I’ve posted here a bit about Russia and things related to the post Soviet world. I’ve explained that my insight is personal. I’ve lived in Ukraine, my partner is Ukrainian, her family lives in Kiev and I’m a news and culture junkie who speaks Russian and watches a lot of Russian content.
This doesn’t make what I am about to say a professional opinion, just one coming from a place where I analyze these things constantly.
My thesis in watching the situation with the Ukrainian border buildup is that at least in part, Putin is doing this purposefully to influence the American elections in 2022 and 2024. I’m going to provide a bunch of facts but at the end of the day it’s obviously speculation but I haven’t seen anyone else saying this and to me it matches. I know this may sound like a huge leap but I would like to present my case.
Let’s get some facts up forward.
First, per the Mueller report and regardless of whatever Trump’s inclusion was, Putin put a large amount of effort into manipulating the 2016 election for Trump to win. The GRU social media attack was real and it was extensive.
It’s important to realize that this was a military attack executed by the largest Military Intelligence agency in Russia. This is the organization behind the shooting down of a civilian airplane over Ukraine among other real acts of war. You can read more about how powerful and serious this arm of the Putin government is here in the New York Times. (www.nytimes.com/...)
The things to really let sink in here are — first of all that this was a military attack. This was a massive intrusion into America even if the Republican party was too busy shielding themselves and Trump to allow that to be the actual earth shattering news that it should have been. We were attacked on our own soil. It’s irrelevant the outcome. In other words it doesn’t matter if it influenced the election or not. We would never say “Oh, they flew some planes and dropped some bombs on some farmland so nothing came of it” and yet that was the outcome there.
I expounded on that to make it very clear that this decision to engineer our elections wasn’t just someone’s afterthought or some random “hmm, let’s hack the US”, this was a chosen strategy by the highest levels — meaning that Putin agreed to a massive cyber attack on the US.
Let’s talk about Putin and risk/benefit analysis and political operation in light of this.
The quickest study of Putin’s history is a clear master of risk analysis and cost-benefit analysis. This operation posed massive risks. Unlike the Republicans he was well aware that this was an attack and that if it was treated as it should have been the consequences could have been severe.
Making a point clear — It’s impossible to imagine that those involved didn’t present at least a mid level risk of the attack being exposed as it was in the decision making process. In other words, this wasn’t “OK, we will never get caught in this hack so let’s not even bother considering that”.
A simple distillation of the above can state that Putin’s goal to influence the American Election to get Donald Trump in power was great enough to face whatever damages that could come out of this.
So it’s incredibly naive to imagine that Putin’s interest in the American System of governing and his potential to influence it has somehow magically disappeared now that Joe Biden is President …..
The reality is that the American Republican party is deeply connected to the Russian oligarchy. The name “Moscow Mitch” is not just a silly nickname — it’s about McConnel’s connection to Oleg Deripaska as Rachel Maddow explains — www.salon.com/.... Deripaska is the oligarch whose home was recently raided in connection with Trump/Russia as well.
The fact that eight Republican Senators spent fourth of July 2018 in Russia is a real thing www.washingtonpost.com/…
Of course the mother-ship of Rupert Murdoch owning the largest outdoor media company in Russia for 8 years as I have written here about. www.dailykos.com/…
It goes on — Paul Manafort, Rand Paul, Devin Nunes, the NRA and so much more...
Point being. Putin and Russia didn’t only connect with Trump. They connected with The Republican Party. Putin didn’t simply want Trump to win. He wanted Republicans in Power.
There is a really simple explanation of this as well. Their interests absolutely line up. Russia is country of Power and control by the ultra wealthy in a ruthlessly capitalistic pseudo-democracy where nationalism, misogyny, anti-LGTB policy and a population that doesn’t trust the media and believes that corruption is just part of getting things done — everything that the Republican party could hope and dream for. All that needed to happen to convert the people who once were afraid to death of communism was proof that the oligarchic regime had no interest whatsoever in that past. Once that was made clear these people were not “strange bedfellows” but actually fully aligned “BFFs” and yet the rest of analytical America (call it the news or whatever) got left in the dust clouds of correlating Russia with communism while correlating the Republican machine with a political party that believed in Democracy. Both of these absolutely dead relics.
2022 and Ukraine
Here is a brief explanation of the Ukrainian situation. Putin has increased forces in Russia on the border of the Donbast region of Ukraine. This part of Ukraine is the most pro-Putin area of the country and it’s been a low burning “hot” war for years. Putin and Russia have been giving aid to the separatists for years and everyone knows it. It’s basically a civil war in territories which are officially within the borders of Ukraine and the fighting is between people who are aligned with Russia and Putin who live there and people who are aligned with Ukraine.
Here is a link at AP Explainer with more details regarding the situation since 2014: apnews.com/...
The reality is that in this conflict very little within this region has changed in 2021 from a structural point of view on the west (within Ukraine). Yes, there has been a slight increase of violence but remember, this is a civil war. The violence was initiated by the separatists and the Ukrainian forces are factually defending their territory against forces within. As far the conflict, the eventual goal if they win is to reconnect with Russia. To clarify, there never, ever was a concept that Ukraine would attack into Russia for any reason(as if this needs to be stated is laughable).
Given the above statement, by definition the only use for Russian forces is to aid the Rebels who factually live within the drawn borders of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. The only escalation can be towards speeding up the process of separating from the country and the point I am trying to make is that, any way you look at this, the Russian side of the equation is causing an escalation whether it is in theory “the people’s will” or not.
