US says Russia creates excuses to invade Ukraine 1:08
(CNN) --
It's a very bad idea;
for everyone involved.
Yet the drumbeat toward another war in Ukraine is amplifying, taking on a life of its own, in a huge, high-stakes move by either the Biden administration or Putin, or both.
"I really don't know where this is all coming from," is a phrase I've heard Western officials sigh on multiple occasions in recent months.
Yes, the Russian military is moving, and they are concentrating in perhaps larger numbers than in other years when we have seen similar posturing.
The US would respond "decisively" if Russia deploys military infrastructure in Venezuela or Cuba
Yes, a source familiar with intelligence tells me there are signs that Russian officials are not just theorizing about an invasion, but are actually working out how they might pull it off, if ordered.
But some of their positions are more than a hundred miles from the Ukraine border.
And the reasons why Russia would not want to occupy more of its neighbor's territory are the same as always.
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First of all, it would not be the invasion of Ukraine, but the re-invasion.
Ukraine has already been invaded twice, even though Moscow pretended that the "little green men" who took Crimea were not theirs, and that the "concerned locals" swarming Donbas had bought all their armored personnel carriers from army surplus warehouses. .
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Part of Russia's problem is that these are incomplete moves, carried out quickly and without a complete plan for the future.
Further Russian action could finish what they left undone and bring long-term benefits to Moscow.
But its incompleteness is also a daily reminder that these conflicts are full of unknown unknowns that derail plans.
actual invasion
Russia's critics and admirers alike are united by a rare unity as they view every action by the Kremlin as deliberate and cunning.
But it is seldom so.
After it stormed Crimea in 2014, Moscow was left without a land corridor linking the peninsula to the Russian motherland, only completing a skinny bridge across the Kerch Strait for public services and supplies in 2018.
Its de facto invasion of Donbas ended in 2015, but Russia continues to prop up a chaotic and disorderly separatist movement there.
This group of mercenaries and outsiders comes at a cost, with few benefits;
Moscow is unlikely to benefit from the zone, as it is not the industrial heartland it once was.
Arguments that the Kremlin needs a land bridge to Crimea and a more secure status for Donbas are often at the core of why it might invade Ukraine for the third time in eight years.
But most military options would come at extraordinary cost.
NATO tries to help reduce the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Have the talks been fruitful?
At its bare minimum, the Russian action could involve "normalizing" the country's control over the Donbas region by sending in Russian troops to block its control of the area, or even to slightly expand its buffer zone against the rest of the Ukraine. That might pay off, but would likely trigger costly sanctions and formalize Moscow's costly position as patron of the ailing region.
Other analysts suggest that a narrow land corridor along the Sea of Azov, through the city of Mariupol, would reduce the cost of maintaining energy and water supplies to Crimea, and could be easily achieved by an amphibious landing on the coast of the Sea. Sea of Azov.
However, a thin strip of land running along the coast would be difficult to defend and less profitable as a trade supply route if it were constantly at risk of attack by Ukrainian forces.
The next option that has spread in the Ukrainian wargames cottage industry is a broader invasion.
In this scenario, Russia could reach all the way to the Dnieper River, taking Kharkiv, Poltava and even breathing down the neck of the capital Kyiv.
But this is where the theorizing gets a bit silly.
I heard a reputable analyst speculate about the invasion of the whole of Ukraine.
All of her.
A country slightly larger than France, from Luhansk in the east to Lviv in the west.
That's more than 16 hours of travel time for one of Russia's newest tanks, running flat out, at its fastest known speed, with no one in its way, and no stops to refuel.
Sbarbi: It is not convenient for NATO to add Ukraine to the bloc 1:58
Risk of sanctions
The idea of occupying a large area of Ukraine may have seemed possible in 2014, but after seven years of war, Ukraine has a notable lack of nostalgia for its former Soviet neighbor.
An occupation would be bloody, cost many Russian lives, require hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, and would likely be an embarrassing reminder to the Kremlin, as its forces overload, of how decrepit its military was just over a decade ago. before its rapid modernization.
Sanctions would also damage, if not cripple, Europe-oriented parts of the Russian economy.
Even a small invasion is really a bad idea for Moscow.
Defenders of the probability of an invasion often point out that Putin is not a rational actor, arguing that he is prone to unpredictable moves.
They point out that, as a supernate autocrat with no real checks, balances, or choices to worry about, he is free to decide anything, at any time.
The Kremlin chief's decision-making has long been deliberately opaque.
And after 21 years in office and almost two years in a covid-19-like isolation bubble, where his interactions are significantly limited, one can imagine that the information he receives is far from balanced.
This is why the Biden administration's decision to amplify the probability of an invasion is so intensely risky.
sound the alarm
There are clear warning signs -- and possibly cruder undisclosed intelligence -- that support the possibility of an attack.
It may be better to make sure your allies are aware and prepared for it than to remain silent and appear unprepared.
But by sounding the alarm so loudly, the White House gave Putin a choice: act now, or make it look like he has bowed to pressure from the West.
And no doubt that is something that would be difficult for the Russian leader to accept, who believes that his country was severely humiliated at the end of the Soviet Union.
Forcing him to make that decision may not have seemed like the best option to CIA chief and former US ambassador to Moscow, Bill Burns, or to the other scholars of Russian politics in the Biden White House.
You have to expect them to know something that others don't know.
Have they calculated - or learned - that Putin simply cannot afford to invade Ukraine again?
Or have they determined that the invasion is inevitable?
If there is any doubt, this US risk-awareness operation could tip the scales and force Russia to do something it probably knows will end badly.
So now, with Russia asking for nothing in its talks with the United States in Geneva and the apparent stalemate, if not collapse, of those negotiations, Ukraine is stuck, facing a harrowing eight-week wait while the ice remains thick enough. hard enough to allow tanks to cross the Russian border.
Afterwards, the mud will settle in, and with it another summer of mild tension.
What did Biden and Zelensky talk about on their call?
2:52
Perhaps the long-term gain from these months of feverish speculation and raucous panic will be judged as shoring up NATO and Europe against the Russian threat, and demonstrating to Moscow that the costs of any further adventurism would be unpleasant, or at least fewer would meet with a united front.
Perhaps the Biden administration simply wanted to show Russia that the United States is back in Europe, reversing the cordiality of the Trump years with Moscow.
But Ukraine, which has already suffered the loss of more than 10,000 people in this war, has found itself at the center of a high-stakes game, with the US-Russia relationship at the forefront.
People are paying attention to his plight again, but he risks sounding like an afterthought, caught in the middle as Washington and Moscow clash.
Putin has the global attention and US engagement that he may crave.
But with the chips in, all in, this huge diplomatic gamble risks a major land war in Europe.
Joe BidenUkraineVladimir Putin