Why President Putin will not invade Ukraine and President Biden insists he will

Is President Putin really planning to invade Ukraine? How does President Biden know he will? What does President Putin really want?

All good questions, and ones my western friends and colleagues have been asking me. They think I, having worked in Russian media in Moscow for 25 years, must have some perspective on this.”

Well, yes.

President Putin does not have any intention of invading Ukraine.

To understand why, and answer those other questions from friends, we need to look at some history. Hang with me, it will be worth your time.

Putin’s NATO ultimatum – refusal guaranteed

The latest round in the Ukrainian drama began in December when Russia delivered a formal list of proposals (many called them demands, others ultimatums) to the United States and NATO regarding Russian security concerns. The list was not long, nine points, the main gist of which was:

 

·        NATO must halt eastern expansion and deny new membership to all former Soviet Union republics. Ukraine is mentioned specifically.

 

·        NATO must not deploy (remove) any military forces or weaponry in European states that were not in place as of 1997 (before any Eastern Bloc states began joining)

 

·        The US must begin arms controls talks, including deployment limitations on short and medium-range missiles, and nuclear weapons.

And Russia made it clear it expected a comprehensive approach and a written response. Sergey Ryabkov, Russian Deputy Minister in charge of future negotiations warned: “This list of proposals must be seen as a whole, it is not a menu of items to pick and choose from.”

If Russia’s proposals on arms limitations appeared logical and even realistic to the West, those on restrictions for current and future NATO members did not.

The United States’ and NATO’s answers, delivered to Russia at the end of January, confirmed that discrepancy: Yes, said NATO and the U.S., we are open to discussions on arms control, no, we not open to discussion on NATO membership limitations. NATO was not ready to hand Russia a veto on those issues.

The western answer was obvious and predictable not only to western observers but, I have no doubt, to President Putin as well. He knew ahead of time NATO would turn him down. And he had a contingency plan in place, which so far is going, well, according to plan.

Putin's security concerns - NATO goes east and arms control stumbles

President Putin’s security concerns in Eastern Europe have been a long time in the making. Some say Mr. Putin’s concerns are justified, others insist he is out of touch, living in a cold-war past or even suffering from paranoia. Obviously, it depends on your point of view.

In 1991 Soviet Union ceased to exist, the Warsaw Pact suffered the same fate. This security block, organized by Krushchev as a buffer to the west after the devastating consequences of Nazi aggression, included the Soviet Union and seven eastern European countries. 

After the Warsaw Pact collapsed all the former eastern European members clamored to join NATO. All of them. Most felt they had been coerced into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence after WWII and when they got a chance to choose a security alliance, they chose NATO.

And NATO embraced them. All of them. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic became members in 1999. In 2004 Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and -- especially unpleasant for Russia -- the three former Soviet Baltic republics of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. The last two share a border with Russia.

Should NATO have taken these countries in?

Well.

As we recall NATO’s reason d’etre was a Western collective defense against the Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed, Russia, the dominant of the 15 republics, officially inherited the USSR’s international rights and obligations.

At the same time, the West inherited something else -- a continuation of its old, cold-war mentality. The West, when presented with an eager batch of candidates from Eastern Europe, found it hard to break with old paradigms and instead steamed ahead with NATO expansion. 

Many analysts say this was a strategic mistake. That it helped push the new Russia back into an old cold-war mentality. I share this view. For Russia, eastern NATO expansion was a keynote for the future of its international relations with the West.

 

In 1991 Russia was thrown into a maelstrom of political turmoil, economic trauma and social disorientation, teetering between its past, the future and the unknown in a delicate psychological state. If the West found it hard to shift away from a cold-war mentality, it should be no surprise new Russian leadership did as well.

 

First Russian president Boris Yeltsin, however open to the West he may have been, implored his friend Bill Clinton in 1994 to not allow for NATO expansion eastward. But Bill did allow it. If Yeltsin had a hard time swallowing that bitter NATO pill eastward, all the more so the new Russian president in 2000, Vladimir Putin, a martial arts enthusiast and former KGB agent.

