Edging towards a ‘nightmare’? Military build-up on Ukraine border continues as diplomatic tensions grow

The talks between Anthony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov in Stockholm were supposed to help quieten the steady drumbeat of another possible war in Ukraine. Instead they ended after just 40 minutes amid accusations and recriminations, with no sign of a roadmap out of the escalating and incendiary crisis.

The Russian foreign minister warned of a conflict that would draw in other states and leave Europe facing the “nightmare of military confrontation”. Blinken’s response was that “the United States and our allies and partners are deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine, including efforts to destabilise Ukraine from within and large-scale military operations”.

The Kremlin has proposed another summit, between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden. Washington is said to be wary of the prospect of the Russian president using it to demand unacceptable conditions on the matter of Ukraine, in particular in respect of the country’s relationship with Nato and on broader western military cooperation.

Putin’s red line on Ukraine, a breach of which may trigger Russian action, has shifted. The demand now is not only that Ukraine must not become a member of Nato, but that interoperability between Ukrainian and Nato forces must be halted as, in Moscow’s view, it means Kiev is joining the alliance by stealth.

Russia is also objecting to the stationing of western troops in Ukraine, wants an end to sales of western weapons to the country, and has called for the halting of “provocative actions”, such as the sailing of American and British warships in what it considers to be Russian waters off Crimea.

There are further objections to western military moves in countries bordering Ukraine, including the stationing of US missile systems in Poland and Romania.

A notable feature of the current crisis is that senior security and political officials in the west simply do not seem to know what will happen next, or when. But there is deep worry that, with around 95,000 Russian troops not far from the Ukrainian border, the increasingly aggressive stand-off, the potential for miscalculation and the law of unintended consequences may well result in bloodshed.

Last month the US shared intelligence with European allies, warning that there may be a Russian attack on Ukraine in the near future. But western officials also say that they are not sure whether Putin has actually decided what to do. Blinken, while discussing the military build-up, said: “I can’t speak to Russia’s intentions. We don’t know what they are.”

Will Putin take military action, knowing that it will lead to sanctions against Russia – perhaps halting the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is of huge commercial and strategic significance to Moscow, as well as resulting in other punitive economic measures, such as further restricting foreign credit and direct foreign investment and the denial of access to international banking information?

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The sanctions already in place after the annexation of Crimea by the Kremlin and the previous war in Ukraine have had significant consequences. The Russian economy has grown by an average of 0.3 per cent a year, compared with a global average of 2.3 per cent. According to some estimates, up to 3 per cent in growth has been lost at a cost of $50bn a year.

The cost of mounting an invasion would be high in the toll of deaths and injuries. The 2014 war in eastern Ukraine, along with the continuing violence it spawned, has cost more than 14,000 lives so far. The Ukrainian forces, 250,000 strong and armed with some western weaponry, will be better able to withstand combat than they were seven years ago. This is likely to mean that a conflict would go on for longer and be more attritional, with a greater number of casualties.

An attempt by the Russians to take and hold western Ukraine – where the situation is very different from that in the Russian-speaking east – is likely to be a bloody affair. After the Second World War, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) fought a bitter and violent underground war in Ukraine. According to Russian accounts, around 35,000 Soviet secret police and 14,500 soldiers were killed during five years of insurrection. The OUN lost 110,000 fighters; around a million Ukrainians were deported to prison camps.

Would Putin, an astute statesman, embark on a military path despite all these inherent risks?

One very senior British intelligence official, speaking earlier this week, said: “Vladimir Putin is regarded, with some justification, as a cold and calculating strategist. But Ukraine appears to be an emotional, sentimental issue with him, one where he may not follow the expected playbook. That is what makes the situation now so unpredictable, and so dangerous.”

If the Russians really have decided on military action, then the question may be “Why not do it now?” Biden’s humiliating retreat from Afghanistan has provoked speculation that it could herald an era of “western defeatism”. This is not just the view of adversaries. A senior official from a Gulf state, on a visit to London, described what had happened in Afghanistan as a “shattering earthquake” that will reshape his region, the Middle East.

“Can we really depend on an American security umbrella for the next 20 years? I think this is very problematic right now – really very problematic,” he commented. Anxiety about the feasibility of depending on the US as an ally has led to a new impetus in talks among Sunni Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, with their traditional foe, Iran.

Meanwhile, there are serious problems in Europe.

The continent’s strongest leader, Angela Merkel, has retired. Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson are feuding over refugees and fishing. The European Union and the UK are locked in dispute in the aftermath of Brexit. There has been a series of confrontations on a number of issues between the European Union and the nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary. On top of all that, there is a resurgent pandemic sweeping the continent.

Western leaders have repeatedly said that there would be a “heavy cost” to Russian aggression in Ukraine. But they have carefully avoided making pledges of military aid or boots on the ground if fighting does break out.

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On Friday, the Ukrainian defence minister repeated claims made by other officials in Kiev that a large-scale Russian military offensive was likely to take place next month. His country, vowed Oleksiy Reznikov, “will fight back” if that happens.

On the same day, the head of the US military warned of the prospect of conflict, saying that there was a “lot of concern” over Russian military activity.

"There’s significant national security interests of the United States, and of Nato member states, at stake here if there was an overt act of aggressive action militarily by the Russians into a nation state that has been independent since 1991,” said General Mark Milley. The general refused to be drawn on what military help Washington would offer.

Other countries appear to have made up their minds on the issue. The Canadian government was reported to have planned, last month, to send several hundred troops to Ukraine to join a force of 200 already there, as a show of solidarity.

This will no longer happen. Asked what led to the change of plan, the Canadian chief of defence staff, General Wayne Eyre, told The Globe and Mail during a visit to Kiev: “We have to be careful ... you’ve always got to take potential adversaries seriously. Wars have started because of potential miscalculations before, throughout history.”