As Russian troops poured across the Ukrainian border on Feb 24, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the present conflict is on a whole different scale than Russia’s previous invasion of Georgia and Crimea.
With its 100,000-strong invasion force striking all across the country and gradually converging on its capital city of Kyiv, it seems that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions extend beyond the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. It is likely that he wishes to invade the whole country.
Yet Russia’s progress towards Kyiv seems to have hit a snag. After initially swift advances, Moscow’s momentum began to slow amid fierce resistance from the Ukrainian people, with local forces reportedly expelling Russian forces from Kharkiv after fighting in the streets.
Putin claims that his goal is not to occupy Ukraine, but to “demilitarise” and “de-nazify” it. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) General David Petraeus told Bloomberg that this likely means that the Russian president intends on overthrowing the Ukrainian government and installing a more pro-Russian administration. Seeing the pro-EU orientation of Ukraine as a threat to Russia’s geopolitical interests, the move is the culmination of attempts by the Kremlin to keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence and prevent “defection” to the “West”.
But the US believes that Putin’s ambitions go beyond restoring Russian influence in Ukraine. In an interview with CBS Evening News, secretary of state Anthony Blinken said that Putin intends to advance beyond Ukraine. “[Putin’s] made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Short of that, he’d like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighbouring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc,” he said. US United Nations representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also said that Putin wants to restore the former Russian empire.
“This struggle is about spheres of influence between major military powers, Nato’s expansion eastward and involvement in the former-Soviet space since the end of the Cold War, deployments and flight times of advanced missile systems in Eastern Europe, locations of short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons, competition for energy sector market share, and more,” writes portfolio analyst Kelly Bogdanova of RBC Wealth Management.
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Continental spillover?
If Moscow truly harbours broader irredentist ambitions, the stage may be set for a broader military conflict on the European continent. Should Putin attack a Nato member such as Poland or the Baltic states, Article 5 of Nato would oblige all other Nato members to respond given that “an attack on one is an attack on all”. In a scenario reminiscent of how European alliance politics instigated the two World Wars, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would become a continental-wide conflict that would also involve the war-weary US.
Meghan O’Sullivan, professor of the practice of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, sees several ways such a scenario might play out. For instance, the Zelensky government might need to flee to neighbouring Romania or Poland, she tells The Edge Singapore.
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“Russia may therefore seek to destabilise those countries, full-scale refugee flows could pour into Europe, or a Ukrainian insurgency against a Russia occupation may take root outside Ukraine’s borders in neighbouring Nato states,” says O’Sullivan, who was previously the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, Cedomir Nestorovic, professor of geopolitics at ESSEC Business School Asia-Pacific, does not see a wider conflict emerging. “No country wants to wage war against Russia. Exception for the United States and China, no other country can match the military forces of Russia,” he says, noting that coordination problems hinder Europe from combining its might to stand up against Moscow. Conversely, since Russia does not have a coalition of its own to resist NATO, it is unlikely to risk-taking on the European Union together without additional support.
Mehill Marku, lead geopolitical analyst at PGIM Fixed Income, also thinks that Putin did not anticipate NATO’s resolve to defend Europe’s common security interests and confront Russia with joint sanctions, predicating his invasion plans on a divided trans-Atlantic alliance between the US and Europe. Additionally, the Russian president may have miscalculated the potentially high loss of life to Russian troops, which could ultimately hurt his electoral performance when he is up for re-election in 2024.
“For reasons I am unable to fathom at the moment, Putin is mortgaging Russia’s future to pay for this war. Not all Russians — regardless of their place in the socio-economic food chain — may be happy with that transaction,” tweets King’s College London professor of politics Sam Greene in the wake of the invasion. Thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to protest the war, risking arrests, with more on social media joining in.
Not that Europe is immune from the fallout of war, however. Stefan Kreuzkamp, chief investment officer DWS, says that the economic fallout from the invasion has seen the risks of a recession in Europe rise. As a potential war in Ukraine increasingly displaces affected populations, it may have to prepare for more refugees as well, with refugees already beginning to trickle into neighbouring Romania.
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The Return of History
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Eventually though, Nestorovic says that Russia is likely to come to the negotiating table, for Putin has made clear from the start that his aim is to have talks — albeit on his terms. “If Ukraine abandons the idea to become a Nato member, negotiations can start. The more Russian forces conquer territory, the higher Putin’s demands will be, as Russian forces are much stronger than Ukrainian forces,” he explains. Moscow cannot afford to let itself get bogged down in a long-drawn conflict like in Vietnam or Afghanistan.
Still, the ESSEC don says there is no doubt that Moscow’s audacious invasion of Ukraine signals Russia’s return as a global power, with the Kremlin sparing no effort to achieve its ambitions. “I believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks nothing less than a shift away from the largely US/Western-dominated world order that has prevailed since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” agrees Michael Strobaek, global chief investment officer at Credit Suisse.
Antonenko sees geopolitical tensions in Asia increasing as states begin expanding their military capabilities and readiness levels. “The war will have a major impact on the global order, as an attack by one country on another will no longer be considered unthinkable. It will have implications for East Asia and Indo-Pacific where effective regional collective security systems do not exist.”
In 1992, at the height of Pax Americana, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the “End of History” as US-style Western democracy seemingly held sway all over the world. But as the world slept on Feb 24 and Russian columns crept into Ukraine under the cover of darkness, it seemed clear that a new, more dangerous multipolar global order had come into being. In the words of US songwriter Five for Fighting: “History starts now.”
Photo: Ukrainian soldiers collecting unexploded shells after a fighting with Russian raiding group in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv / Bloomberg
