No one is offering any guarantees, but a lot of the smart money in Washington is betting that if Russian President Vladimir Putin is clear-eyed about the ramifications of invading Ukraine, odds are he’ll blink.
Nevertheless, with an estimated 100,000 Russian troops, along with their tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers, staged as close as 100 miles from Ukraine’s eastern border, it would be foolish to dismiss the risk of armed conflict. It is especially true as Putin already violated Ukraine’s sovereignty in 2014 by illegally annexing Crimea and supporting Russian separatists who now effectively control Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken
at NATO
earlier this month. “We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide.”
While it might seem a forgone conclusion that Russia’s more extensive, better-equipped military and superior airpower would quickly prevail in a blitzkrieg strike across the border, the war could be bloody and costly. Moreover, it could end with Russia occupying part, or all, of a broken country with a raging insurgency.
“A full-scale Russian invasion of unoccupied Ukraine would be by far the largest, boldest, and riskiest military operation Moscow has launched since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan,” concludes
an analysis
by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. “It would cost Russia enormous sums of money and likely many thousands of casualties and destroyed vehicles and aircraft.”
Ukraine’s military has dramatically improved in the almost eight years since the Crimea annexation, argues Luke Coffey, a foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation.
“The Ukrainian armed forces are far better trained, equipped, and resourced. It’s more motivated than it was in 2014. There are an estimated 400,000 Ukrainians that have combat experience on the front lines in Donbas.”
Plus, Russia no longer enjoys the element of surprise.
In 2014, when Putin sent “little green men” in unmarked uniforms into Crimea, it wasn’t clear at first who they were and what they were doing.
“In 2014, no one really knew what was going on. Now, they know,” Coffey said. “It’d be like the fourth plane on 9/11 where the passengers knew by then that this was a big terrorist attack, and they took action. They literally fought for their lives, and this is how I think the Ukrainians would behave. They’d be literally fighting for the survival of their nation and their lives. And the further west that Russian forces would move, the stiffer the resistance would become, without a doubt.”
Despite being an authoritarian leader, Putin still has to worry about the domestic outrage over what could be heavy casualties in a Ukrainian campaign, said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.
“Putin’s current popularity within his nation is high by Western standards, but low compared with earlier in his tenure,” Thompson wrote in a
recent essay
. “Any prolonged war in Ukraine could foster the same kind of domestic backlash resulting from Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s because Russians don’t like losing their sons to ill-conceived military adventures any more than Americans do.”
Another factor weighing against an all-out invasion is the argument that Putin can accomplish his primary goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO and slowing its westward leaning with just his credible threat of military intervention.
“I think that the No. 1 goal of Russia in Ukraine right now is to keep Ukraine out of the Euro-Atlantic community,” said Coffey, a goal that can be accomplished with the status quo.
“You know, it’s reasonable to ask, ‘Why would NATO invite a country into the alliance that’s already at war with Russia?’ And Russia knows this.”
“The possibility of Russia striking large is there. I don’t think, however, it will happen. I think it’s bluff,” said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, on CNN. “The fact the U.S. has taken such a strong position and coordinated that position with our European allies and partners makes the risk for Moscow much larger. Therefore, I think Putin will not strike.”
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme NATO commander, agreed a full-scale invasion is unlikely.
“The worst case is Putin becomes reckless. He goes in, he actually carves out a chunk, and simply claims the Donbas area in the southeast corner, creates a land bridge between Crimea and Russia, which he seeks to do. I think that’s probably the extent of military action,” said Stravidis. “But then, you’re really on a rocket ride back to a true cold war between the United States and Russia. He doesn’t want that. He can’t afford it.”
The unintended blowback could be a galvanized NATO alliance, said Thompson, which would be motivated to increase military spending to stiffen defense against a revanchist Russia.
“Thus, Russia’s bid to keep Kyiv out of NATO could result in the Western Alliance becoming a much bigger military problem for Moscow,” he said.
President Joe Biden has been roundly criticized for waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, which Herbst called a “disastrous decision … which was a huge gift to Putin.”
But Germany has already indicated its willingness to
suspend the opening
of the pipeline if Russia escalates the crisis, adding to punitive sanctions aimed at exports of oil and natural gas that are the lifeblood of its economy.
“We continue to assess … that Putin does not, in fact, intend to invade unoccupied Ukraine this winter despite the continued build-up of Russian forces in preparation to do so,” concluded the analysts at the Institute for the Study of War.
Instead, they suggest Putin is more likely engaged in “strategic misdirection” while he plots “his preferred, wily, and more subtle next move.”
“The West will likely make additional concessions over the course of the next two months as part of the diplomatic effort to de-escalate,” the Institute for the Study of War report predicts.
“Putin’s ‘concession’ may be nothing more than not invading Ukraine. If he never intended to invade Ukraine, he will have received quite a lot while giving up almost nothing.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