President Vladimir Putin

In the first years of his presidency, Vladimir Putin was busy addressing internal problems. Among the most pressing were Chechen separatism and booming oligarchs, many financing wildly independent press and opposition parties, stirring up messy and unnecessary emotions and problems in Russian society. These were all problems for President Putin. And he had a plan.

As the second Chechen conflict gradually came under control Putin began to nationalize private media. The first media giant fell in 2001, NTV, Russia’s most opposition-oriented, national news channel. All the others private television channels soon followed.

Putin then turned to the oligarchs and in 2005 Russia’s wealthiest businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had been financing opposition parties, became an example for all when he was sentenced to nine years in prison for tax fraud. Other oligarchs followed, some were forced into exile.

When Putin got his internal affairs under control, he turned his attention to fish in the bigger pond.

NATO concerns

President Putin turned his attention to the international arena and he did not like what he saw.

He asked himself: If NATO is a defensive organization whose purpose is to defend against the USSR, and the USSR no longer exists, why does NATO not only still exist, but is expanding ever closer to Russian borders?

You have to admit, the question, though not from an American friend, is a good one. Putin thought so too and to his chagrin (yes, chagrin), he found no good answer to his question.

President Putin had reason to be not only concerned about NATO expansion but offended. He was referring to a promise broken, according to him, by the US and NATO. Putin asserted that during the German reunification negotiations in 1990 both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and NATO General Secretary Manfred Wörner promised Mikhail Gorbachev: in return for German unification NATO would not expand to Eastern Europe. By most accounts it appears those promises referred to expansion not to Eastern Europe, but into Eastern Germany. Promise or no, we do know the final Two Plus Four Agreement signed in 1991 in fact include limitations on NATO expansion into Eastern Germany.

2007 Munich Security Conference

Vladimir Putin’s security concerns for Russia were not limited to NATO expansion. To his mind, topping the list of other threats were the growing tendency of the United States to act outside the framework of international law (the Kosovo and Iraq wars) and unsatisfactory arms control results.

In 2007 President Putin voiced these concerns loudly and clearly at the Munich Security Conference. He was blunt.

Putin said NATO expansion was: “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?” He said that the United States had repeatedly overstepped its national borders in questions of international security, a policy he said had made the world less, not more, safe. Putin added that destabilization of international relations is connected with stagnation of disarmament issues.

The West not only did not understand Putin’s views but was shocked by them. The White House said it was “surprised and disappointed” by Putin’s accusations. In effect, the West’s attitude was: Maybe you should prove to us first that Russia is not a threat, that you are not like the Soviet Union. Although there might be some logic in this position, it did not impress the President. Not a good springboard for continuing dialogue.

2007 marked a turning point in Putin’s understanding of the West. And of course, vice versa.

Arms control crumbles

Since 2007 Putin’s security concerns in Europe have only grown.

For starters. four more Eastern European countries joined NATO. There was more.

Apart from NATO expansion, no less unsettling for Putin was the fact that the United States over the years had failed to ratify or unilaterally exited from a variety of arms control treaties with Russia. George Bush exited from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972 citing unspecified missile threats from Iran. The United States and other NATO states never ratified the 1999 Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, citing Russian violations of OSCE Istanbul Summit agreement. In 2018 President Trump announced the U.S. would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing violations by Russia. In 2020 Trump exited the Open Skies Treaty, also citing treaty violations by Russia.

Each agreement has its own song and story of mutual grievances, but by any standard the results were discouraging. Today the U.S. has nuclear weapons stored in Germany and anti-ballistic missile installations in Rumania and Poland, which Russia insists can easily be changed to offensive missile launchers.

In Vladimir Putin’s eyes, NATO expansion and inadequate arms control, primarily at the fault of the U.S., had created a major security threat for Russia in Europe.

