to plan measures in
response,” Belarus’s Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said Monday, according to
the outlet.
On top of
this, Russia controls large deliveries of energy to Europe and there are fears
Putin could hold delivery hostage — during critical winter months — in an
effort to extract concessions from the West.
5- Ukraine's
security a rare area of bipartisan support
Ukraine is a
key US ally and Kyiv’s shift away from Russia and towards the West is viewed as
both a symbolic and strategic advantage, bolstering the protection of
neighboring NATO-allied countries and as a key economic partner connecting
Europe and Eurasia.
This has
made support for Ukraine’s security an area of bipartisan support on Capitol
Hill.
Sen. Chris
Murphy chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near East, South
Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, told CNN’s "State of the
Union" on Sunday that he hopes Biden’s meeting with Putin can “bear fruit,”
but warned of a strong US response if Kyiv is threatened.
“But let me
say this — If Russia does decide to move further, it would be a mistake of
historic proportions for Moscow,” Murphy said. “Ukraine can become the next
Afghanistan for Russia if it chooses to move further, and it’s up to us in the
Congress that we are going to be diplomatic, political and military partners
with Ukraine.”
Sen. Joni
Ernst also sounded the alarm during a panel at the Reagan National Defense
Forum.
“This is a
moment in time where we need to show leadership and we need to push back and
say to Putin, you can't do this,” Ernst told the forum. “We need to show that
[if] you do this there are going to be repercussions.”
