Monday 22 November 2021
Russian deployment in front of Ukraine
Actually, neither side is interested in war
By Denis Trubetskoy, Kiev
US media and official Kiev are again reporting on a massive Russian deployment on the border with Ukraine. An open invasion of Russia is unlikely this time as well. But the situation in the region is getting worse.
In the spring, a Russian troop deployment on the border with Ukraine had caused unrest and finally buried the ceasefire negotiated in summer 2020 in the embattled Donbass, which surprisingly held mostly successfully for around six months. Since the end of December, several US media have been reporting again that Russian soldiers are being concentrated on the Ukrainian border. So far, such reports have been denied by Kiev. Meanwhile, however, Ukrainian representatives are also sounding the alarm.
The New York Times reported a few days ago that US intelligence had warned its allies in Europe that there was only a small window to prevent Russia from conducting a military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has allegedly not yet decided what exactly it wants to do with the troops, but it is conceivable, among other things, to create a corridor between the Crimean peninsula on the one hand and the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk on the other. Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014, but still belongs to Ukraine under international law. The two regions in eastern Ukraine are controlled by separatists supported by the Kremlin. According to the New York Times, the US takes the threat of a military invasion seriously.
The broadcaster CBS also reported something similar. According to its sources, the likelihood of a Russian invasion increases as the cold in the region increases. According to this, the military operation could begin within a few weeks if the West did not prevent it beforehand. The Bloomberg agency speaks, also with reference to intelligence sources, of a scenario in which Moscow could attack via the Crimea, the common border with Ukraine and Belarus using around 100 tactical groups. It is about a cross-border operation in which around 100,000 Russian soldiers would take part.
Moscow speaks of “hysteria”
Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian military reconnaissance, reports that more than 92,000 soldiers have been concentrated by Russia near the border with Ukraine. According to Budanov, the Kremlin is preparing to attack in late January or February 2022. These accusations are denied with strong words in Moscow. “This hysteria is artificially fueled,” emphasizes Kremlin spokesman Dmitrij Peskow on Russian state television. “Ukraine is looking for another attempt to create a military solution to its own problem. That would be a disaster for Ukraine itself, but also for everyone in Europe.” The US media reports are also stamped in Russia as part of an attempt to prevent the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is unpopular in Washington.
The escalation followed an incident at the end of October, when the Ukrainian army claimed to have struck for the first time with a Turkish Bayraktar drone, which is prohibited according to the Minsk peace agreement. In response to criticism from the German government, for example, Ukrainian representatives justified the Bayraktar mission with the right to self-defense.
The Ukrainian army has been fighting the Moscow-backed pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian industrial region of Donbass since spring 2014. According to the UN, around 13,500 people died during this time. In February 2015, with the help of Berlin and Paris, Kiev and Moscow signed the Minsk peace agreement, which reduced acts of war to the vicinity of the actual front line. The agreement basically stipulates how the currently occupied territories are to be reintegrated into the Ukrainian state after the local elections have been held. Namely, local elections would first have to be held, and only then would Ukraine regain control of the Ukrainian-Russian border in Donbass.
Russia creates facts in Donbass
In political Kiev, this is considered extremely unfavorable. For this reason, among other things, Russia, which for its part apparently considers an unlikely attack by Ukraine in Donbass to be quite realistic, accuses Ukraine of deliberately failing to fulfill the Minsk Agreement. At the same time, Moscow is acting anything but in the interests of Minsk. Since spring 2019, Russia has been issuing passports to the population of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics on a massive scale. These citizens were even allowed to take part in the electronic vote for the Russian parliamentary elections in September.
In mid-November, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially opening the Russian market for goods from Donetsk and Luhansk. This follows the takeover of the most important industrial company in the occupied territories by a system-loyal Russian entrepreneur in the middle of the year. Mutual integration between the two People’s Republics and Russia therefore seems to be in full swing, and processes are being created that can hardly be reversed overnight. That is why the question in Ukraine is increasingly being asked of how Russia can accuse Kiev of breaking the Minsk Agreement, while the Kremlin is increasingly binding the occupied Donbass territories to itself.
For the Ukrainian authorities, the latest reports of a possible Russian invasion come at a convenient time domestically. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj is now in open conflict with the richest man in the country, Rinat Akhmetov, whose media empire is attacking the president hard. This is not only happening on the edge of Zelenskyi’s poll numbers, which are falling somewhat more than usual, but also because of the wavering absolute majority of his parliamentary group. The external threat is seen in part as a kind of distraction from Zelenskyi’s problems.
From a Russian point of view, a full attack in eastern Ukraine before Nord Stream 2 goes into operation does not make much sense at first glance. A military operation in Donbass would not be a good option for Ukraine either. The consequences could be fatal for Kiev. But in the meantime, a little something could be enough to flare up the conflict that has been simmering for more than seven years.