Russia began deploying its forces on Ukraine's borders last November 2021. With the increase in the size of the crowds, the level of Western concern rose over the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine.
But this was not the first Russian build-up on the border of the western neighbor and the former Soviet republic, nor the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis.
What is new this time is that Russia, which says that it is not about to invade, is asking the West for specific security guarantees, on top of which is a pledge not to include Ukraine in NATO.
Over the past two months, the United States, and other Western countries in Europe, have tried to contain the crisis, whether through direct contacts with the Russian leadership, or threatening extremely harsh sanctions against Russia if it attacks Ukraine.
However, these contacts did not succeed in defusing the crisis, which appears to be getting more and more complex, instead of ebbing and détente.
And Europe, which has not yet emerged from the pressures of the Covid-19 epidemic, and the enormous burdens that the epidemic has imposed on the economies of its countries, the continent is living with the anxiety of a possible Russian invasion.
It is true that the tension on the Russian-Ukrainian border cannot be considered similar to the Berlin crisis in the 1960s, neither in its connotations nor in its context nor in its relevance to Western Europe, but this remains an unprecedented crisis since the end of the Cold War.
And if it develops into a hot war, no one can predict its consequences for the European Union countries, the eastern NATO countries such as Turkey, and the balance of power on the European continent as a whole.
Where are the roots of this crisis?
Will Putin really invade Ukraine if Western countries do not provide him with the security pledges he demands?
And where can Putin's armed movements actually end, whether he invaded or not?
geopolitical ukraine
Ukraine has only been an independent country in its history for short periods, for most of that history has been captive to the tides of the Lithuanian, Polish, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires.
Ukraine occupies a special place in Russian historical memory.
Ukraine is the home of the first Russian people;
In the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, legend says: Prince Vladimir, in 998, converted to Christianity, on the first entry of the Orthodox Church into the country of Russia.
Since the nineteenth century, at least, Russian intellectuals have been promoting the idea that there is a single Russian-Ukrainian nation, and that there is no essential ethno-cultural differentiation between the two peoples.
However, Ukraine's position in Russia's perception of its geopolitical space far exceeds its position in Russia's cultural consciousness.
Ukraine is Russia's gateway to the West, the necessary security belt between Russia and Western European powers, and across its vast plain, Russia has been invaded twice since its founding: the Napoleonic invasion at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the Nazi invasion in the 1940s.
Although post-Soviet Russia looks with great concern at the variables of what is known abroad, Ukraine's position cannot be compared in any way to the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
There is no doubt that Moscow sees it necessary to maintain effective influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia, but it is also true that Russia does not expect to face an existential threat in the south.
Ukraine is a completely different matter.
If Ukraine joined NATO, the alliance's missiles could be located no more than 200 km from St. Petersburg.
In addition, Tsarist Russia's control of the Crimea in 1773 was the most important and largest step it took on its way to the warm seas.
The problem, which did not arise then, is that Khrushchev, the secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, of Ukrainian origin, granted Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, for a reason that is not yet clear.
With this, Ukraine became Russia's main partner on the Black Sea coast.
With the independence of Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this coastal strip, with its deep ports, and the main Soviet naval base on the Black Sea, went to Ukraine.
In other words, if Ukraine is not safe, the Russian state can never feel safe.
Near Russia
At the end of 2003, as it became clear that the United States was starting to sink in Iraq, a popular revolution erupted in Georgia, toppling the pro-Russian regime of Eduard Shevardnadze.
Moscow accused the West, and the United States in particular, of being behind the Georgian revolution, and that the West is working to besiege Russia.
But it was not just Georgia;
In 2004, another revolution broke out in Ukraine, toppling the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, who is also pro-Russian.
Once again, Moscow pointed the finger at the United States and Washington-funded civil action organizations.
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov (R) and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych in Moscow, October 2003
During the twenty years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded into all of the Warsaw Pact and former Soviet Union countries in Europe, including Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and the three Baltic states.
There is no longer a separation between Russia and the European NATO countries except Ukraine and Belarus.
Since assuming the presidency in May 2000, Putin has worked to stop the worsening deterioration in Russia's military capabilities and to rebuild the army and fleet.
In 2008, although he gave up the post of president and assumed the prime ministership, Putin led a lightning military operation against Georgia, with the aim of maintaining the security of the dissident Georgian provinces in the border strip between Georgia and the Russian Federation.
The military operation resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Georgian army;
But Putin's real goal in the war was to send a message to the West that Russia was returning to the international scene, and that it would not tolerate any threat from its near abroad.
