The Economist - USA (2022-01-22)

The Economist January 22nd 2022 45

Europe

RussiaandUkraine

The guns of January

“W

hat stands in  front  of  us,  what

could  be  weeks  away,  is  the  first

peer­on­peer,  industrialised,  digitised,

top­tier  army  against  top­tier  army  war

that’s  been  on  this  continent  for  genera­

tions,” warned James Heappey, Britain’s ju­

nior  defence  minister,  on  January  19th,

pointing  to  Russia’s  build­up  of  over

100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. “Tens

of  thousands  of  people  could  die.”  Esto­

nia’s  defence  chief  echoed  the  warning.

“Everything is moving towards armed con­

flict,” he said.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister,

is  due  to  meet  Antony  Blinken,  America’s

secretary  of  state,  in  Geneva  on  January

21st.  But  the  prospects  for  diplomacy  are

dim.  On  January  19th  Sergei  Ryabkov,  one

of Mr Lavrov’s deputies, said that even a 20­

year moratorium on natomembership for

Ukraine would not satisfy Russia. In recent

weeks, Russia has mobilised reservists and

dispatched troops and missiles from as far

away as the North Korean border.

Western  countries  are  bracing  for  the

worst. On January 17th Britain began airlift­

ing thousands of anti­tank missiles to Uk­

raine.  Days  earlier Sweden  rushed  ar­

moured vehicles to the island of Gotland as

three Russian landing craft passed through

the  Baltic  Sea,  destination  unknown.  The

same day, Ukraine was struck by cyber­at­

tacks which defaced government websites

and locked official computers. Meanwhile,

the  White  House  said  it  had  intelligence

showing  that  Russia  was  planning  staged

acts of sabotage against its own proxy forc­

es  in  eastern  Ukraine  to  provide  a  pretext

for attacking the country.

Such an attack could take many forms.

One possibility is that Russia would simply

do  openly  what  it  has  done  furtively  for

seven years: send troops into the Donetsk

and Luhansk “republics”, breakaway terri­

tories in the Donbas region of eastern Uk­

raine,  either  to  expand  their  boundaries

westward or to recognise them as indepen­

dent  states,  as  it  did  after  sending  forces

into  Abkhazia  and  South  Ossetia,  two

Georgian regions, in 2008.

Another  scenario,  widely  discussed  in

recent  years,  is  that  Russia  might  seek  to

establish a land bridge to Crimea, the pen­

insula  it  annexed  in  2014.  That  would  re­

quire seizing 300km (185 miles) of territory

along  the  Sea  of  Azov,  including  the  key

Ukrainian  port  of  Mariupol,  up  to  the

Dnieper river.

Such  limited  land­grabs  would  be  well

within  the  capabilities  of  the  forces  mus­

tering in western Russia. What is less clear

is whether they would serve the Kremlin’s

war  aims.  If  Russia’s  objective  is  to  bring

Ukraine  to  its  knees  and  prevent  it  from

joining natoor even co­operating with the

alliance, simply consolidating control over

Donbas or a small swathe of land in south­

ern Ukraine is unlikely to achieve it.

To do so would require imposing mas­

sive  costs  on  the  government  in  Kyiv—

whether  by  decimating  its  armed  forces,

destroying  its  critical  national  infrastruc­

ture or overthrowing it altogether. One op­

tion would be for Russia to use “stand­off”

As war looms larger, what are the Kremlin’s military options?

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