For weeks, Russia has been gathering troops close to Ukraine in a military build-up on a scale that has not been seen since its invasion in 2014.
Analysts, as well as Ukrainian and Western officials, have struggled to understand what Russian accumulation means: it is simply a stance aimed at sending a message to Ukraine and the Biden administration, or they are real preparations for Russian military action or even large-scale invasion of Ukraine?
Right now, only the Kremlin knows the answer. But most observers have concluded by now that the highly visible buildup is very likely to make noise, although the threat of climbing cannot yet be ruled out.
“In general, the situation is better now than a week before,” Oleksiy Semenov, a former adviser to the secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, said in an interview Friday.
“I would say that in reality the percentage of some kind of real war or even medium-sized military conflict (either on the line or at the border) is low,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the situation can’t change.”
The conflict in eastern Ukraine has had a low intensity since 2015, when a peace agreement ended major fighting. This peace process has been more or less blocked since then, leaving parts of eastern Ukraine under the rule of Russian-controlled separatists facing a front line with Ukrainian government forces. Separatist areas are nominally self-declared republics, but in practice are effectively controlled by Moscow, which has so far failed to recognize them.
Since the end of March, Russian social networks are full videos showing loads of armored vehicles and heavy artillery moving to the Crimea and near eastern Ukraine. This has been accompanied by a barrage of war rhetoric in the Russian state media. At the same time, the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine between the Russian-controlled rebels there and the Kiev government has collapsed, with increased gunfire.
Estimates of the number of Russian troops deployed near Ukraine now range from 60,000 to more than 100,000, although many of these are permanently stationed there. Russia’s Defense Minister has said he moved two armies and three airborne units to the southwestern border, saying the build-up is part of a “readiness check” in response to the alleged increase in activity. of the United States and NATO forces.
Russia has established a large new field base for hundreds of vehicles, visible in commercially available satellite imagery, and foreign journalists have been allowed to approach.
Most observers say they believe the highly visible nature of the Russian buildup means they want to be seen, suggesting it is a message, not a prelude to an invasion.
“We were and are spectators of a show, which many have taken – and continue to take – for reality,” Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in an interview with Russian website 47News.
Many observers believe that the program is intended to send signals to both Ukraine and the Biden administration.
In Ukraine, Trenin said, it is a warning against any attempt to use military force to reclaim its occupied territories and also to express dissatisfaction with a recent shift by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky towards a more assertive stance against groups. pro-Russians of the country.
In the United States, Trenin said the message was also a warning to maintain tight control over Kiev, which the Kremlin considers dominated by the United States.
Other analysts say they believe it was meant as an early test for the Biden administration and as a message from the Kremlin that it can reactivate the conflict at will if its interests are ignored.
The movements have managed to attract the attention of the West. President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin and offered him a meeting at the summit in the coming months, which analysts say Putin is looking forward to.
Some analysts said they believed the Kremlin had recently adopted more assertive moves from Kiev recently to expose its points. The escalation began when Zelensky banned three pro-Russian media channels and sanctioned a powerful oligarch often described as Putin’s man in Ukraine. Zelensky also conducted military exercises near the front.
“Although the Kiev movements at the time were not preparations for a military offensive,” Trenin wrote in a recent article, “The Kremlin decided to take advantage of them to increase its participation.”
Trenin and other analysts have suggested that Russia is genuinely concerned that Kiev leaders may confuse U.S. words of support in support of an attempt to forcefully reclaim occupied regions.
Some observers said the view was disturbing, suggesting a dangerous disconnect between the prospect of the Kremlin conflict and its view of Ukraine and Western countries.
“There was no ongoing Ukrainian military effort that could have justified the operations in which Russia is now engaged on Ukraine’s borders,” Gustav Gressel, a political member of the European Foreign Relations Council, wrote in a recent article.
“While the Kremlin’s fears are based on illusions, he believes those illusions entitle him to real offensive actions.”