In Ukraine, the opposition did not improve the management of the country after the 2004 revolution, which helped Moscow rebuild relations with the neighbor of paramount geostrategic importance, and helped Yanukovych in 2010 return to the presidency of the country.
But Yanukovych's rejection at the end of 2013 of the conditions set by Europe for the signing of a cooperation agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, led to the outbreak of a new Ukrainian popular revolutionary wave, and to Yanukovych's flight in February 2014. This time, it seemed that Russia would not be able to restore Ukraine in the foreseeable future, And that Russia should work to reduce the size of the losses.
This is what Putin has been working to achieve as quickly as possible.
Ukrainians look at 'wanted' notice of fugitive Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych 2014
The problem of Ukraine, as well as the problem of a number of countries in the former Soviet Union, is that its population is not homogeneous.
Ukrainians are ethnic Russians at 18 percent of the population;
While the western provinces are considered the cradle of Ukrainian nationalism, Russian Ukrainians form a majority in Crimea and eight eastern provinces.
This helped Putin move to counter the loss of Ukraine in 2014.
Russian forces took control of Crimea only a few months after the collapse of the Yanukovych regime;
A popular referendum was announced on the peninsula's accession to the Russian Federation.
At the same time, Russia worked to support former Ukrainian Russian military, in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, to defect from Kiev.
In the years since the outbreak of fighting in the Donbass region, the conflict between Kiev and Russian dissidents has resulted in at least 13,000 deaths and widespread devastation in eastern Ukraine.
The Bush Jr. administration could not do much to confront Russia in Georgia, but extend a hand to the Tbilisi government to rebuild its army and economy.
Nor could the Obama administration do much in Crimea, other than announcing its refusal to recognize the peninsula's accession to the Russian Federation, and imposing economic sanctions on Russia.
Like the United States, the European Union and NATO member states, including Turkey, refused to recognize the annexation of the peninsula, although they varied in the level of sanctions they imposed on Moscow.
However, that was not the end.
When the Soviet Union began to collapse, the dominant language in Western capitals toward Russia was a quest for historical reconciliation, an end to Russian isolation and exclusivity, and the reception of Russia under the Western umbrella.
But the promises of reconciliation were never fulfilled;
And because Russia came out of the Cold War with only half a defeat, and allowed it to keep the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world, the United States, during the long reigns of Clinton and Bush Jr., quickly worked to isolate Moscow from the international decision, and treat Russia as a potential danger.
To confront Russia in Georgia, Ukraine, and the Black Sea, Western aid flowed into Georgia and Ukraine, and Western powers encouraged voices in both countries to strengthen their countries' ties with the Western camp.
The United States has reinforced its presence in the Black Sea, despite the limited period of time in which a military presence in the sea is permitted for non-visiting countries.
Since the end of the Bush Jr. era, and during the Obama administration years, the United States has worked to deploy an anti-missile system in the eastern European countries that are members of NATO, and to establish advanced radar centers in a number of these countries, including in southeastern Turkey.
A new crisis episode
The Russians always say: The West, and the United States, in particular, gave Russia, through James Baker, Secretary of State of Bush Sr., a firm promise that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The Russians say: This promise was the main guarantee that led to the Gorbachev government to withdraw its opposition to German unity.
The Americans do not deny that James Baker spoke this to Gorbachev;
But they argue that what Baker said was not a binding policy of the US government, neither the Bush Sr. administration nor subsequent administrations.
However, the danger that the Russians see in the totality of Western moves since the nineties of the last century, has gone beyond the expansion of NATO, and extends the balance of power in the European arena, and attempts to besiege the Russian presence in the Black Sea and weaken Russian influence in the Balkans, and the continuation of attempts to expand in the countries of Central Asia and the former Soviet Caucasus The West did not fulfill its promises to help modernize Russian industry.
Last October 2021, when Ukraine used Bayraktar drones, which it had previously purchased from Turkey, to bombard heavy artillery positions for dissidents in the Donbass region, Putin saw an opportunity to take another step towards the goal of maintaining Russia's security in the near abroad.
Moscow said that the Ukrainian bombing of the positions of the Ukrainian-Russian dissidents is a clear violation of the Minsk ceasefire agreement in Donbass, and represents a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
Kiev defended its position that it was not taking offensive steps in any way, but merely responded to artillery positions targeting its soldiers and inflicted losses among them.
However, finding out the truth and indications of the exchange of bombing on the line separating Kiev and the dissidents of Donbass has become secondary, after it triggered a new crisis in the European arena.
Over the next few weeks, Russia began massing tens of thousands of soldiers on three border axes with Ukraine.
In January 2022, a large Russian force, backed by the latest combat aircraft, was transferred to Belarus, which borders Ukraine in the west, under the pretext of conducting joint exercises.
