Russia and Ukraine – the language of war speaks

Almost everyone Russian reports of its security concerns in recent decades have received military responses from the West. After the annexation of Crimea and military support for the Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO responded with a permanent military presence – albeit with rolling crews – in the border regions of the alliance with Russia, the Baltic states and Poland. In response to Russian military exercises, also spurred by fears of NATO’s approach to Russia, NATO has rallied together for large-scale military exercises. Trident Juncture in 2018 with 50,000 NATO troops in Norway, and the cold response coming this spring, with 35,000 troops, promises military — not political — answers to primarily political challenges.

In the middle of this we have Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister, and leader of the party behind Norway’s restrictive base and confidence-building policy toward Russia, regarding the absence of US military bases on Norwegian soil. We may come close to answering the ambiguous title of “Secretary General” of NATO. Perhaps the answer is that Stoltenberg—who is above all a very effective political craftsman, neither Secretary General nor Secretary—became Secretary to the Americans, and General to others. His ears have turned to Washington, and he has adopted the language of the NATO military staff generals in Brussels. The military logic implanted there is rarely agreed upon political solutions.

Two fragile projects

You can – and should – Being very critical of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Democracy for all practical purposes is replaced by despotism. The country has become a police state that brutally suppresses all criticism of the regime. Putin’s Russia pursued a dangerous and aggressive foreign policy, especially when it annexed Crimea, and supported and provided military assistance to the uprising in eastern Ukraine. But not wanting to see Russia face legitimate security challenges as NATO expands to the east, and with the prospect of a military NATO presence in Ukraine, for example, is naive at best. At worst, hostile. And anyway dangerous.

And this is where we are now. So what kind of war will we face then? First, war is a risky sport. Suffice it to recall the last two great wars, the first in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a particularly risky sport when local opinion is not prepared for war, as in Russia today. There are no war drums on state television, the usual channel of information and propaganda in Putin’s state to garner national support. Failure on the battlefield in Ukraine could quickly backfire on Putin himself, destabilizing his entire enterprise.

crush to brevik

Zuzzu Perhaps a less dangerous war scenario would be military action involving Russia’s entry into the lands of eastern Ukraine that they already control, and the formal annexation of those lands. But why would Putin do that? Such a measure will go a long way in resolving the problem of the Ukrainians. Then they can – apart from protesting loudly – ignore these areas and move on to building their state.

A limited occupation one can imagine is the conquest of a 300-mile strip of land that would bring Crimea to unite with Russia on the Sea of ​​Azov. It would be a long-term strategic victory, but it does not solve Putin’s bigger problem, a government in Kiev that wants to join NATO.

Dangerous near freezing point

Regime change in Kiev With the introduction of a pro-Russian government, a more comprehensive war is presumed. Perhaps this assumes that the Ukrainian army has been crushed, with extensive bombing of infrastructure, as happened when NATO bombed Serbia in 1999. This can be done from the air, or with missiles, as NATO did in the Balkans. Or simply by Russia’s occupation of all or large parts of Ukraine east of the Dnieper, or Dnipro, as the river that defined Ukraine over the centuries is called in Ukrainian. It could mean war in three million cities, Kharkiv in the north, Dnipropetrovsk in the center, and Odessa in the south.

but you can They also imagined a deep military offensive, not aimed at long-term control of the state conquered by Catherine the Great in her time, nicknamed “New Russia”. In this case, there will be an attack in the direction of the capital Kiev, which is located on the banks of the Dnieper. Both intense bombing and a major ground offensive could lead to order chaos in Kiev, with the potential for regime change as a result.

But no one can know The political outcome of such a war, except that it would be a disaster for Ukraine, and perhaps also for Russia. War is a risky sport.