That said, in the second half of 2021 Putin moved massive troop strength to an area within Russian where he has no permanent military infrastructure on this border. Yes, Putin can legally put his army wherever he wants in his country. This is a straw man. The only reason to multiply the troop levels by tenfold is to threaten and/or attack. As noted above, this can’t be claimed as a defensive posture without being laughed at. Once again, there is nothing to defend except for claiming that, because part of the population of his neighbor is favorable to him to the extent of attacking their own government and neighbors, that he needs to defend them. It’s nonsense. And, he knows that.
And here is the question at the root of this:
Why has Putin Chosen to escalate this now?
A few more details. Putin made his demand that NATO formalizes their charter to never allow Ukraine to join NATO. When a meeting between NATO and Russia took place last week, Russia clarified this position as not some negotiating strategy. This wasn’t haggling for something. Putin’s message in the talks was “It’s either this or nothing”.
The demand is not only ridiculous on face value, it’s impossible by the structure of NATO which is built on a framework which allows an open door application policy. The member states would need to modify the charter of NATO to allow for this and of course that would never happen.
What does this mean — ?
Understanding Putin is key to this next piece. Putin is a master calculator and I would bet my entire life savings on this statement — Putin never thought that NATO would ever agree to this demand. Never, ever.
Logic is simple here. He never intended to negotiate down and he knew going in that NATO would not grant the demand. So he did it on purpose. Period.
Post meeting, Putin has given NATO 7 days to come to a “yes” answer and at this moment it is not clear what will happen if NATO doesn’t agree but there is only one place for him to go and that is “up” — escalate. That is a tough statement to digest but there is no other answer. He’s not going to back down — he started it all in the first place and he came to the table with a false negotiation.
Where does it go? That is where I am going to stop and I won’t make a prediction that I would bet on, however, I’m going to say what I am leaning to.
He’s going to invade the parts of Ukraine in Donbast where he has the support of the separatists just as he did in Crimea. That’s my guess.
But here is my deeper speculation regarding all of this — and this piece is 100% speculation, 100% my own theory and I accept that there is no way to prove it:
The bigger prize is attempting to return the American governance to the Republican Party. I’ve watched Putin recently at a press conference earlier in December where he started using pejorative and flatly false claims about Ukraine. Basically referring to the country as a falsely separated family. Now, watching Putin speak is like a masterclass in Kabuki. He says endlessly things that he doesn’t mean but this seemed particularly empty. I believe Donald Trump is both delusional and is often a bad judge of the realities of things he discusses. Putin is the opposite. He is deeply aware of his messaging and deeply aware of the lies he is telling for what they are.
He knows that the greater population of Ukraine loathes him and the way he rules Russia. They may be frustrated with Zilensky, they may want more clarity with many things in how their country is run but reconnecting with Putin’s Russia is Anathema to an overwhelming majority. You can find countless articles like this one detailing that “Putin Lost Ukraine” uacrisis.org/… this has been an ongoing slide but it’s not something that needs to be polled on a regular basis. Putin’s actions on multiple levels has caused tremendous and often vehement dislike and distrust of him.
So once again, I’m not believing for a second that he made this statement in sincerity. I don’t believe for a second that he is ready to launch a full scale war of unification with Ukraine and — for what it’s worth, it doesn’t appear that many Ukranians believe this will happen either.
This is getting very long, I know so I will wrap it up
The upside to an invasion of a form in Donbast is that it will cause only problems for Biden. There is zero possible strengthening of the Biden Administration in this. None. If Putin attacks Biden has two choices — to engage or to back down. In the event he engages, he is a Democratic president who chose to start a war with Russia over an invasion into a neighboring country where this is (in Donbast) at least a substantial portion of the population who wants to be with Russia.
I hope that the lack of nuance in this should be clear. It’s us escalating a super power war due to a civil war on the border of the other super power and the rebels of that civil war want to be part of that country.
We enter the situation with a weak posture and it goes downhill from there.
The other choice of not acting is exactly what happened with Crimea although the internal political spotlight is arguably hotter than it was with Obama — or — maybe that isn’t fair so let’s leave it as it’s own thing.
America looks weak, unable to activate and everything attached. The end result? Strength for Republicans.
BTW — I believe that the idea of this being a spillover into the entire Democratic party and affecting 2022 is part of this as well. The sooner that Putin has a more allied American legislature the better and he is for sure expecting the same time of ridiculous stunts from a Republican congress as they pulled with Hillary, Benghazi, etc (which needs no guesswork — they have promised it).
The last line
Regaining Donbast is a victory for Putin but it’s not worth the risks associated with it. This is extremely high stakes chess with the entire international community, NATO and the US. The prize is simply not worth that.
The entirety of Ukraine is not in play. Period. Which is why Ukrainians in Kiev are angry but not scared. Managing a war against the parts of Ukraine that are truly sovereign is a loser. The economic and power damage are beyond thinkable for Putin who again, everyone seems to be forgetting is generally a master of this stuff and this level of question “Should I actually attack Kiev?” is Kindergarden stuff. The answer is clear as a bell to a novice junior — attacking Kiev would be idiotic and simply isn’t part of the plan. At all.
And yet, he’s doing it (meaning doing some action in Donbast). He’s proceeding. The goal is different. It’s not finally having the line drawn on a region that at this point is a bombed out wasteland that needs to be rebuilt so that they can raise the Russian flag and Putin can add an area of land the size of a pinhead compared to the rest of Russia in the map.
The above is clear analysis.
My piece about the American situation is absolute speculation but I ask if it seems to make some sense given all of the above. In the absence of another answer that makes any sense it seems like a pretty good one.