Enemy at the Gates

Why is Moscow massing troops at the Ukrainian border? Anatol Lieven on what Vladimir Putin is after. “Ukrainian ethnic nationalists are determined to … create an ethnically Ukrainian, Ukrainian-speaking, Ukrainian nation. Whether this is a project that Western liberals should be supporting is an interesting question.” War Games Why is Moscow massing troops at the Ukrainian border? Anatol Lieven on what Vladimir Putin is after. Russia has sent nearly 100,000 soldiers to its frontier with Ukraine, prompting fears of war and rebukes from the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union. Russian President Vladimir Putin says such fears are “[alarmist]( and Russian officials say Moscow has no intention of invading the Ukrainian region of Donbass, where Russian-backed separatists control a small enclave and have clashed regularly with the Ukrainian military since 2014. The latest confrontation apparently began in late October, when Ukrainian forces retaliated with a [drone strike]( to artillery shelling by the separatists. But the Russian army [reacted differently]( to this episode, bringing in armored vehicles and units usually stationed far from the area and repositioning troops at night, unlike previous public displays of strength. The situation recalls Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in the Black Sea, where Russia keeps a major naval base at Sevastopol. What’s behind the Russian military buildup this time? Anatol Lieven is the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s senior research fellow on Russia and Europe and the author of [Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry]( along with two other books about Russia. According to Lieven, Ukraine simply means more to Russia than any other neighboring country—because of historical and cultural bonds, but also because so many Russians have Ukrainian ancestors or relatives. The prospects for war are uncertain, Lieven says, though Moscow would intervene to protect the separatists if Ukraine enters the breakaway enclave in Donbass. The key to understanding Vladimir Putin, in Lieven’s view, is that he’s utterly transactional. As Lieven sees it, Putin is maneuvering Russia’s armed forces to use as leverage for deals he hopes to cut with the United States and European countries. ——— Michael Bluhm: What is Putin’s strategy here? Anatol Lieven: We can’t be sure that he is massing troops near the Ukraine border in a force strong enough to launch a new invasion. U.S. intelligence has proved exaggerated and false in the past. But the Russian government has made very clear that, if Ukraine tries to reconquer the separatist area of eastern Ukraine by force, Russia will fight. Russia will send in the army to defend them. That’s been clear for years. There are two new elements that are worrying and could lead Russia to escalate. One, Russia is deeply unhappy with the Ukrainian government moving against Russian language and culture in Ukraine. There is a large Russian minority in Ukraine, and many Ukrainians in the east and south speak Russian. More and more measures are being taken to shut down Russian media outlets, drive Russian out of the higher-education system, and so on. For Russia, this means abolishing its historic cultural ties to Ukraine. Two, the Russians are very unhappy with America arming Ukraine. In the past, Moscow didn’t take that seriously, because they thought that, however many weapons America gives to the Ukrainians, Russia would still win. But the war in Nagorno-Karabakh last year, in which the Azerbaijan army achieved some remarkable successes with drone technology, has perhaps made the Russian military think Ukraine might not be such a pushover, after all. So, they’re trying to send a message to Washington: You can arm the Ukrainians, and it might be more difficult for us, but we still vastly outnumber them. We have much better armed forces. If it comes to war, we will win. Don’t dream that you can somehow build up Ukraine as a successful enemy of Russia. Bluhm: How likely is this to turn into a war? Lieven: It’s very difficult to say. In the past, both sides have backed off. Earlier this year, the Ukrainians seemed to be moving toward some kind of offensive, and Russia sent troops to the border, and the Ukrainians backed off. It could be that this is just posturing. Remember the Cuban missile crisis. Imagine if America were in a situation where China or Russia were heavily arming Mexico against the United States. The security establishment in Washington would go completely crazy and would use—if history is any precedent—extremely ruthless methods to bring that threat to an end. Russia is no different. It doesn’t like American arms in Ukraine, and it also wants to send some very strong messages that it will not tolerate American troops in Ukraine. If America tries to move troops into Ukraine, to establish bases in Ukraine, then I think Russia will invade. More from Anatol Lieven at The Signal: “The Russian establishment operates on a doctrine that says, Russia has remained a great power in the world, it can’t be anybody else’s satellite, and it must exclude potentially hostile alliances from neighboring states—and from Ukraine in particular. Ukraine isn’t a steppingstone to anywhere else; Ukraine is a goal in itself. It’s the country outside Russia with by far the largest Russian minority. It’s the country with by far the greatest cultural and historic meaning for Russia.” “It’s not Western military aid to Ukraine that’s deterring the Russians; they still think they’d win. They are afraid of vastly increased Western, and especially European, sanctions resulting from a new war. If there’s a new war, that’s almost certainly the end of the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline, in which Russia has invested so much hope—and also so much money. Nord Stream is a critical part of Russian strategy toward Europe—to keep Europe dependent on Russian gas, but also not to fall completely into the Chinese camp. The Russians never talk about this in public, but there are real fears in Russia: If we break completely with the West, or the West breaks completely with us, we will then simply become a supplier of energy and raw materials to China—and end up as a Chinese satellite. They don’t want that, so the great Western deterrent in Ukraine is economic, not military.” “The Russians were bitterly disappointed with the Trump administration. Putin liked having a photo opportunity with Trump, but Trump did not change U.S. policies at all. The Russians liked Trump for another reason, although they didn’t say so: They regarded him as discrediting American democracy and leading to increased polarization and even violence at home. For the Putin regime, anything that discredits American democracy is good, but they’ve given up on hoping that the Republicans will do anything more for Russia than the Democrats will.” ——— Meanwhile How do you know when a pandemic is over? “The pandemic appears to be winding down in the United States in a thousand subtle ways,” Joel Achenbach and Yasmeen Abutaleb [remarked]( in The Washington Post this week—“but without any singular milestone, or a cymbal-crashing announcement of freedom from the virus.” This seems right. But what does it mean? We asked Timothy Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta. —Graham Vyse Caulfield: Alas, while there’s cause for optimism—in the U.S. as in Canada—there will be no bright line. We aren’t going to wake up one morning with Covid gone. But case numbers are decreasing and if enough people, young and old, get vaccinated—and boosted—we can reduce hospitalizations and the impact Covid has on our daily lives. Many policies seem likely to remain for the foreseeable future, though (masks on planes?), and, so too, the deep polarization of public debate about them. That’s the world we live in now: Questions about the value of masks, mandates, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and even vaccines have all become almost entirely about ideology. Science and evidence have become beside the point for people advancing a denial narrative about Covid. We recently published a[study]( that found social media debates about hydroxychloroquine to have been almost perfectly polarized: Those who supported Trump, supported the unproven therapy; those who didn’t, criticized it. The debate was all politics. This polarization won’t end. On the contrary, it seems likely to intensify. All the science-free noise running through public debate is just going to add more confusion to how we transition out of pandemic mode and, more importantly, how people, and politicians, perceive that transition. The chaotic information environment will, for example, mean a patchwork approach to the easing of public-health policies. It’ll also shape how we think about and prepare for future pandemics. That’s not good. For more from Tim Caulfield on the struggle to manage Covid-19 … ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new digital publication exploring urgent questions in democratic life and the human world—sustained entirely by readers like you. 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