By 2020 it had become clear to Mr. Putin the West was not listening.

And what, one might ask, does Ukraine have to do with all this? Well, a lot.

The Ukrainian problem – ethnic conflict and Crimean peril

In the Slavic world kin and tradition mean everything. And Ukraine is Russia’s nearest, dearest and largest (population 35 million; Belarus -- nine million; Serbia -- four million) Slavic partner with far-reaching historical, cultural and political ties.

Vladimir the Great from Kiev, one of the first rulers of ancient Rus, was responsible for Russia’s conversion to Christianity in 988. Today he is known as Saint Vladimir.

Putin, in his 2021 essay, described Russia’s ties with Ukraine like this:

Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus.

Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.

Ukrainians and Russians are similar ethnically and have similar languages, and both historically have lived in Ukraine side by side without conflict. Today approximately 78% of Ukraine’s population is Ukrainian, 18 % Russian, the majority of which live in the eastern and southern regions nearer to Russia’s borders.

Ten years ago, a military conflict between Ukraine and Russia would have seemed absurd. In fact, warning signs appeared earlier.

Eastern regions

In 2005, a few years before President Putin gave his talk at the Munich Conference, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced his country was ready for cooperation with West, both the EU and NATO. This was hardly good news for the Russian president.

In 2010 the new president, Victor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, who hailed from the eastern region of Donetsk, located on the Russian border and comprised primarily of ethnic Russians, offered a different view of Ukraine’s future. He declared ties between Russia and Ukraine must improve. 

Yanukovych announced that Ukraine was no longer interested in joining NATO, but still interested in cooperation with the EU. The president soon put words to deeds and began negotiations. In November of 2013 the EU offered Kiev $800 million in aid and requested some changes to Ukrainian regulations and laws.

A week before the signing ceremony, enter Russia. President Putin countered with an offer of $15 billion in aid, gas price discounts and no demands for legislation change. Yanukovych backed out of the EU deal and chose Russia. Street protests in Kiev begin the next day.

Protests escalated, especially in the central and western regions of the country. In mid-February 2014 social unrest boiled over in what came to be known as the Euromaidan. Yanukovych fled to Russia and was impeached in absentia.

Russia called Euromaidan an illegal revolution and implied it was engineered by the West.

One day later, the Ukrainian parliament in a fever of national independence repealed a language law granting favored, national status to the Russian language. The eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk viewed this as ethnic aggression against Russians. So did Vladimir Putin. 

From here events evolved quickly.

Armed conflict between the Ukrainian forces and the border regions of Donbas and Lugansk quickly turned into civil war. Russia began covertly supporting those regions with advisors, fighters and arms. President Putin was alarmed at how quickly the situation was deteriorating.

But the worst for Putin was something else.

Crimea

Putin was alarmed even more at the thought that Russia’s only Black Sea military port, Sevastopol in the Crimea – up to now leased from the Ukrainian government -- could easily end up in the hands of a NATO country. The Ukraine problem had morphed from a local ethnic battle to a colossal Russian security threat.

Putin acted quickly.

In late February he sent troops in unmarked uniforms to the Crimea. Within three weeks Russia had neutralized Ukrainian military forces and organized a local referendum. According to official sources, the Crimean Peninsula (67% ethnic Russians) voted by 95% in favor of seceding from Ukraine and becoming a part of the Russian Federation.

When the Ukrainian dust cleared Putin’s rating among Russians at home soared to 85% and he declared:

·        The status of the Crimea is not open to discussion

·        The Donbass and Lugansk regions require a solution

Minsk II Protocol

A solution was hammered out in 2015 with the help of Germany and France called the Minsk II Protocol. Among other things, it stipulated:

1.     The Ukrainian government should grant special autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

2.     Foreign armed formations, military equipment, and mercenaries should leave Ukraine, and Eastern region borders would be returned to Ukrainian control.

Now all awaited Minsk II implementation. And Vladimir Putin waited.

