Russia attack looks like all-out, not limited invasion
Russian armoured forces and troops are in combat around Ukraine following wide-ranging missile strikes
Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine this morning, starting with missile strikes and then moving armoured columns across the border to battle Ukrainian troops. The invasion started shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "special operation" to destroy Ukraine's military capacity and decapitate its leadership, or in his words, "de-Nazify" it. Ground troops are pushing north from Crimea, south from Belarus and west from Russia, and Ukraine's military is fighting back.
What next
Putin says Russia does not plan to occupy Ukraine, but his recent record of engaging Western states in talks only to wreck them, and then rapidly shifting position on his intentions in eastern Ukraine, shows this cannot be taken on trust. The nature and extent of Russian advances in coming days will give a clearer picture of his intentions. If he plans to capture Kyiv and other major cities, crushing armed resistance and imposing governance will be tougher than winning the war.
Subsidiary Impacts
- The advance from Belarus suggests that capturing Kyiv is an objective.
- The Moscow Exchange and the ruble have plummeted and further losses seem inevitable.
- US and EU sanctions will hit Russia harder than any to date, but are unlikely to alter Putin's course.
Analysis
Speaking this morning, Putin said the operation was to "protect people who for eight years have suffered mistreatment and genocide by the Kyiv regime. To that end, we will seek the demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine."
Another aim, he said, was to "put on trial those who have committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful civilians, including Russian citizens" in the two separatist republics.
He said the attack was prompted by a request for help from the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), and the friendship and mutual cooperation treaty he signed with them after recognising their sovereignty late on February 21.
In a turnaround from weeks of urging calm, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged everyone with combat experience to resist the invasion. A state of emergency is in force and army reservists have been called up. Some civilians are preparing to fight; many are fleeing the capital.
Military operations so far
Explosions caused by projectiles were reported in Kyiv; in Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Dnipro in the east; in Ivano-Frankivsk in the west; in Mykolaiv, close to Crimea; and in the south-eastern ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk, as well as Odessa, the key port in south-western Ukraine.
Weakening air defences
Russia's defence ministry said it was not targeting civilians but using precision strikes to take out Ukrainian military aircraft, aerodromes, air defence systems and other military structures. Ukraine does not use aircraft against the DNR and LNR, so this focus on Ukraine's air power is to protect a major Russian ground advance.
Ground offensives
After the missile strikes, ground offensives began in the south, east and north of Ukraine.
- Armoured and other forces drove northward from Crimea.
- Russian armoured offensives began in two parts of eastern Ukraine: in the vicinity of the cities of Kharkiv and Sumy to the north, and further south in the Luhansk region (the part not already under rebel occupation).
- Tanks and other hardware were seen crossing from Belarus, and Ukraine soon reported fighting in the adjoining Chernihiv region.
After missile strikes, phase two -- ground invasion -- is under way
Military and political objectives
The three-pronged ground offensive is the maximalist scenario that most commentators predicted. How it ends is another matter. Putin has several options:
- The ground troops could turn around and go home after unspecified gains, which come down to punishing and at least partially defeating Ukrainian forces.
- They could partially occupy strips of land around Ukraine's coastline and a slice of territory consisting of some or all of eastern Ukraine. That would give Moscow control of ports at Mariupol and Berdyansk, the helicopter engine plant in Zaporizhzhia and the Kharkiv tank factory -- all valuable assets for Russia -- and deprive Kyiv of their use. However, it would leave a straggling, long front line which Russia would have to man until further developments, military or political (that is, the collapse of the Kyiv government).
- Invading forces could push into the whole of Ukraine, besieging and possibly capturing major urban centres and attempting to remove President Zelensky and his administration -- the "de-Nazification" project.
Only the third option achieves Putin's stated aim of regime change (see RUSSIA: Putin weighs options against costs and gains - February 16, 2022). It has often been discounted because of the high casualties and heavy Western sanctions it entails. Putin probably priced those risks in some time ago, and harsh sanctions are now inevitable anyway.
Occupation is possible, but would come with high costs.
No government imposed by Moscow will be accepted by the majority of Ukrainians.
The Russian National Guard would be deployed to 'pacify' the civilian population, but lacks counter-insurgency capacity, so the army would have to fight guerrilla-style forces in rural and urban areas, resulting in high casualties and an inability to impose governance. Russian defence ministry claims of mass Ukrainian military desertions are probably a mix of disinformation and wishful thinking.
Always planned?
Putin has massed armed forces around Ukraine since November, moved them into forward positions and now ordered them into Ukraine.
Western governments hoped either that he was using them to gain leverage in discussions on European security with Washington on NATO, and that this was really his focus; or that he was undecided and that diplomacy and the threat of sanctions would persuade him to back down.
It is possible that this is an inaccurate reading and that Putin planned this invasion all along, using discussions about NATO and European security to keep the United States and its European allies both off-balance and busy.
He appears determined to reverse Ukraine's shift towards democracy and Western relationships, and to prevent it joining NATO. Accession to NATO has never been a realistic imminent prospect because of Ukraine's internal problems and unresolved territorial issues but at some point, probably last year, it became the primary concern for Putin.
Crushing Ukraine, not discussing European security, is the priority
Despite his access to extensive intelligence, Putin has little understanding of Ukraine or the social and political drivers there.
He simultaneously argues that Ukraine is Russia's dearest neighbour and that it has no right to statehood, nor has it ever properly existed as a nation. This is apparent from his July 2021 article presenting a skewed, selective view of history since the 9th and 10th centuries, and in his lengthy review of this version of history when he announced that he was recognising the DNR and LNR late on February 21 (see RUSSIA/UKRAINE: Invasion may follow eastern occupation - February 22, 2022 and see RUSSIA/UKRAINE: Putin's views should alarm Ukraine - July 13, 2021).
It may be that Putin's limited outlook, fed by the few hawkish-minded officials he sees in his self-imposed COVID-19 isolation, have driven policy on Ukraine much more than what Moscow until recently said was a commitment to discuss the twin diplomatic tracks of security talks with the United States and NATO and the four-party process around the Minsk 2.0 peace deal for eastern Ukraine.
Although these talks were continuing, Putin abandoned Minsk 2.0 and undermined any chance of a productive security dialogue. His priorities in Ukraine have eclipsed them, and probably always did.