For nearly three months of the build-up, the Russian forces did not penetrate the Ukrainian border, nor did they fire a single shot at the Ukrainian army, but Western capitals insist that the Russian military build-up is only a prelude to a limited or large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and an attempt to change the Ukrainian regime by force of arms. .
Therefore, to contain the potential for a Russian threat to Ukraine, the United States and most of its Western allies quickly took a series of measures.
The US President spoke with his Russian counterpart, in early December 2021, and the foreign ministers of the two countries met twice: on December 2, 2021 and January 10, 2022. What emerged from these communications indicates that the Americans informed the Russians that the invasion of Ukraine He will be faced with direct and severe economic sanctions against Russia, and the United States is in full agreement with its European allies in this regard.
In addition, the United States and other European powers, especially Britain, supplied Ukraine with defensive specific weapons, and weapons for use in resisting the occupying powers;
And the deployment of several thousand soldiers in a number of NATO countries close to Ukraine and Belarus.
After his second meeting with his American counterpart, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, indicated that his country no longer trusted the promises and reassurances of the West, and that it demanded the Biden administration to provide a written response to the Russian security demands;
The response was already delivered to the Russian side, on 26 January.
During the few days following the receipt of the American response, the Russians did not hide their disappointment with the American position, without explicitly declaring the halt in the negotiating process.
On the American side, Biden administration officials emphasized that the response to the Russian demands did not include a pledge that NATO would refrain from annexing Ukraine in the future;
A position that was repeated by the Secretary General of NATO.
At the end of January 2022, while attention turned to the UN Security Council session that was held to discuss the Ukrainian crisis, Western intelligence sources confirmed that Russia had sent equipment and forces to the military mobilization hubs surrounding Ukraine.
In other words, Russia, despite its delegate to the Security Council assuring that it does not plan to invade Ukraine, is still continuing with the necessary military equipment for a military invasion.
Risky bet
The best end to the Ukraine crisis, in Putin's view, is for the deployment of military force to convince Washington and its European allies that Russia is serious and capable of invading Ukraine, and thus to move toward responding to Russian demands, albeit at least minimally.
In other words, Moscow, which demands the preservation of Ukraine's neutrality and its non-joining of NATO, and the withdrawal of the military alliance's presence in Bulgaria and Romania, can only accept an agreement on Ukraine's status at this stage.
But the American way of dealing with the crisis does not suggest that the Biden administration will make any commitments to Moscow regarding Ukraine's future relationship with NATO.
And because Putin, who apparently believes that this is an opportunity that cannot be missed, can hardly back down without achieving Russia's security goals in Ukraine, a section of Western decision-makers says: There is no longer any escape from war.
A number of observers believe that the United States, not Europe or Turkey, might want to see Putin actually invade Ukraine.
If Putin dares to take this step, he will not only face stiff resistance from the Ukrainians, but an unprecedented package of sanctions will be imposed on him, his regime, and the Russian state, setting Russia back several decades.
The other possibility, of course, is that Russia will deal a fatal blow to the Ukrainian military capabilities, using this or that justification, without undertaking an actual invasion, with the aim of creating a climate of instability that leads to the overthrow of the regime of President Vladimir Zinsky in Kiev, and opens the way for Russian negotiations -Ukrainian, and Russian-Western, on the status of Ukraine and its future relationship with Russia.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zinsky
The problem that Putin might face in this case, of course, would be for the United States and its Western allies to impose sanctions on Russia, even if Russian forces did not cross the border line with Ukraine.
The most worrying thing for Moscow is that Ukraine, if attacked in this way or that, will rush to apply for NATO membership, and that the alliance will eventually agree to its annexation.
The third option, and the safest for Russia, in the foreseeable future, at least, is to avoid an invasion or aggression against Ukraine, and at the same time maintain the atmosphere of tension surrounding it for as long as possible.
By adopting a policy of patience and longsuffering, Moscow hopes that pressure on Ukraine will lead to a change of government in Kiev in favor of understanding with Russia.
But this option, which is not guaranteed results, and is very costly, will also be faced with Western reactions, which are difficult to assess in advance or how Russia will deal with it.
In the end, whatever course the crisis will take in the coming weeks and months, it is hard to imagine Putin's withdrawal without Western concessions that will save Russia's face.
In Russia's long and exhausting history, there has not been a close relationship between the survival of the ruler and the economic burdens that the Russian people can suffer.
There is no doubt that Western sanctions against Russia will be met by stopping Russian energy supplies to Europe, with all that such a development means for the European economy, and for the world economy as a whole.
——————————————————————————
This article is taken from Al Jazeera Center for Studies.