Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to authorize some degree of new conflict with Ukraine, according to President Joe Biden, who acknowledged that a “minor incursion” might sow discord within the trans-Atlantic alliance about how to respond.
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we have to fight about what to do and not to do,” Biden said. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the force amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine.”
That prospect has loomed into view in the weeks since Russia presented the United States, and NATO writ large, with a draft treaty that would require a practical contraction of the trans-Atlantic alliance and a legal guarantee that no other countries would be permitted to join. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba emphasized earlier Wednesday that Kyiv is counting on U.S. and European allies “agreeing on very strong sanctions” in retaliation for a prospective attack, but Biden acknowledged the difficulty of the task.
“There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens, the degree to which they’re willing to go,” Biden said, explaining that the most severe sanctions on Russia “are gonna have a negative impact on the United States as well as a negative impact on the economies of Europe as well, [and] a devastating impact on Russia.”
US RACING AT ‘FORMULA ONE SPEED’ TO ARM UKRAINE
Biden’s candor about the potential dispute between allies could spell “a disaster” for Ukraine in the coming weeks, according to a former senior U.S. official, because Russian President Vladimir Putin could read it as a sign that the costs for invading Ukraine might be lower than U.S. officials have threatened.
“Unbelievable,” the former senior U.S. official told the Washington Examiner. “ Acknowledging it is Putin’s to decide. Ceding him the initiative. Differentiating between an incursion and an all-out invasion, and suggesting our response would be different. Talking about differences among Allies rather than conveying unity and resolve. And ultimately saying that he thinks Putin WILL go in, because he can’t back down now.”
The former official surmised that “jaws must have been dropping in both Moscow and Kyiv.”
In the meantime, Moscow is taking Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s impending meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as an opportunity to see if they can achieve their political goals without using military force.
“There arrives a moment of truth when the West either accepts our proposals or other ways will be found to safeguard Russia’s security,” Konstantin Gavrilov, who leads the Russian delegation at the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Wednesday. “We are running out of time. The countdown begins.”
Putin’s goals are a subject of debate in Western circles. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has implied that the military buildup is designed to compel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to end the antecedent war in eastern Ukraine on terms that are very unfavorable for Ukraine — a concession that Zelensky will only make, according to Lavrov, if Western countries pressure him to do so.
“If Ukraine is left alone to its conscience, it will not do anything,” Lavrov said in December. “It must be pushed to act. This is what the Normandy format” — a diplomatic forum that includes Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France — “was established for, but Berlin and Paris are neglecting their obligations. We are trying to attract their attention to the importance of doing this.”
The Normandy format, convened amid the conflict, produced a pair of deals known as the Minsk agreements, and Putin was pleased with the outcome of Minsk 2. Western officials regard that text as “deeply flawed and open to wildly different interpretations,” as former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker has put it, while Moscow faults Kyiv for failing to hold elections in the territories controlled by Russian forces.
“What is lacking in Ukraine’s passage of these political measures is not the legislation per se, but implementation — which Russia itself prevents by continuing to occupy the territory,” Volker wrote. “For example, international legal norms would never recognize the results of elections held under conditions of occupation, yet that is exactly what Russia seeks by demanding local elections before it relinquishes control.”
Lavrov suggested this week that he expects Blinken to waffle on Volker’s “peculiar views,” as he termed it.
“We have reasons to believe that the current administration views the situation around the Ukrainian settlement in a more realistic way,” Lavrov said Tuesday. “In particular, it acknowledges that the problem of the special status of Donbas needs to be resolved first.”
Putin’s team has published an expansive proposal for how that “special status” should take shape, and it involves a change to the Ukrainian constitution that would allow the Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine the right to strike agreements with foreign governments such as Russia while curtailing the foreign policy powers of the central government.
“The [Russian proxies] would be reincorporated into Ukraine but as distinct political, economic and legal entities tied to Russia — thus introducing a constitutional Trojan horse that would give the Kremlin a lasting presence in Ukraine’s political system and prevent the authorities in Kyiv from running the country as an integrated whole,” Chatham House associate fellow Duncan Allan has explained. “Yet the [Russian proxies] would be able to sign agreements with other countries (i.e. Russia), perhaps establishing Russian military bases on their territories.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor echoed Volker’s assessment that the Ukrainian government will never agree to hold elections in eastern Ukraine while Russian forces and their proxies have military control of the region.
“The Ukrainians are not going to agree to that because that will mean that there are no free and fair elections and that will be controlled by Russia,” Taylor told the Washington Examiner. “They’re a sovereign country … and they’re not going to have elections while a foreign country controls the province.”
Russia, in any case, has broadened the controversy by linking the potential for conflict in Ukraine to a demand that Biden agree to curtail NATO. And while most U.S. officials have surmised that Putin has not made a decision about whether to attack Ukraine, Biden acknowledged that he sees a fight brewing.
“My guess is he will move in,” Biden said. “He has to do something.”
Volker predicted that Putin will order an invasion designed to seize the Ukrainian territory between Crimea and the Donbas. Such an operation would have the advantage of securing the water reservoirs that supply the Crimean peninsula and bringing Mariupol, a major port city on the Sea of Azov, under Russian control.
“They’re prepared to call our bluff and say, ‘Nope, we’re just going to take … territory that [we] want,’ and, in doing so, impose a new set of rules,” Volker told the Washington Examiner. “I think [Putin’s] already worked out what he’s going to do.”
That scenario dovetails with former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove’s prediction last week that Putin would not take the most aggressive option available to Russian authorities.
“A lot of people mostly fear that creeping incrementalism, whereby, craftily, Putin applies military power … just below the threshold of broad reply,” Breedlove told the Washington Examiner. “And his whole goal would be to divide the alliance.”
BLINKEN WARNS OF POSSIBLE RUSSIAN FALSE FLAG ATTACK AGAINST UKRAINE
Biden acknowledged that there is a range of scenarios in which such a Russian tactic might succeed, but he tried to put guardrails around that idea later in the press conference.
“It’s one thing to determine that if they continue to use cyber efforts, well we can respond the same way, with cyber,” Biden said. “I’ve got to make sure that everyone is on the same page as we move along. I think we will [be] if there’s something that is — where there’s Russian forces crossing the border, killing Ukrainian fighters, et cetera. I think that changes everything. But it depends on what he does, as to what extent we’re going to be able to get total unity on the Russia, on the NATO front.”
Jerry Dunleavy contributed to this report.
