It happened in full view: a relentless build-up of troops, tanks and rockets that took place over almost four months and was captured by Russian citizens on their mobile phones and car cameras, as well as by commercial and espionage satellites. .
US President Joe Biden already warned on January 19 that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “enter” Ukraine. By February 18, he was convinced that Putin had decided to invade in a few days and attack the capital, Kiev.
But frantic diplomatic efforts, threats of sanctions, and the unprecedented US-led “information war” proved powerless to prevent what finally happened in the early hours of Thursday, when Russian missiles struck Ukrainian cities and its troops crossed borders. .
Most importantly, Putin knew that the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not step in to fight alongside Ukraine. Western leaders had publicly dismissed it, claiming that Ukraine is not a member of the alliance.
“That was the biggest missing piece. The moment you tell Putin that you are not going to fight no matter what, he has the upper hand. He was content to take that risk (of sanctions) because to him that risk seemed calculable,” said Jonathan Eyal of the RUSI think tank in London.
“He didn’t confuse us, he didn’t dupe us: we knew what he was up to. The only problem was that we were not prepared to take the ultimate risk.”
kremlin prank
For weeks, Russia has publicly scoffed at increasingly urgent Western warnings that it could invade at any moment, accusing the United States and its allies of hysteria and warmongering.
Putin’s spokesman said the Kremlin leader had joked about media reports naming dates for the planned invasion, asking his aides to let him know what time it would start.
Meanwhile, the time to pull the trigger was drawing near.
The surge of Russian troops on the border beginning in November took place exactly in parallel to what Putin presented as a major diplomatic initiative to enforce Russian “margins” and obtain legally binding security guarantees from the West.
In December, Russia presented demands to the United States and NATO that even analysts close to the Kremlin said Moscow knew would be rejected. They included calls to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO and to withdraw all military infrastructure the alliance had placed in Eastern Europe since 1997.
It was a trap for the West. Negotiating with Russia, not to mention offering her concessions, would give the impression of rewarding her for her threatening behavior; the outright rejection of Moscow’s demands would be used by Putin as proof that Russia’s adversaries had scorned diplomacy and that he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands – exactly the argument he used this week.
As the Russian military build-up intensified, NATO responded by sending thousands more troops to eastern Europe and supplying Ukraine with weapons, including anti-tank missiles. This was also presented by Putin as proof of the West’s aggressive intent.
The Russian moves
The United States saw what was coming, although it was unsure of the size and scale of an impending Russian attack. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly said that Russia was following the same military and propaganda “playbook” that it used before wresting Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
But threats of massive and unprecedented sanctions have proven ineffective against a country that has already lived with sanctions for years, has amassed $635 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves and supplies a third of Europe’s gas.
Even as those warnings mounted, Western leaders wondered aloud if Putin would simply ignore them. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said sanctions “may not be enough to deter an irrational actor.”
In a rare and risky move, the United States and Britain released intelligence warnings about “false flag” operations they said Russia was planning to carry out. Blinken told the United Nations that these could include a fake or real chemical attack that Russia would blame on Ukraine.
Eyal praised the tactics of the US intelligence services, which he said probably surprised Putin and were effective in exposing his intentions. But he said the failure of the sanctions approach lay in putting a quantifiable cap on the costs Putin would have to face, rather than keeping him on his toes.
“He always had the upper hand in escalating this crisis because he knew the most he could expect from us. At no time were we able to persuade him that our answer would be so uncertain that he should not contemplate the operation”.
false signals
All the while, Putin engaged in diplomacy, including two phone calls with Biden and lengthy meetings with the leaders of France and Germany in the Kremlin. French sources said Macron found him a changed man compared to their previous meeting three years earlier, and that he lectured him for five hours about grievances dating back to the end of the Cold War.
In a subsequent press conference, Putin said he was ready to continue negotiating. But in one of a series of angry public diatribes, he also evoked the threat of conflict between Russia and NATO if Ukraine joined the alliance, asking a French journalist: “Do you want France to go to war with Russia? ”.
In the ten days before the invasion, Putin sent false signals. In a made-for-TV moment on February 14, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said diplomatic possibilities were “far from exhausted” and recommended continuing down that path.
In the days that followed, the Russian Defense Ministry released a video it said showed Russian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery units retreating from areas surrounding Ukraine. Financial markets briefly recovered, until NATO and the United States said Moscow was adding even more units and moving closer to the border.
Putin’s last step was to establish a quasi-legal basis for the intervention, as he did with the seizure of Crimea in 2014, which he justified by holding a referendum.
On Monday he recognized the “independence” of two Russia-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, which have been fighting Ukrainian government forces for eight years, and signed friendship treaties allowing Russian forces to be deployed there and the establishment of military bases. russians
The signing was preceded by an almost hour-long speech in which Putin argued that Ukraine was an artificial country that “never had a tradition of a true state.” Now, he said, he was a US stooge and a springboard for NATO aggression against Russia.
“To those who took and hold power in Kiev, we demand an immediate cessation of hostilities,” Putin said. “Otherwise, all responsibility for the possible continuation of bloodshed will fall entirely on the conscience of the ruling regime on the territory of Ukraine.”
Just over 48 hours later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine by land, air and sea.
Source: Gestion
Ricardo is a renowned author and journalist, known for his exceptional writing on top-news stories. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he is known for his ability to deliver breaking news and insightful analysis on the most pressing issues of the day.
