A ‘war’ Russia thinks it can win without firing a shot

It’s a question being asked in London, Washington, Kyiv and Moscow – and now highlighted by a provocative new assessment from the NATO supreme commander. Will there be a war in Ukraine?

The answer probably depends on your definition of “war.” A full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine? The answer is no. Not yet, anyway.

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But we’re already deeply into a classic “phony war,” the kind that Europe has seen before.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the top allied military commander in Europe, said in interviews in Brussels Tuesday that Russia has some 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and could launch an attack with 12 hours’ notice. NATO officials also say the Russian army is behaving in such a way – communicating through hand-to-hand couriers, deploying logistical units and erecting field hospitals – that it looks more like preparations for an invasion than a standard military exercise.

The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, is hastily raising a new National Guard in hopes of demonstrating that, unlike in Crimea, it intends to put up at least some kind of fight.

But analysts in Moscow – including those with Kremlin connections – say President Vladimir Putin has not yet decided to invade. So far, he has only asked his government and military to give him all the tools he needs to mess with Russia’s disobedient neighbour.

Mr. Putin may be apoplectic over the revolution in Kyiv, but few believe he has lost his mind. He’s not interested in sending his army to capture and hold – and it’s the holding that is the real challenge – eastern and southern Ukraine. Not if he can get what he wants by other means. The military force at the border is meant, for now, only to intimidate.

But Russia is already waging war by other means. The Kremlin’s media outlets – widely watched in Ukraine until a recent ban – have whipped up fear among Russian speakers that the new government in Kyiv is controlled by “fascists” bent on forcing their children to speak Ukrainian.

Russian citizens are believed to have joined demonstrations in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lugansk and Odessa, decrying the “coup” in Kyiv and calling for Crimea-style referendums in those Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities.

The goals of the military buildup, the propaganda and the provocateurs are the same: sending the message that Ukraine is ungovernable without Russia’s help and making it plain to Kyiv and the West just how far Mr. Putin is willing to go to keep the former Soviet republic from joining the European Union and NATO.

The delicate dance of the past weeks – clashing protesters in Ukraine, rumoured Russian troop movements at the border, limited economic sanctions from the West – recalls the 1850s, as Russia’s Czar Nicholas I tried to wring concessions out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire before the English and French navies arrived in – yes – Crimea. Comparisons could also be drawn to Europe in the 1930s.

Lviv, in the far west of Ukraine, can fly the flag of Brussels if it wants. But the Kremlin considers almost everything east of there to be part of its historic sphere of influence.

Mr. Putin has watched that sphere contract for the past 20 years as former Soviet republics joined NATO and the European Union. He has now drawn a line through Ukraine, roughly following the curve of the Dnepr River. He may not make war, but he’ll make it a new Iron Curtain if he has to.

This crisis won’t end soon, even if Kyiv and its allies in the West agree tomorrow to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea as legal.

If Mr. Putin gains the Crimean Peninsula while losing influence over the rest of Ukraine, he’s lost very badly indeed.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that he’s thinking about how he’ll be judged in Russian history textbooks, not the ones that will some day be printed in North America and Western Europe.

Moscow sees only one route to resolve this conflict: Redesign Ukraine to give expanded autonomy to the Russian-speaking regions so they become de facto Russian protectorates and guarantee that Ukraine stays out of NATO and the EU.

Some policy makers in the West might be tempted to accept the deal if only to avoid a costly and prolonged showdown with Moscow. But any Ukrainian leader who agreed to such a pact, one drafted without the participation of Ukrainians, would almost certainly see the “Maidan” – the street movement that ousted Viktor Yanukovych – turn on him or her next.

That’s the wild card. The Kremlin believes it can win this war without fighting it, and is counting on the West to force Kyiv to accept its terms in order to keep Mr. Putin from sending his troops across the border.

But the worrying thing about phony wars is they can prove the prelude to the real thing. Ukrainians who just spent three months staring down Mr. Yanukovych’s riot police won’t simply back down now. Neither will Mr. Putin.

 

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