The Gathering Storm

Why the West Can’t Stop Russia From Invading Ukraine


The shadow of war looms large over Eastern Europe. 100,000 Russian troops line the Russian-Ukrainian border. The future of East European security hangs in the balance as the world looks on with bated breath. With the winter snows thawing in the East of Ukraine, if a Russian invasion is going to happen, it’s going to happen soon. The US and its allies have little time to avert a crisis that will reshape the narratives of security in the region, as well as call into question the efficacy of the United State’s European strategy.

Russian troops exercising in a T-72B3 main battle tank at the Kadamovskiy Firing Range in the Rostov region of Southern Russia, December 2021 - Associated Press

Sounding the Drums of War

After weeks of emergency talks between Russia and NATO through numerous high-level diplomatic channels and forums, a peaceful resolution seems to be slipping out of reach. The Vienna OSCE Summit and Brussels NATO-Russia Council Summit this month have concluded without any credible de-escalation to the crisis. With NATO refusing all of Russia’s ultimatums, a war in Ukraine seems inevitable.

Why is Russia invading Ukraine in the first place?

Much of Russia’s invasion/intervention rationale is drawn from an arguably illegitimate grievance – that the US and NATO promised not to expand “an inch” East after the end of the Cold War. Russian media supposes that the promise was made during the negotiations for the Two Plus Four Agreement that marked the reunification of Germany in 1991. This notion was seemingly dispelled by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview with Russia Behind the Headlines, stating that “the topic of NATO expansion was not brought up at all”.

Regardless of the historical truth behind the myth of this promise, Russia’s grievances with NATO ring in some truth given the apparent disregard of consideration of Russian security perceptions. The possibility of Ukrainian – as well as Georgian – accession to NATO brings with it the chance of NATO offensive and defensive installations on the Russian border, such as the deployment of hypersonic missiles and air-defence systems such as PATRIOT that diminish the credibility of Russian response capabilities. All would serve to increase Russia’s sense of insecurity.

Romanian deployment of US-built PATRIOT air-defense system on its Black Sea coastline (Cape Midia), September 2020 - Balkan Investigative Reporting Network

Declawing the Bear

The question remains, what can NATO do to prevent the crisis and to preserve Ukrainian sovereignty. Firstly, the possibility of a military response is completely out of the question. The logical conclusion of foreign military deployment in Ukraine assuming an invasion takes place – which currently seems to be the most likely outcome – would be all-out war with Russia. This leaves the US and its allies with options ranging from diplomatic isolation to a salvo of economic sanctions. The latter however is likely to come with mutually damaging outcomes.

A SWIFT Retaliation

One possibility would be to exclude Russia from the global international banking payment system, SWIFT. Such a move would severely weaken the position of Russian banks to service clients at home and abroad, and lead to a severe depreciation in the Russian Rubel – the strength of which critically impacts the revenues of Russian energy companies like Gazprom. Whilst perhaps strikingly effective at dissuading Russian aggression in Ukraine, such a policy has been met with a muted response from policymakers in Europe. Investigative journalists at German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that government sources indicate that such a move is off the table.

This is likely true for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the required unanimous vote for undertaking any EU response against Russia is unlikely to materialise for measures that have such widespread impacts on the broader international economy – such as SWIFT exclusion. Recent reports seem to suggest targeted sanctions against specific Russian banks are likely to receive greater support across the EU.

Secondly, the exclusion of Russia from SWIFT would further accelerate the adoption and development of the current fledgling SWIFT alternatives such as Russia’s SPFS (eng: System for Transfer of Financial Messages) and China’s CIPS (Cross-border Interbank Payment System). As countries begin to view SWIFT as a tool of American diplomacy, the incentive to decouple from the system will only become stronger. Such a reality would serve to weaken the efficiency of the global financial sector by fragmenting the international banking transfer system and to diminish Western institutional power in the global financial sector.

Turning Off the Gas

The opening of the Nordstream 2 pipeline remains a contentious issue between EU member states, the US, and Germany. The pipeline’s opening and operation serves as a bargaining chip between the EU and Russia. The pipeline is expected to double Russian gas exports to Germany, extending its existing gas monopoly over Europe as well as diminishing the relevance of the current Soyuz and Brotherhood pipelines that pass through Ukraine to Europe. The closure/cancellation of Nordstream 2 would represent a catastrophic blow to the Russian energy sector given its reliance on gas exports as well as the economy as whole given the importance of the Russian energy sector.