Kiev had never been satisfied with the terms of the Minsk II Protocol. Kiev felt it had been forced into a hastily prepared and unfavorable agreement. Many believe Kiev never intended to fulfill the agreement.

Fast forward to 2021. No progress had been made on implementing the Protocol. The only developments were that 15,000 people had died in the conflict and 700,000 Ukrainian nationals were awarded Russian citizenship.

It became clear to Vladimir Putin that Kiev was not listening. He felt it was time to act.

Why President Putin will not invade Ukraine

Western sources first noticed Russian troops arriving on Ukraine’s southeast border in November. By December Russia had amassed 100,000 troops. And military activity was happening elsewhere.

To the north, Russia began joint Military exercises with Belarus. In the south Russia began separate military exercises in the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea. Even to the west, Russia managed to stage military drills, using its 1000 peacekeepers stationed in Moldova’s break-away Transdniestria region.

By all signs, Russia was poised to start an invasion of Ukraine proper.

But Russia will not invade Ukraine, for two simple reasons: Russia has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Nothing to win

To invade you should have a reason. There should be a goal, something to be attained. In this case, options are limited.

Some have suggested a Russian invasion could create a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which has a mainland tie only with Ukraine. However, the access issue was largely decided in 2016, when Putin’s oligarch friend Arkady Rotenberg bankrolled the construction of $3 billion, 20-kilometer bridge (the longest in Europe) between Crimea and the Russian mainland. Equipped for both road and rail traffic, the bridge’s capacity has proven sufficient for most of the region’s basic food, fuel and other material needs.

Others have floated the idea that an invasion could help support a Russian-inspired Ukrainian coup. Given the Ukrainian’s animosity today for things Russian, this seems unrealistic. Of course, one could argue an invasion would help Russia appropriate Ukrainian natural recourses. Or would help expand Russia’s buffer zone to the west.

It’s hard to find something that’s not there. There seems to be no tactical or logical reason for Russia to invade Ukraine proper.

Everything to lose

At the same time, by invading Ukraine President Putin has everything to lose.

Since 2014 Ukraine has greatly modernized its armed forces. People’s militias are cropping up and the morale is high. The Ukrainians do not want a repeat of the Crimea fiasco.

Nevertheless, Russia could easily win a war with Ukraine. Local Russian experts argue and boast on television how long it would take the Russian military to reach Kiev. Some say four days, others object, insisting it could take up to a week.

What everybody agrees on is a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be expensive -- both in lives and money. And there’s always the question: What do the victors do after the victory? If the population does not greet with open arms -- it won’t -- the next problem is occupation, which can be more costly and messy than victory itself.

And Vladimir Putin himself could pay a dear price at home.

While many Russians sympathize with the plight of their Russian brothers and sisters in Donetsk and Luhansk, most do not want to invade Ukraine. An invasion could seriously hurt Mr. Putin’s rating at home. 

An invasion could also be unpopular with the oligarch class and other Russian elites. A large portion of the Russian elite has real estate, bank accounts and children studying in European capitals. Strict personal sanctions that would follow an invasion could cause support for the regime from this group to falter. 

Finally, a Ukrainian invasion could cost Vladimir Putin that which is most precious to him -- his legacy. Putin’s policies toward Russia’s closest Slavic neighbor these last years have already poisoned his image for the majority of Ukrainians for generations to come. An invasion could expand that sentiment to Russians at home and carve an unfavorable image on a larger stone. Putin would not want to risk that.

Ok, if Vladimir Putin will not invade Ukraine, then, what does he want?

What does President Putin really want?

President Putin wants his concerns on Russian security in Europe and regulation of the Ukrainian conflict to be taken seriously.

Putin’s bluff and bluster

And he is trying to kill two birds with one Ukrainian stone, hopefully without firing a shot. The massive military buildup and exercises near the Ukrainian border is a show of bluff and bluster. It is about adding pressure and feigning threats in the hope of bringing recalcitrant partners to the bargaining table. So far, it may be working.

