Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered a spiral that goes beyond the clash between two states and runs the risk of acquiring international proportions. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military fiasco, the victory-mode morale of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the geostrategic interests of US President Joe Biden are guiding the conflict towards a new phase that could be even more deadly than the initial one and with potentially much more serious reverberations for the rest of the European continent.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The two sides are facing a decisive week, with the date of May 9 marked in red as a possible high point of the Russian offensive or as a pause for peace negotiations. But the most likely scenario, according to sources in Brussels and Washington, is that the war will drag on and that Russia will keep up an escalation that increasingly includes the threat of using its nuclear arsenal.
“The Russian government loves anniversaries and they would probably like May 9 to be a milestone in the conflict,” NATO sources point out, alluding to the upcoming commemoration of the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The symbolic date, according to these sources, would be propitious for the Kremlin to try to claim its success in the invasion of Ukraine or to offer a path to negotiation. “But most likely, Russia will not be able to do either one thing or the other. The battle continues and the Ukrainians are convinced that they can win”, add the same sources.
The spiral of aggressive rhetoric by Putin’s government and, above all, its continuous non-rhetorical violence in recent weeks, raise fears of a deepening conflict and an extension of international ramifications. The Western allies are supplying the Ukrainian army with increasingly abundant and sophisticated weapons so that it can defend itself against the incessant Russian strikes.
Allied sources acknowledge that these deliveries will require permanent participation by the West in the maintenance and management of the supplied equipment, as well as in the training of the Ukrainian military personnel in charge of using it. Both factors will increase the risk of a fortuitous or deliberate attack by Putin’s army. Ukrainian soldiers are already traveling to US bases in Germany and other countries to be trained, the Pentagon has announced.
Objective: Decimate the Russian army
Washington has also set itself the goal of helping the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to decimate the Russian army until it is unable to undertake an invasion like the one that began on February 24. And US President Joe Biden is raising US aid to Kyiv to levels that already equal America’s annual spending during its campaign in Afghanistan.
Putin has threatened, for his part, to resort to never-used weapons to respond to Western involvement that, according to Moscow, is beginning to border on co-belligerence. And Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Monday accused NATO of having embarked on a war against Russia through the intermediation of Ukraine. He warned that the risk of a nuclear conflagration is “serious, real.” “We must not underestimate it,” he added threateningly.
Russia is also threatening to extend the conflict to Moldova, taking advantage of the presence of its so-called peacekeepers in the separatist region of Transnistria, which would open up another front on the southwestern flank in Ukraine. And, for the first time, Russian authorities are beginning to use the term “war” to describe a conflict that until now they have described as a “special military operation.” Western sources point out that Moscow’s toughest wing would be in favor of openly declaring war against Ukraine, a move that would involve the general mobilization of the Russian adult population for possible conscription.
Allied sources attribute the growing aggressiveness of the Kremlin’s rhetoric to its continuing struggles on the battlefield. “Raising your voice so much right now is a display of weakness rather than strength,” these sources point out. Jamie Shea of the Friends of Europe think tank and a former NATO official agrees that Russian protests against Western arms supplies are a clear signal that Moscow fears military failure in Ukraine. “The Kremlin knows that it will have to scale down its offensive in the Donbas region and in the Black Sea when the Ukrainian army starts using sophisticated, high-tech weapons, such as Switchblade drones, missile launchers or air defense and radar systems.”
Even the European Union, initially reluctant to the idea of getting involved in a military resolution of the conflict, is becoming more and more combative. “Russia’s aggression is a direct threat to our security, and we will make it a strategic failure,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week. “This is a defining moment, our response will decide the future of both the international system and the global economy,” she predicted during an official visit to India.
Washington sets the pace
But it is Biden who is setting the pace in the arms race in favor of the Zelenskiy government. According to allied sources, Washington’s leap forward has come after “the lack of stamina by the Russian army became evident” as well as the apparent shortcomings of the Kremlin’s intelligence services. “Weapons from the West began to enter Ukraine on February 25, the day after the start of the war, and there is still no record that Russia has hit even one of the Western shipments,” says an allied source.
“It is clear that there is a change in strategy in Washington and in many European capitals,” Richard Gowan, an analyst at the independent organization International Crisis Group, explains by phone from New York. “Let’s say that now a crack has opened through which they see a possibility to go further and end up weakening Russia to prevent it from making incursions into other countries in the future.”