Nordstream 2 map (Vyborg to Greifswald), 2015 - Gazprom

The cancellation of Nordstream 2 would also be severely damaging to European economies, most especially Germany. European gas prices rose 17% the day after the announcement of the delay of the opening of the pipeline due to a German regulatory roadblock. The EU overall imports just shy of 50% of its gas from Russia with Nordstream 2 only serving to increase the figure. Whilst the EU has maintained that it has been focused on diversifying its gas suppliers since the price surge associated with the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the aforementioned reality sits in sharp contradiction. With this in mind, the EU’s capacity to withstand a short to medium-term cut-off from Russian gas seems relatively weak, perhaps explaining Germany’s reluctance to let go of the Nordstream 2 project in the face of fierce opposition from the US and its EU allies.

The threat of these sanctions intend to deter intervention and damage the Russian economy, yet President Putin appears to be relatively unbothered. A quick glance at Russian state finances offers a compelling explanation.

Russian foreign exchange reserves stand at about 630Bn USD - an all-time high. This is in part due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global financial and commodity markets which has seen the price of gold soar 25% and the price of oil climb more than $25 to $85 USD per barrel (25th January 2022) since January 2020. Given the Russian fiscal breakeven price for oil stands at around $40USD, the coming oil price inflation expected by commodity analysts may serve to only bolster the already favourable position of the Russian energy sector.

These figures support what some call Putin’s “Fortress Russia” strategy, where the deployment of economic policy is designed to insulate Russia from the impacts of international economic sanctions. Whilst Russia may be able to weather Western sanctions for years to come, it will pay dearly for this fiscal posture.  The Fortress Russia strategy, however, requires a high level of fiscal austerity and prioritizes the dominance of state enterprises which crowd out capital investment in a country whose R&D spending as a percentage of GDP is already 2-3 times lower than the average of its OECD counterparts.

Déjà Vu

As January draws to a close, the prospect of a diplomatic solution is fading. Talk of an all-out invasion has foreign policymakers and news media hawkishly scanning the Ukrainian border, watching and waiting for any inkling of the invasion’s beginning. The thousands of tanks and soldiers lining the border is quite the spectacle and stands as a strong symbolic message of Russian resolve.

Yet Moscow’s sabre-rattling and brinksmanship may serve to divert attention away from other objectives of espionage and subterfuge. Maskirovka is a well known and established Russian/Soviet military concept specializing in the use of deception. It was most recently deployed during the 2014 invasion of Crimea, using plausible deniability and deflagging/unmarking soldiers to mask military operations. Many still remember the “Little Green Men” - members of an unmarked elite Russian Spetsnaz unit - that mysteriously appeared in Crimea weeks before its annexation.

A Russian soldier stands guard outside the navy headquarters in Simferopol, Ukraine on March 19, 2014 - Associated Press (Filippo Monteforte)

No doubt a similar situation is playing out in the Donbas region and perhaps more broadly across Ukraine with the purpose of weakening critical command and control infrastructure to prepare for an invasion. For eight years since the conflict in the Donbas region started, many Ukrainian soldiers have reported rebels utilising advanced Russian military equipment and employing tactics only carried out by professional soldiers.

The current buildup may be indicative of a “feint” whereby the current mass of military assets is only a diversion from the concealed first attack thrust. This would mean the initial attacks would come from elsewhere, likely a naval invasion in the South of Ukraine, or possibly a Southern thrust out of Belarus - especially relevant given Russia and Belarus’ ongoing joint military exercises. Putin will be hoping for a swift and decisive blow rather than a protracted ground war, and the element of surprise might just serve it to him.

Several Russian battle groups, including tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and a long-range multiple rocket unit is deployed in the Pogonovo Training Area outside of Voronezh, Russia, November 26th - Maxar Technologies

But Maskirovka is not only limited to covert military operations undertaken by soldiers on the ground.

Just recently, Ukrainian government websites were hit by a cyberattack that repeated a demoralising message designed to break the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian citizenry. In line with these tactics is the UK government’s apparent discovery of a coup plot against the Ukrainian government, one that would see the installation of a pro-Russian regime. Whilst the details remain murky, and the Ukrainian government do not seem convinced, such a move would indeed be within the hand of cards Russia has played before.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits positions of armed forces near the frontline with Russian-backed separatists in Donbas region, Ukraine April 9, 2021 - Ukrainian Presidential Press Service

At this present moment, Ukraine and Russia seem to be heading for a large scale conflict that threatens to create collateral damage for regional security and the global economy. The West must approach further negotiations with tangible solutions that serve the interests of both Europe and Russia, else Ukraine will become the battleground of a conflict the size of which has not been seen since the Gulf War.

Aaron Robbins

Aaron is a graduate from MA Geopolitics, Resources, and Territory at King’s College London School of Global Affairs. He also holds a BA (Hons) in History, Politics, and Economics from University College London, and is a trusted contributor for the Conflict Observer OSINT group. Aaron’s research interests include the development of Regional Security Architecture in East Asia, Eurasian Geopolitics, Maritime Security, and China-US relations.

Previous
Previous

The Next Level

Next
Next

Green Power