Russia is conducting a series of military and rhetorical escalations toward Ukraine that have analysts once again looking for clues as to President Vladimir Putin’s next move.
On Wednesday, Russia’s state security agency, the FSB, claimed that it had blocked an attack on Crimea by “sabotage-terrorist groups” sponsored by the Ukrainian government, though two Russian soldiers were killed. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of using terrorism to incite conflict over Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Infiltration attemptThere are two sets of overlapping events: the supposed recent attack on Crimea, and Russia’s build-up there.
The official Russian account lays out the first as follows: It began late Saturday, when FSB officers discovered a group of saboteurs just on the Crimean side of the land border with Ukraine. A fire-fight ended with one FSB officer killed and several of the saboteurs captured. Then on Monday, Ukrainian special forces attempted to cross into Crimea, killing one Russian soldier in firing over the border.
Moscow insists that Ukraine sponsored the plot. It’s difficult to judge the truth of these claims. Ukraine denies them.
Whatever happened, images found by open-source analysts suggest that Russia has been escalating its military presence in Crimea since at least Saturday — before the supposed attack occurred.
Mr. Putin has also escalated his language toward Ukraine, choosing to use this episode for some larger aim.
Analysts have pointed out disturbing parallels with how Russia behaved just before previous military actions against Ukraine.
In February 2014, similar speeches and military manoeuvres provided cover for Crimean volunteer militias to seize the peninsula, then still controlled by Ukraine, only to reveal they were in fact Russian special forces launching a military occupation.
Some have wondered whether Moscow might be plotting another intervention. Fighting has increased in eastern Ukraine, as it did before the August 2014 incursion.
But that seeming parallel may be the point, meant to create fear of military action — rather than actual action — that will give Mr. Putin leverage with Ukraine and with Western countries.
Classic Russian strategyMark Galeotti, a New York University professor who studies Russia, pointed out that Crimea would make little sense as a staging ground for military action against eastern Ukraine, which borders mainland Russia but not Crimea, and that the rest of the country is better defended. “It’s highly unlikely that the Russians are truly planning some major offensive,” Mr. Galeotti said. Rather, “We’re looking at a classic Russian strategy of building up tension.”
International peace talks over Ukraine, once the mechanism by which Mr. Putin forced contact with Western leaders who had shunned him over annexing Crimea, have become increasingly regarded as fruitless and irrelevant.
By dangling the threat of renewed conflict, Mr. Putin gives the talks a new purpose: to coax him back from the brink.
“It’s a standard Putin tactic — he wants to try to go there from a position of strength,” Mr. Galeotti said of the next peace talks, planned for early September. — The New York Times News Service
