Russia has deployed several tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks and artillery near the Ukrainian border.
¿Imminent risk of invasion or intimidation to impose their views on the West? Russian troops concentrated on the Ukrainian border offer Moscow a wide range of options, according to experts, who believe that a selective military intervention is more likely than a massive operation.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Geneva on Friday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in a moment of maximum tension between Moscow, on the one hand, and Washington and its European partners, for another.
Blinken warned that if Russia crossed the border it would provoke a “quick and tough” reaction from the United States, which suspects that Moscow wants to invade Ukraine.
The Kremlin, although it denies any plan of attack, insists that the de-escalation requires written guarantees for its security, in particular with respect to NATO, which plans to reinforce its presence in this area of historical Russian influence.
In the last weeks Russia has deployed several tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks and artillery near the Ukrainian border, with the help of military resources from the far east of the country.
On Friday, Ukraine announced that it had suffered a cyberattack against several of its ministries. In parallel, several Russian tank and troop landing ships have left the Baltic in recent days and are heading south, probably towards the Black Sea.
What’s more, “the Russians have announced a large-scale exercise in Belarus, from February 9 to 20, in which they are transporting all kinds of military material, fighter planes, anti-aircraft missiles, etc.”, says William Alberque, director of research at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
As a result, “Ukraine will be completely surrounded by almost a hundred joint Russian combat groups,” he says: to the north, Belarus, to the south, the Russian presence in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea annexed in 2014, and to the east, the Donbass, plunged into a war with pro-Russian separatists.
climatic factor
“From a military point of view, Russia is preparing for the full range of eventualities, from psychological upheaval – through cyber and informational means – to a massive invasion”, says Mathieu Boulègue, of the British ‘think tank’ Chatham House.
For Moscow, the question is no longer “if”, but “when” and “how” to intervene in Ukraine, said the expert, who believes that “Russia is just waiting for an excuse”.
Especially since Moscow is under time pressure because it is “difficult to keep 85,000 or 100,000 soldiers away from their bases for a long time. Its operational capacity must be maintained and its deployment has a significant logistical cost”, says Boulègue.
In addition, there is the climatic factor.
“In my opinion, Russia has a window of opportunity now and until temperatures start to rise again in Ukraine.. Starting in the spring, armored vehicles would be a nightmare to maneuver in sodden terrain,” says William Alberque.
Some European military intelligence services, especially the French ones, are much more cautious than the Americans about Russian offensive intentions in Ukraine.
The four experts interviewed by AFP they believe that the most likely option is to attack strategic targets without crossing the border.
“The forces concentrated along the Ukrainian border are not enough for an invasion and massive occupation of the country,” said Pavel Baev, of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, recalling that “when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it sent at least twice as many troops as Russia has deployed on the Ukrainian border.”
According to the researcher, the escalation will rather take the form of “air strikes, against which Ukraine is vulnerable” due to the lack of air defenses and strong air forces.
“Russia has no interest in invading Ukraine. The political and military cost of occupying that territory would be too great. Putin does not need this to create a form of victory”, agrees Mathieu Boulègue.
“It could be limited to using artillery fire and airstrikes to decapitate the Ukrainian command and control centers, to destroy their retaliatory capacity, without having to displace Russian troops,” he adds.
An analysis also shared by Keir Giles, from the UK’s Conflict Studies Research. “Moscow can achieve its goals by many other means than by invading Ukraine.. Russia has already achieved its main objective: to push the United States to discuss the future of the European security architecture,” he says. (I)
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