Putin wants from NATO

True, Putin’s did not receive a NATO commitment to membership limitations. But he knew that ahead of time. And in fact, future NATO membership may not be as pressing a problem as some think. 

In addition to NATO’s open-door policy, it also has a closed-door clause for countries with territorial disputes which de facto excludes many of potential NATO candidates which Moscow opposes.

For starters, Ukraine with its, albeit Russian-orchestrated, territorial issues, certainly does not qualify now for NATO membership. Nor should it in the foreseeable future. Even if the regional conflict is regulated, it is unthinkable that a Russian or Ukrainian politician would relinquish his country’s claim to Crimea any time soon. 

Other former Soviet republics suffer the same fate: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, even Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have ongoing territorial disputes. Other former Soviet republics in Asia, such as Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, have either governments too unstable or institutions too undeveloped to be considered for NATO membership. 

In Europe proper Sweden and Finland are possible, but for now unlikely NATO candidates, for a different reason. Both these countries enjoy cooperation with NATO without the downside of actual membership (image, military budget issues). Not a bad place to be. In the event of a Russian threat to Sweden or Finland these countries could count on a high level of support from the West.

Putin wants from arms Control

Putin’s hope to coax the West to the negotiating table for meaningful arms control talks may be working. The parade of western leaders and ministers, including from the U.S., sprinting to meet with Moscow officials has been impressive. Frankly, assuming a continuation of rational US leadership, such arms negotiations with Russia would have resumed sooner or later. Putin’s list initiative just pushed the urgency up a notch.

Putin wants from Minsk II

Yes, President Putin has hegemonic ambitions vis-à-vis post-Soviet states. Ideally, he would envision a tighter federation of former Soviet countries with Russia playing a leading role. Under this scenario, Ukraine would be at the top of the list. But this is a long-term project.

For now, Putin wants the Ukrainian problem to go away. What started as a poorly-managed, ethnic misunderstanding has exploded into a global nightmare? The Donbass and Luhansk regions are populated not only with ethnic Russians, but now Russian citizens. Putin must protect these people, or seriously lose face. Losing face is not an option.

Mr. Putin is hoping his show of military force will pressure Kiev to take a more serious look at the Minsk II Protocol. It may or may not work. At the Munich Security Conference on Friday (Russia did not send a delegation this year) President Zelensky voiced a request for an urgent meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Why does President Biden insist Russia will invade Ukraine?

President Biden has insisted Russia will likely invade Ukraine. He even suggested concrete dates: February 16, then February 20. At his press conference last Friday Joe Biden said he is now convinced Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade, and he believes Russian forces will target the capital city of Kiev. 

Russian officials vehemently denied such intentions. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he has gotten tired of refuting Western reports of a Russian invasion and recently accused “Our Western partners of spreading slander and exercising informational terrorism.” The Russian ambassador in Washington Anatoly Antonov spoke of “self-hypnosis … which hinders his American colleagues from seeing things objectively.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov continued this medical slant and called on his countrymen to have patience, explaining: “the culmination of Western hysterics is still far away… and even after, a remission would not start immediately.”

The Russian officials are adamant, as I, that Russia will not launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine

So why is President Biden pushing this narrative so hard?

Frankly. of all the good questions from good friends, this is the hardest one to crack.

The “hysterics” and “self-hypnosis” diagnoses aside, there are a few options, none of which in my view are very satisfying.

For example, 1. Joe Biden has special intelligence information. 2. The Biden administration is misreading the Russian signals or psychology. 3. President Biden is intentionally exaggerating the Russian threat to whip up more support from Western partners, in the event the U.S. imposes sanctions.

And one last version, maybe a little more viable than the others: President Biden is exaggerating and falsely concretizing the Russia threat as a tactical move. This puts President Putin on the defensive and forces Russian officials to justify themselves and make publicly denials. This could complicate or mitigate an actual eventual aggression.

