On Tuesday, the day before the United States had previously claimed Russia would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he doubled down on his threats of a “bloody, destructive war” even though no Russian invasion was forthcoming.
KYIV—Oleksandr Biletskyi is standing in a lecture hall on the outskirts of Kyiv laying out the items he considers most necessary to have on hand for emergencies. On the table in front of him, he’s placed a bag containing a compass, a pocketknife, a carabiner and a roll of tape. Gently, he adds three more bags: one with a Kalashnikov, one with a shotgun and one with a pistol. “We have to prepare for anything,” he tells me.
Neither Membership nor Neutrality Is the Answer
With Russia massing troops on Ukraine’s border and demanding an end to NATO enlargement, a heated international debate has broken out over whether limits on future membership in the alliance might resolve the crisis and avert war. Some have argued that it is time to close the door to new members, while others argue it would be a grave mistake to let Russian President Vladimir Putin dictate the terms of European security. Yet one all-important question has been missing from the debate: what being welcomed into NATO—or kept out—would mean for Ukraine itself.
If tiny Latvia’s single active army brigade ever came under attack by Russian forces, its task would be keeping them on their heels while staying alive long enough for allies to send reinforcements, the brigade commander said.
“It’s not like 1945, when we were on our own,” said Col. Sandris Gaugers, referring to a time when his country was under Soviet occupation and lacked the protection that comes with its NATO member status.
Warships are transiting the Mediterranean Sea and nearby waters in numbers rarely seen in recent decades, adding another dimension to the ongoing tensions between NATO and Russia over Moscow’s military buildup along Ukraine’s borders.
NATO military commanders will draw up plans for the creation of allied battlegroups in central and southeastern Europe, in response to the “new normal” of a persistent Russian threat to the Continent, the alliance’s top official said Wednesday.
For several months now, much of the U.S. and European foreign and security policy community’s attention has been riveted to the Russia-Ukraine border, where more than 100,000 Russian troops remain massed and equipped for a potential invasion. Most of the internal debates in the West during this time have focused on variables that are simply unknowable: What are Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions? What are his objectives? And will the U.S. and its NATO allies be able to deter him from starting a war that would radically alter the geopolitical landscape of Europe, but also the world?
In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific coast, to issue a call to action. Russia, he said, needed a new generation of pioneers to revive the country’s eastern frontier. “The development of the Far Eastern region is of huge importance to Russia,” Putin said, urging the assembled businesspeople to invest in the region. No less than “the development of our country not [just] for decades, but for centuries to come” depended on it, he added.
Two stories out of Italy have attracted international attention this week: The country’s chaotic election of its president, and a controversial video conference between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian business leaders. Both highlighted the ways in which Italy, which could play an important role in the European Union on the standoff between the West and Russia over Ukraine, has instead remained a silent bystander.
While the U.S. warns that Russia could invade Ukraine any day, the drumbeat of war is all but unheard in Moscow, where pundits and ordinary people alike don’t expect President Vladimir Putin to launch an attack on its ex-Soviet neighbor.