Hmm… As I said, this question was the toughest of the bunch.

Finally, we have “What if” category.

What if?

What if President Putin’s bluster and bluff tactics do not work? What if Kiev does not begin implementation of the MINSK II Protocol? What if the United States and NATO drag their feet on arms control negotiations?

Putin has a contingency plan for both. Neither involves a Ukrainian invasion. Both may have consequences that are difficult to predict.

What if Minsk II fails

On February 16 the Russian parliament passed a bill requesting President Putin to recognize the Donbas and Luhansk regions as independent countries. How realistic is this? Very. And there is a precedent.

Following a military confrontation with its caucus neighbor Georgia in 2008, Russia recognized its two breakaway republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Granted, the scale was smaller; the regions’ combined population is 300,000. And the list of states who recognized the new countries is also modest -- besides Russia and each other, the list is rounded out by Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and Nauru. For that, Russia has managed to hand out passports to 90% of the region’s population. Unlike Crimea, neither region has yet voted to become an official part of Russia.

If Kiev does not begin implementing the Minsk II Protocol soon, Russia may help Donetsk and Luhansk organize a referendum and recognize their independence.

In this event, especially worrying would be if Ukraine were to begin a military effort to regain these territories. Russia might answer with open military support and the West with some level of sanctions.

What if arms control talks fail

On January 13 Deputy minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian television that he could neither confirm nor exclude sending military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if arms talks with the U.S. fail. Asked further about such steps, he said: “it all depends on the actions by our US counterparts”.

Yes, some form of a Cuban Crisis-2 could be in the making. Though a perfect remake is unlikely as Cuba would probably not take part this time around. Cuban President Díaz-Canel is now experiencing political problems of his own.

Today Venezuela is a better candidate.

As we recall the 1962 Cuban missile crisis happened against the backdrop of two circumstances. The first was ongoing Soviet concerns over U.S. medium-range Jupiter missiles based in Turkey and Italy. The second was a botched attempt by the United States to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the 1961 Bay of Pigs incident.

After that attempt, Castro and General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev agreed to house Soviet medium and intermediate-range R-12 and R-14 missiles on Cuba soil. This move served both as a Soviet counter to the U.S. missiles located in Turkey and Italy, and a Cuba defense against future U.S. aggression. 

Fortunately, in that case, cooler heads prevailed. The Soviets agreed to dismantle its missile installations in Cuba. In exchange, the United States agreed to publicly declare not to invade Cuba again and secretly removed its missiles from Turkey and Italy.

The parallels between then and now are striking.

Relations between the United States and Venezuela were souring for 15 years as the U.S. imposed sanctions for Caracas’ lack of cooperation on terrorism and narcotics control. In 2019 diplomatic ties broke down completely after the U.S. refused to recognize Maduro as the legally-elected president following contested presidential elections.

In the meantime, relations between Russia and Venezuela have been good since the Hugo Chavez era. In 2005 Russia began selling arms to Venezuela. To date, Russia has supplied Venezuela with nearly $20 billion in overall aid.

In the event the U.S. drags its feet in upcoming arms control negotiations, President Putin could deploy Russian missiles in Venezuela. Such a move could again create conditions for another quid pro quo between the U.S. and Russia on arms deployment and provide Venezuela with a layer of protection against possible American aggression.

Russian missile installations across the Caribbean would be no more appealing to the Americans today than they were 60 years ago but one must admit, here too, it is hard to argue with the Russian logic. In the event this happens, we can only hope that cooler heads will again prevail.

I’ve discussed Russian security concerns with my Russian colleagues. Most think as I, that a Russian invasion of Ukrainian proper is illogical and unlikely

One of my colleagues did suggest I remember all the wars that began in spite of logic. He pointed out that besides logic, leaders can be motivated by personality and emotions.

“Things, my colleague said, “don’t always go as they should.”

Here I had nothing to answer him.

Edward Opp
Moscow
Feb. 20, 2022